Antonio Vivaldi spent most of his working life directing music at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, an institution for young girls that combined features of an orphanage, nunnery, school, and conservatory. Vivaldi’s musical instruction raised the level of performance at the Ospedale to an international standard, and Pietà performances became one of Venice’s premier attractions. In addition to showcasing the young students’ musical skills, they displayed Vivaldi’s exceptional virtuosity as a violinist.

Almost half of Vivaldi’s more than five hundred concertos are for solo violin. But the ease with which Vivaldi produced new works was not always regarded as an asset. The 18th-century theorist Quantz believed that the quality of Vivaldi’s mature concertos (those composed after 1720) had become diluted due to "excessive daily composing." And Stravinsky reportedly quipped that Vivaldi didn’t write five hundred concertos - he wrote one concerto five hundred times.

Many of Vivaldi’s concertos have poetic titles attached to them, which is usually a marketing ploy rather than an apt description of the music. But in the case of the Violin Concerto in E major, nicknamed L’Amoroso, the title is pertinent. The key of E major was traditionally a "mellow" key in baroque music, and Vivaldi’s abundant use of grace notes suits the pastoral nature of the music. The opening Allegro lilts in continuous triplets through simple harmonies. The Cantabile middle movement begins in major but shifts to the minor mode for a melancholic aria before the radiant, confident finale.