Vivaldi

Vivaldi was ordained as a Catholic priest (earning the nickname the Red Priest for his red hair) but spent most of his career teaching and composing at a girls' orphanage in Venice. He wrote over 500 concertos, 46 operas, and numerous sacred works, establishing the concerto as a major form and influencing every Baroque composer who followed. The Four Seasons, a set of four violin concertos with accompanying sonnets, is the most frequently performed piece of Baroque music and one of the best-selling classical recordings of all time. Vivaldi's concertos were studied by Bach, who transcribed several for keyboard. After his death, Vivaldi was largely forgotten until a major revival in the 20th century.