The Concerto for strings, RV 129, is one of the more than 140 concertos Vivaldi composed between 1723 and 1729. The works had been commissioned for performance by the young female players at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, the orphanage-cum-music conservatory where Vivaldi had held a teaching appointment in earlier years. As concerts at the institution contributed significantly to the Venetian cultural identity, the school continued to solicit new pieces from Vivaldi after his departure, requesting an average of two concertos per month. While the sheer volume of this output has historically opened Vivaldi to criticism of being compositionally formulaic and uninventive, the D minor concerto, RV 129, distinguishes itself from the majority in a number of regards. For one thing, it contains not three movements but four, with the usual fast-slow-fast configuration prefaced by a short, slow movement. Also, it is one of a handful of concertos with which the composer supplied nicknames. This so-called "Madrigalesque" concerto seeks, in the contour and flow of its melodies, to create a distinctly vocal quality. In this regard, though, Vivaldi does prove his comfort with creative economy and musical expediency: not only are the melodies song-ish, but some of them are actually recycled extensively from earlier vocal works.

Considered in this light, the opening Adagio—with its diminutive length, languid pace, and ethereal, yearning harmonic twists—takes on the feel of an operatic instrumental introduction to a dramatic vocal number rather than an independent movement of an instrumental work. The quick second movement does not articulate the clear ritornello form for which Vivaldi's opening Allegro movements are known, but rather presents an urgent theme subjected to continuous fugal treatment; this music is borrowed almost entirely from the second Kyrie eleison from the composer's own Kyrie in G minor, RV 587. Much like the first movement, the subsequent Adagio is not so much a proper movement as an interlude to the concerto's finale. This closing Allegro is also built upon a borrowed foundation, transposed and rescored from the finale of Vivaldi's Magnificat in G minor, RV 610. Though busy and intricate, this last movement is also brief. In fact, the concerto as a whole lasts less than three-and-a-half minutes in most performances. Rather than relying on the structural and harmonic expectations established in his other works, the Concerto madrigalesco takes a decidedly more emotionally direct, melodically expressive tack.

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