Visions of Hope

The Fountains of Rome
Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna, Italy, on July 9, 1879, and died in Rome
on April 18, 1936. He composed his Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome) in 1916. The first performance took place in March 1917 at the Augusteo (Mausoleum of Augustus) in Rome, conducted by Antonio Guarnieri. The score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets  and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, chimes, glockenspiel, two harps, celesta, piano, organ and strings.
ESTIMATED DURATION: 15 minutes

Respighi wrote music of extraordinary color and orchestral brilliance, partly, no doubt, a consequence of his having studied orchestration with Rimsky‑Korsakov during the years he served as principal violist in the orchestra of the St. Petersburg opera. After returning, he made composition his principal activity. Respighi wrote eight operas, as well as other stage works. He was interested in early music, and this led to a number of “archaizing” works like the Piano Concerto in the mixolydian mode and a Concerto gregoriano for violin, not to mention his better-known arrangements of Ancient Airs and Dances and The Birds, both derived from older lute and keyboard compositions.

But the works that remain far and away the best known of Respighi’s entire output are the three orchestral suites depicting aspects of his adopted city, Rome. He composed The Fountains of Rome in 1916, The Pines of Rome (the most popular of them all) in 1924 and the Festivals in 1928‑1929. In the course of the dozen images presented musically in these three scores, Respighi draws inspiration from the Rome of classical antiquity, of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and the modern day. Some movements depict natural beauties, others paint the customs and life of the Roman streets and plazas.

From the days of the ancient Romans, the provision of water into a city the size of Rome has been one of the civil engineering wonders of the world. Different regions of the city received their water via aqueducts coming from mountains in various directions from the city, often dozens of miles away, and to this day Romans argue cheerfully among themselves about the advantages of their various “waters,” which surge forth from a series of exquisite fountains. Respighi’s musical tribute to this aspect of Roman life is also a character piece tracing the Roman day from dawn to sunset, the composer having chosen to present each linked with “the hour in which their character is most in harmony with the surrounding landscape, or in which their beauty appears most impressive to the observer.”

The four “scenes” run directly from one to another. The Fountain of the Valle Giulia at dawn, or Julia Valley, is a pastoral scene. The breezes cause the leaves in the trees to rustle as a herd of cattle passes slowly by. A sudden summons on the horns immediately conjures up The Fountain of Triton in the morning. The triton, in Bernini’s great 17th-century stature, is seated on an open scallop shell, his head far back as he drinks from a conch shell. The sheer virility of the figure is celebrated in the horn calls, while the fantasy that envelops it figures in the lively main theme in the woodwinds. The Trevi fountain in the afternoon evokes the most famous of all the Roman fountains, the one into which visitors throw coins with the wish to return to Rome. Respighi’s music takes us to a site that, even when Nathaniel Hawthorne visited more than a century ago, was one of the liveliest daytime scenes in Rome:

for the piazza is then filled with stalls of vegetable and fruit dealers, chestnut-roasters, cigar venders, and other people whose patter and wandering traffic is transacted in the open air. It is likewise thronged with idlers, lounging over the iron railing, and with forestieri [foreigners], who come hither to see the famous fountain.

The music grows quieter as evening falls, and we end the day strolling to the Fountain of the Villa Medici at sunset. The fountain in front of the Villa Medici is a modest broad basin, spurting a single jet of water upwards, but it rests high above the city (not far from the Spanish Steps and the Piazza del Popolo with a spectacular view to the west). At sunset, the water in the fountain will mirror Michelangelo’s great cupola on St. Peter’s, across the Tiber in the Vatican. Oboe and English horn recall the pastoral mood of the opening, a tranquility that seems unlikely in one of the world’s great capitals, yet one attainable here, where the sunset view has changed surprisingly little in four centuries. Birdsong dies away, and the stillness of the dark closes the day.