FINZI AND RESPIGHI
Notes on the composers and the pieces
Gerald Finzi
Intimations of Immortality
Ottorino Respighi
Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)
Return to Home Page |
Ottorino Respighi: Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome), P. 141
Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was born in 1879 in Bologna, Italy to a musical family. His father, a local piano teacher, gave him his first lessons on piano and violin. From there the boy moved on to the Liceo Musicale di Bologna in 1891, where he studied violin and viola with Federico Sarti (first violinist of Das Bologneser Quartett), composition with composer Giuseppe Martucci, and music history with Early Music scholar Luigi Torchi (a subject Respighi would later pursue). His first student compositions appeared in 1893. After he received his violin diploma in 1899, he made trips to Russia in 1900 and 1902 to work as an orchestral violinist/violist during seasons of Italian opera at the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, where he also studied orchestration with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakoff, whose teachings served him well, if his colorful scoring is any indication. In 1901 he finished his studies at Liceo Musicale with an advanced degree in composition. After returning to Italy in 1903, he worked as a violin soloist and as a violist in the Mugellini Quintet. In 1908 he moved to Germany and worked as a piano accompanist in a voice studio for a year (and in the process learned about vocal technique). Later he moved back to Bologna to teach composition at Liceo Musicale.
In 1913 Respighi moved to Rome, where he became a professor of composition at the Liceo Musicale di Santa Cecilia. He spent a great deal of time roaming the city’s streets and environs while taking serious notice of its fountains, an experience that led to his first major work, Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome), in 1916. In 1919 he married one of his pupils, mezzo-soprano and composer Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo, who would be a strong advocate and performer of her husband’s music. Two years later he produced a children’s opera, La Bella Dormente nel Bosco (The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods), the first of his works to be formally staged. Respighi’s interest in Renaissance and Medieval music led to a set of Medieval-style airs for lute that he later orchestrated into three suites entitled Antiche Danze ed Arie per Liuto (Ancient Airs and Dances, 1917, 1923, and 1931). In 1924, Respighi was appointed the Director of Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, a position he filled for only two years because it interfered with his composing (though he continued to teach until 1935). He also composed, performed, and conducted in Europe and the Americas. After he died in 1936, Elsa Respighi vigorously promoted her husband’s reputation and music until her own death in 1996, a week before she would have turned 102.
Ottorino Respighi was the only major Italian composer of his era whose orchestral works, particularly his Roman trilogy—Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome), Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome), and Feste Romane (Roman Festivals)—caught on with audiences more than his operas did.
Pines of Rome depicts four settings of pine trees in Rome. Much of the music is based on Medieval works and folk songs that Respighi learned from his wife. The score calls for some unusual instruments: six buccinae: trumpet-like instruments made of a long tube bent into a C-shape and used in the Pines of the Appian Way movement, and a recording of a nightingale at the end of Pines of the Janiculum. Respighi was well aware of the difficulties in finding or manufacturing six buccinae and wisely sanctioned the use of modern brass instruments in performances. He was not so sanguine about audience response to hearing a recording of a live bird tweeting in Pines of the Janiculum: “...[N]o combination of wind instruments could quite counterfeit a real bird’s song,” he explained. “Let them boo…What do I care?” referring to an audience reaction to his publisher’s use of a recording of a bird made in 1924—the same recording that is used in subsequent performances including modern ones. The composer did want to help people appreciate the musical pictures in Pines of Rome, so he described each movement as noted below, for use in concert programs:
-
I pini di Villa Borghese (The Pines of the Villa Borghese): “Children are at play in the pine groves of Villa Borghese; they dance round in circles, they play at soldiers, marching and fighting, they are wrought up by their own cries like swallows at evening, they come and go in swarms.”
-
Pini presso una catacomba (Pines Near a Catacomb): “Suddenly the scene changes—we see the shades of the pine trees fringing the entrance to a catacomb. From the depth rises the sound of a mournful chant floating through the air like a solemn hymn and gradually and mysteriously dispersing.”
-
I pini del Gianicolo (The Pines of the Janiculum): “There is a thrill in the air: the pine-trees of the Janiculum stand distinctly outlined in the clear light of the full moon. A nightingale is singing.”
-
I pini della via Appia (The Pines of the Appian Way): “Misty dawn on the Appian Way: solitary pine trees guarding the magic landscape; the muffled, ceaseless rhythm of unending footsteps. The poet has a fantastic vision of bygone glories: trumpets sound and, in the brilliance of the newly risen sun, a consular army bursts forth towards the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph to the Capitol.”
Respighi is best known for his orchestral works, but his operas are worth investigating. In chronological order they are Re Enzo (King Enzo), Semirâma, Marie Victoire, La Bella Dormente nel Bosco, (The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods), Belfagor, La Campana Sommersa (The Sunken Bell), Maria Egiziaca (Saint Mary of Egypt), La Fiamma (The Flame), and Lucrezia (completed posthumously by Elsa and Respighi’s student Ennio Porrino).
—Roger Hecht
Roger Hecht plays trombone in the Mercury Orchestra. He is a former member of Bay Colony Brass (where he was also the Operations/Personnel Manager), the Syracuse Symphony, Lake George Opera, New Bedford Symphony, and Cape Ann Symphony, as well as trombonist and orchestra manager of Lowell House Opera, Commonwealth Opera, and MetroWest Opera. He is a regular reviewer for American Record Guide, contributed to Classical Music: Listener’s Companion, and has written articles on music for the Elgar Society Journal and Positive Feedback magazine. His fiction collection, The Audition and Other Stories, includes a novella about a trombonist preparing for and taking a major orchestra audition (English Hill Press, 2013).
Read about Finzi
Return to Home Page |
