Though three of the concerti are wholly original, the first, "Spring", borrows patterns from a sinfonia in the first act of Vivaldi's contemporaneous opera Il Giustino. The Four Seasons is the best known of Vivaldi's works.
They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione ( The Contest Between Harmony and Invention).
These were composed around 1718−1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua. The Four Seasons ( Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concertos by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year. Antonio Vivaldi (engraving by François Morellon de La Cave, from Michel-Charles Le Cène's edition of Vivaldi's Op.