It can dictate the form of the music (as with Liszt and other Romantics) or it can be used within a preconceived formal pattern, as in The Seasons. Programme music is as old as music itself (depicting the sounds of nature was the basis of primitive music) and has been used in many forms. Apart from fashion, it was only natural that his dramatic temperament should have inclined him towards pictorial effects in purely orchestral music. As a subject, the seasons have been depicted musically by many composers (Lully before him, as a ballet, Haydn, Tchaikovsky and Glazounov and others after him) though Vivaldi may have been the first to do so symphonically but in terms of both illustrative power and pure music, Vivaldi's concertos are perhaps his greatest achievement. It was fashionable at the time to depict nature in music, and Vivaldi wrote other descriptive pieces, both suggesting moods and specific images. The four concertos entitled The Four Seasons which open Vivaldi's Op.

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