Download Respighi Church Windows

OTTORINO RESPIGHI Vetrate di chiesa (Church Windows)
BORN: July 9, 1879, in Bologna, Italy
DIED: April 18, 1936, in Rome
WORK COMPOSED: 1925-26 (orchestral adaptation and fourth movement; first three movements were composed
in 1919-1921 as Three Preludes on Gregorian Melodies for solo piano)
WORLD PREMIERE: February 27, 1927, Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge
Koussevitzky conducting
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer who vigorously championed his country’s musical
heritage. Early in his composing career he did a series of transcriptions and arrangements of
music from the 17th and 18th centuries. He also edited works of Claudio Monteverdi and Tomaso
Antonio Vitali, although musicologists of today would consider his editions to be an abomination
of historical practices. Influenced by this early music Respighi became popular with his tone
poem Fountains of Rome (1916). His Pines of Rome (1924) and Roman Festivals (1928) would
place Respighi as one of the most popular and beloved Italian composers of the 20th century only
to be overshadowed by Giacomo Puccini.
Respighi trained mostly as a violinist in Bologna and his composition studies with a pioneering
musicologist sparked his lifelong interest in early music. In the winters of 1900-01 and 1902-03
Respighi was employed for several months as a violist in a Russian orchestra. During those times
he had a few lessons from Rimsky-Korsakov that would crucially influence his orchestration.
The success of Fountains of Rome completely transformed Respighi’s reputation (and his
finances) beyond recognition. In 1923 he was appointed director of the Conservatorio di Santa
Cecilia in Rome. Within three years he would resign the post to have more time to compose
because he found the administrative duties to be time-consuming and uncongenial. He taught an
advanced class in composition that was created for him at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in
Rome until 1935.
In most instances a composer of a symphonic tone poem is influenced by an outside source, but
in this case the music itself influenced the title and story (sort of like placing the cart before the
horse). The first three movements began their life as Three Preludes on Gregorian Melodies for
solo piano that Respighi composed from 1919-21. Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo (1894-1996), who
he married in 1919, would write in her memoirs that she introduced Respighi to Gregorian chant:
We had been married for some weeks when one day I asked Ottorino if he had ever studied
Gregorian Chant. …he asked me to intone a passage from the Roman Gradual while he listened
spellbound. The Maestro told me how wonderful it would be to recast those magnificent melodies
in a new language of sounds, free them from the rigidly formal Catholic liturgy of the Roman
Gradual and revive the indestructible germ of real human values contained therein.
However, as we learned earlier, his interests in early music predate their meeting. Nevertheless,
she may have been the influence for the piano preludes that would later become Church
Windows.
Respighi later orchestrated the three preludes, keeping the original order, and added a fourth
piece to conclude the suite in 1925-26. His friend Claudio Guastalla (1880-1948), professor of
literature, editor and opera librettist, remembered:
What were these four symphonic impressions to be called? Respighi thought of four church
doorways. ... I objected that it was too colorless. Why not Vetrate di chiesa — (Church Windows),
I suggested? The name remained and was perhaps responsible for some of the more idly
superficial critics comparing the work to the symphonic poems, which are quite different.
After the title of the work was settled Respighi and Guastalla decided they needed to assign
topics for each of the four movements. Guastalla heard in the first movement “the passing of a
chariot beneath a brilliant, starry sky,” which caused him to think of the passage in the Gospel of
Matthew (2:14) where Joseph flees into Egypt with Mary and the baby Jesus. A great battle was
sensed in the second movement that brought to mind the Archangel Michael battling the dragon
in the Book of Revelation (12:7-8). The pure and mystical character of the third movement led
them to a passage about Saint Clare in The Little Flowers of St. Francis. The grand finale
reminded Guastalla of the 6th century Pope Gregory (540-604) whose reforms to the liturgy led
to his name being attached to the repertoire known as Gregorian chant.
Somewhere in Italy one might find stained glass windows that depict these images, or perhaps it
is left to the listener to create their own image as they listen to Church Windows. Respighi helps
the listener along with titles and depictions in the score for each movement:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
The Flight into Egypt – “The little caravan proceeds through the desert in a starry
night, bearing the Treasure of the World.” A Middle Eastern modal melody
accompanies the swaying hesitation of a donkey stepping over unfamiliar territory
in the desert.
St. Michael the Archangel – “And a great battle was made in the heavens;
Michael and his angels fought with the dragon and his angels. But these did not
prevail, and there was no more place for them in Heaven.” A Gregorian chant is
the melody for the low brass and the opening is evocative of Wagner’s Ride of the
Valkyries, but here it is the ride of the angels. The arrival of Michael is sung by
the trombone melody.
The Matins of St. Clare – “But Jesus Christ her bridegroom, not wishing to leave
her thus disconsolate, had her miraculously transported by angels to the church of
St. Francis, to be at the service of Matins.” The order of nuns whose vow of
poverty mirrors that of St. Francis of Assisi was founded by St. Clare. The quote
is taken from The Little Flowers of St. Francis. When St. Clare was too ill to
attend mass, she visualized it on the wall of her room. In 1958, in witness of this,
Pope Pius XII made her the patron saint of television.
St. Gregory the Great – “Behold the Pontiff!... Bless the Lord… Sing the hymn to
God. Alleluia!” This movement is a fantasia on one of the chants for the Gloria of
the mass. Like a procession it is heard in the distance growing ever louder and
pompous.
Program Notes © Vincent Osborn, 2016