 
Respighi wrote Pines of Rome as a companion piece to his Fountains of Rome. He may yet write “Hills of Rome,” but it would have to be in seven movements. In the Fountains of Rome he set no bird a-singing. In the third section [of the Pines of Rome] “Pines of the Janiculum,” he introduces a nightingale. Perhaps he had in mind the reply of the good King Agesilaus, who, when a man was recommended to him as a skillful imitator of that justly famous bird, replied: “I have heard the nightingale itself.” So Respighi obtained a gramophone record of a nightingale which he heard singing. The movement would not suffer if there were no nightingale in the orchestra. In the “Pines of the Villa Borghese,” where children are supposed to be playing games, darting to and fro, shrieking, emitting loud squeals of joy, the instrumentation is unusually brilliant, effective, original. One finds more poetic feeling, more imagination in “Pines near a Catacomb,” with the somber opening, the solemnity of the double basses, the mysterious song which swells But if one takes the work poem as a whole, the composer is revealed as a supreme master of orchestral color rather than a man of fine, entrancing, impressive ideas. This symphonic poem was composed in 1924. It was performed at a concert in the Augusteum, Rome, in the season of 1924-25. The score calls for 3 flutes (and piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, double bassoon, 4 horns, 1 trumpet off stage, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones and bass tuba, 6 buccine (the bucina was the war trumpet of ancient Rome): 2 flicorni (Fluegelhorn) soprani, 2 flicorni tenori, 2 flicorni bassi—replaced if necessary by horns; kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, 2 small cymbals, tambourine, rattle, triangle, tam-tam, harp, bells, celesta, gramophone (No. R. 6105 of the Concert Record Gramophone—the “Song of the Nightingale”), pianoforte, organ, and strings. The piece is in four connected sections. They are based upon this programme, printed as preface to the score: “1. The Pines of the Villa Borghese. Allegretto vivace, 2-8. Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of ‘Ring Around a-Rosy’; mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening; and they disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to— “2. The Pines near a Catacomb. Lento, 4-4; beginning with muted and divided strings, muted horns, piano. We see the shadows of the “3. The Pines of the Janiculum. Lento 4-4; piano cadenza; clarinet solo. There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Gianicolo’s Hill. A nightingale sings (represented by a gramophone record of a nightingale’s song heard from the orchestra). “4. The Pines of the Appian Way. Tempo di marcia. Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps. To the poet’s phantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the sacred way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline Hill.” Mr. Ernest Newman was facetious, hearing the symphonic poem at a concert of the London Symphony Orchestra in October, 1925: “The tame nightingale in the last movement (a gramophone record, ‘kindly lent,’ as the programme informed us, ‘by the Gramophone Company, Hayes’) did not communicate the expected thrill. Perhaps the captive bird does not sing with the rapture of the free one. Perhaps the proper romantic associations were lacking; it might have been better had the lights been put out and we had all held hands. But I fancy the explanation is that realism of this sort is a trifle too crude to blend with music. We all remember Mr. Arnold Bennett’s ‘Card,’ who, having bought in the days of his prosperity a painting of a Swiss scene with a church tower in it, and still having enough of the Five Towns left in him to want to fortify the beautiful with the useful, had a real clock face inserted in the tower to tell him and the world the time. Since then we have read of Mr. Harry Leon Wilson’s little boy, who used to gaze with a blend of fascination and terror on a picture of a lion in a cage, the bars of the cage being real, inserted in the frame; the great thing was to put your fingers behind the bars and half hope, half fear that the lion would go for them. Musical realism of the Respighi type has the same queer attractiveness and the same drawbacks. Of course, if the public likes it, it can be extended indefinitely. We may yet live to see the evening when the Pastoral symphony will be given with real running water in the slow movement, nightingale by the Gramophone Company, quail by Messrs. Fortnum and Mason.” |
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