Antonio Vivaldi

L’Estro Armonico, Op. III, dedicated to the Grand Prince of Tuscany Ferdinando de’ Medici, is a set of twelve concertos for string instruments by Antonio Vivaldi, first published in Amsterdam in 1711 by Estienne Roger, a francophone printer, bookseller and publisher of sheet music working in the Netherlands. It was the first printed collection of Vivaldi’s concertos, and one of the most influential sets of instrumental music to appear during the whole of the eighteenth century.
L’Estro Armonico marks the definitive transition from the traditional Roman concerto grosso in Arcangelo Corelli’s style, where a concertino of two violins and cello plays in contrast to a tutti string orchestra, to the modern solistic concerto for one or more instruments. As a whole, L’Estro Armonico marks the pinnacle of a process of emancipation of instrumental music from its dependence on vocal forms, definitively extricating musical writing from the constraints of the word.