Here is an elegant way of writing, in the sense of the rhetoric of another day; a beautiful harmonizing; a splendid method of orchestration; and with these a desire to be agreeable, well-mannered, and respectable at all costs. —Gatti.

As the descendent of a family of professional musicians, Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) inherited a rich talent as part of his birthright. His earliest music lessons were with his father, but he progressed so rapidly that he began his professional training in violin, piano and composition at the age of just thirteen. As a young man, Respighi was torn between ambitions to become a concert violinist or a composer. He got a job as a violist with the orchestra of the St. Petersburg Opera, and took advantage of his time in Russia to study with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose brilliant orchestral technique was a lasting influence. He then moved to Berlin to study violin and composition with Max Bruch. Respighi spent the years from 1903 to 1925 primarily in Italy, first as a performer, then as professor of composition, and finally as head of the Saint Cecilia Academy in Rome. He left the Academy in 1925 to devote himself to composition and touring, making four trips to the United States during the next seven years. He died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-six.
Respighi had an abiding interest in the music of the late Renaissance and Baroque eras, and he edited many works by such venerable composers as Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Tartini and Vitali for publication. Speaking against serialism and mechanical/mathematical music that was being played in some concert halls and chased away audiences, Respighi was one of ten composers who issued a document espousing the hallowed philosophy of music as communication: “We are against art which cannot and does not have any human content and desires to be merely a mechanical demonstration and a cerebral puzzle. A logical chain binds the past and the future—the romanticism of yesterday will again be the romanticism of tomorrow.” Given most current trends in composition, they were obviously correct.
Among the most charming of Respighi’s works based on old models are the three sets of Ancient Airs and Dances (1917, 1924, 1932), arrangements of Italian and French lute and keyboard pieces of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries. Respighi kept the old melodies and harmonies intact while enriching their texture and providing them with brilliant orchestral color.
The First Suite of Ancient Airs and Dances opens with a Balletto detto “Il Conte Orlando” (“Count Orlando’s Dance”) issued in Venice in 1599 as part of a large collection of lute pieces by Simone Molinaro (ca. 1565-ca. 1613). The following Gagliarda is the work of Vincenzo Galilei (1520-1591), the Florentine composer and theorist and father of Galileo Galilei. Respighi placed in the center of the movement an anonymous Italiana built above a bagpipe-like drone. The lovely third movement, a sort of serenade with plucked accompaniment undoubtedly meant to resemble a lute, is a Villanella, a vocal form that originated in Naples during the mid-sixteenth century as a reaction to the refinement and pretensions of the sophisticated madrigal. Two pieces of unknown origin, a quick Passo mezzo and a flowing Mascherada, a type of villanella used for masquerades, alternate to bring the work to a joyous close.