The most remarkable thing about Vivaldi s concertos for solo bassoon and strings is their sheer number thirty-nine, including two incomplete (or possibly just incompletely preserved) works. No other composer has produced more than a handful, and the examples best known today by Mozart, Hummel and Weber are singletons within their respective composer s uvre. Vivaldi s bassoon concertos form a chronologically compact group within his output, being concentrated in the second half of his career (1720 41). They may well include the first of their type ever written, since the earliest precisely datable example, by the French composer J.B. de Boismortier, was published only in 1729 (and identifies cello and bass viol as alternative solo instruments).
In the standard catalogue of Vivaldi s compositions by Peter Ryom the bassoon concertos form a continuous block stretching from RV 466 to RV 504: the two incomplete concertos are RV 468 (two movements) and RV 482 (a single movement). Another unusual feature is that they survive without exception only in the form of autograph drafts once belonging to the composer s personal musical archive and today held by the National University Library in Turin. The fact that no contemporary copies, or even mere listings, of these concertos in inventories are extant suggests that demand for them was very localised and specific: Vivaldi evidently composed them in response to commissions from a small number of individual bassoonists or their patrons.