Vivaldi composed his Concerto fatto per la Solennità della S. Lingua di S. Antonio to perform himself in February 1712 at the annual Padua Festival of the Holy Tongue of Saint Anthony. (The festival’s name refers to the legend that when the legendary preacher’s body was exhumed in 1263, 32 years after his death, to be reburied in a just-completed Padua basilica built in his honor, his tongue was found undecayed in his skeleton.)

There are two very different extant versions of the concerto, both of which display the combination of invention and virtuosity that made Vivaldi a legend.