Ancient Airs and Dances: Suite No.3

Italiana

Arie di corte

Siciliana

Passacaglia

Respighi was not, by an ordinary definition, a progressive composer. He wrote nothing more progressive in that sense than his three popular and brilliantly evocative orchestral works inspired by the fountains, pines, and festivals of Rome. But moving forward is not the only way to progress, as Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, based on music by Pergolesi, so clearly demonstrated when it changed the direction of modernism in 1920. Respighi was a another, even earlier pioneer of progression by moving backwards. His neo-classical ballet score La Boutique fantasque based on music by Rossini was performed by the Ballets Russes a year before Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and long before that he had written a violin concerto, the Concerto all’antica, that anticipates similar developments in Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony by ten years or so.

The three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances - written in 1917, 1923 and 1931 respectively - are part of Respighi’s rediscovery of the music of the past as a way of enriching that of the present. Based on 16th-century Italian lute music (as transcribed and published by Oscar Chilesotti in 1890) and “freely arranged for orchestra,” they reveal a composer of far more sensitivity and modesty than one would suspect if one knew him only by, say Feste Romane. It is true that Respighi uses harmonies his lutenists would not have recognised and that he creates his own constructions, often allying one composer’s material with that of another in the same piece. On the other hand, his orchestration has such a cleverly contrived archaism about it that much of the spirit of the original remains.

The Third Suite of Ancient Airs and Dances - which, unlike the other two, is scored for strings only - begins with an Italiana based on an anonymous galliard and part of another dance of the same kind and of the same period identified as La Cesarina by Santino Garsi da Parma. No fewer than six expressive court songs by Jean-Baptiste Besard (“It is sad to be in love with you,” “Farewell forever shepherdess,” Lovely eyes that see clearly,” “There is the skiff of love,” “What divinity touches my soul” and “If it is for my innocent that you love me”) are included in Arie di corte where they are not so much blended together as presented one after the other with little or no connecting material. The Siciliano is devoted to an anonymous tune known in the 17th century as “Spagnoletta,” its courtly elegance threatened by Respighi’s increasingly enthusiastic orchestration but only to recover its poise again before the end. Count Lodovico Roncalli’s dramatically articulated Passacaglia makes a highly effective conclusion.

Gerald Larner©2003