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Ancient Airs and Dances (Italian : Antiche arie e danze) is a set of three orchestral suites by Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, freely transcribed from original pieces for lute. In addition to being a renowned composer and conductor, Respighi was also a notable musicologist. His interest in music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods led him to compose works inspired by the music of these periods.
Suite No. 1 P 109 was composed in 1917. It was based on Renaissance lute pieces by Simone Molinaro, Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo Galilei) and additional anonymous composers.
The orchestration calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in F, trumpet in D, harp, harpsichord and strings.
Suite No. 2, P 138 was composed in 1923. It was based on pieces for lute, archlute, and viol by Fabritio Caroso, Jean-Baptiste Besard, Bernardo Gianoncelli, and an anonymous composer. It also includes an aria attributed to Marin Mersenne.
The orchestration calls for an average-sized orchestra of 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets in A/B♭, 2 bassoons, 3 horns in D (doubling 2 horns in E/F), 2 trumpets in A/D (doubling trumpet in C), 3 trombones, 3 timpani, celesta, harpsichord 4-hands, harp and strings.
Suite No. 3, P 172 was composed in 1931. It differs from the previous two suites in that it is arranged for strings only and somewhat melancholy in overall mood. (A note by the composer in the printed score states that the work may also be performed by a string quartet, completely omitting the double-bass part.) It is based on lute songs by Besard, a piece for Baroque guitar by Ludovico Roncalli, and lute pieces by Santino Garsi da Parma and additional anonymous composers.
The Ancient Airs and Dances first two suites were freely transcribed by the composer for piano (2 and 4 hands).[ citation needed ] In 2016, Dennis Janzer transcribed the set for the organ. [1]
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 You may hear Respighi's "Ancient Airs and Dances" with Neville Marriner conducting the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in 1976 Here on archive.org |
There have been many recordings of the suites in their entirety, and individually, with Suite No. 3 most frequently appearing alone. Recordings include:
In 1987 Paul O'Dette released a recording of the original lute songs and dances on which Respighi based the suites.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in 1931.
A chaconne is a type of musical composition often used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line which offers a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and melodic invention. In this it closely resembles the passacaglia. It originates and was particularly popular in the Baroque era; a large number of Chaconnes exist from the 17th and 18th centuries.
The theorbo is a plucked string instrument of the lute family, with an extended neck that houses the second pegbox. Like a lute, a theorbo has a curved-back sound box with a flat top, typically with one or three sound holes decorated with rosettes. As with the lute, the player plucks or strums the strings with the right hand while "fretting" the strings with the left hand.
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).
The Day the Universe Changed: A Personal View by James Burke is a British documentary television series written and presented by science historian James Burke, originally broadcast on BBC1 from 19 March until 21 May 1985 by the BBC. The series' primary focus is on the effect of advances in science and technology on western society in its philosophical aspects.
Pines of Rome, P 141, is a tone poem in four movements for orchestra completed in 1924 by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. It is the second of his three tone poems about Rome, following Fontane di Roma (1916) and preceding Feste Romane (1928). Each movement depicts a setting in the city with pine trees, specifically those in the Villa Borghese gardens, near a catacomb, on the Janiculum Hill, and along the Appian Way. The premiere was held at the Teatro Augusteo in Rome on 14 December 1924, with Bernardino Molinari conducting the Augusteo Orchestra, and the piece was published by Casa Ricordi in 1925.
Ferenc Farkas was a Hungarian composer.
Count Ludovico Giuseppe Antonio Filippo Roncalli, or simply Count Ludovico (1654–1713), was an Italian composer.
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger was an Austrian-Italian virtuoso performer and composer of the early Baroque period. A prolific and highly original composer, Kapsberger is chiefly remembered today for his lute and theorbo (chitarrone) music, which was seminal in the development of these as solo instruments.
Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn was a 1993 documentary television series filmed on location in some of the world's most beautiful, noteworthy gardens, hosted by Audrey Hepburn, who also co-narrates the series with Michael York.
The Suite for Cello and Piano, Op. 16, was written by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1866. This work is considered the launching point of the composer's career.
The Birds is a suite for small orchestra by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. Dating from 1928, the work is based on music from the 17th and 18th century and represents an attempt to transcribe birdsong into musical notation, and illustrate bird actions, such as fluttering wings, or scratching feet. The work is in five movements:
Simone Molinaro was a composer of the late Renaissance in Italy. He was especially renowned for his lute music.
Italian folk dance has been an integral part of Italian culture for centuries. Dance has been a continuous thread in Italian life from Dante through the Renaissance, the advent of the tarantella in Southern Italy, and the modern revivals of folk music and dance.
Francesco Libetta is an Italian pianist, composer and conductor.
Salvatore Di Vittorio is an Italian composer and conductor. He is the music director and conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of New York. He has been recognized by Luigi Verdi as a "lyrical musical spirit, respectful of the ancient Italian tradition… an emerging leading interpreter of the music of Ottorino Respighi".
Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen, also known as HKKS, is a Norwegian percussion and cimbalom player,
The Sei pezzi per pianoforte, P 044, is a set of six solo piano pieces written by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi between 1903 and 1905. These predominantly salonesque pieces are eclectic, drawing influence from different musical styles and composers. The pieces have various musical forms and were composed separately and later published together between 1905 and 1907 in a set under the same title for editorial reasons; Respighi had not conceived them as a suite, and therefore did not intend to have uniformity among the pieces. The set, under Bongiovanni, became his first published work. Five of the six pieces are derived from earlier works by Respighi, and only one of them, the "Canone", has an extant manuscript.
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