Listen4 listening guides A brief guide to listening to Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome This outline serves as a listening guide, or “road map,” through a work being performed today. The intention is to help you follow along and enjoy it in more depth. We welcome you to email us with your reactions at [email protected]. Now ... let the music begin!

While not quite a household name, the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi wrote music that has stood the test of time, highlighted by extraordinarily colorful orchestration (a large variety of orchestral instruments used), great rhythmic vitality, and charming melodies.

Pines of Rome, written in 1924, consists of four movements played continuously and is an excel- lent example of program music—music that is written to represent specific events, places, or ideas. In fact, Respighi included descriptions of each movement’s intentions at the beginning of the score. But ultimately, you don’t need to know what the music is “about” to enjoy the sheer joy of this wonderful work.

Second movement: Pines Near a 1 2 Catacomb; Slow (In Italian: lento) First movement: Pines of the Villa Borghese; The lower instruments of the orchestra (basses, bassoon in low register, cellos) Relatively fast, lively and vivacious (In Italian: introduce a somber mood. Listen for allegretto vivace) Respighi’s use of an older harmonic Listen as the opening fanfare in horns and cellos, with structure (known as “modal” with a swirling upper strings and flutes, announces the festive melancholic sound) to reinforce a atmosphere of children at play. The initial fanfare is sense of the ancient catacombs repeated by other instruments from oboe to clarinet beneath Rome. A solo trumpet played and back to the brass section. Pizzicato (plucking) off-stage evokes the lives of the dead, strings create a sense of skipping and jumping, while with the harp plucking the heartbeat. the horns and trumpets trade blaring jests. The movement builds in excitement until the cacophony is abruptly cut short. 3 Third movement: Pines of the Fourth movement: Pines of the Appian Way; Marching Janiculum; Slow (In Italian: lento) 4 speed (In Italian: tempo di marcia) Although this movement is marked Listen for the quiet, relentless rhythm, established at the “lento” like its predecessor, the beginning of this movement in the low strings and piano, difference in disposition is representing the distant approach of the Roman army immediately apparent. Yearning marching along the Appian Way. The clarinets quietly first solos are traded between the cello, introduce what will become the major fanfare later in the viola and violin, and clarinet. movement; the brasses start the final ascent to the climax Towards the end of the movement, with that same fanfare. As the volume grows, the fanfare listen for a magical moment—the takes on a heroic nature as it is passed around the brass entrance of recorded bird songs as section, and the movement marches to a triumphant end. the clarinet plays its final notes and the harp and strings draw the movement to a close. —Betsy Furth