The Nightingale


Respighi incorporated our little feathered friends into his music and was the first to do it this way.  He wrote a piece called "The Pines of Rome" in the early middle twenties and wanted to incorporate a bird (Nightingale) songs and chirping into the third movement (played below).  The Pines depicts a stand of pines in four different parts of Rome.  This one is the pines near the Janiculum - a hill (not one of the 7 hills of Rome but a hill nonetheless) on the Western part of Rome outside the ancient city.  The scene is sunset.  The colors and quiet are radiant.

No instrument could, of course, replicate the actual sound so he designated (in the musical score) a recording (an actual 78rpm - on the Brunswick label and recorded in a courtyard on that very hill) to be played near the end while the orchestra is playing.  

This was the first time that an electronic device was used in an orchestra score - the theremin (science fiction sound) coming some 3 years later.  Thus armed with knowledge you can face your day.

Besides, listen to this movement as it is, well, lovely might be totally inadequate.


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