The most austere of Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, the third suite employs the most serious material and calls only for strings, although it works best with a fairly substantial ensemble. As with this work's predecessors, the sources are mostly sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian and French lute and guitar pieces found in turn-of-the-twentieth century transcriptions by Italian musicologist Oscar Chilesotti.

The brief first movement, "Italiana," begins with a graceful anonymous tune in 3/4 time, popular around 1600; Respighi marks it Andantino, and grafts it onto a second piece, part of Santino Garsi da Parma's La Cesarina. Both are galliards, and Respighi tends to provide a pizzicato accompaniment to the long melody lines.

The second movement, "Arie di Corte" (Courtly Airs), is a mini-suite of elegant songs by Jean-Baptiste Besard. Respighi gives rich harmonization to the fluid melodies of contrasting character: "It Is Sad to Be in Love with You" (Andante cantabile), "Farewell Forever, Shepherdess" (Allegretto), "Lovely Eyes That See Clearly" (Vivace), "The Skiff of Love" (Lento con grande espressione), "What Divinity Touches My Soul" (Allegro vivace), and the exuberant "If It Is for My Innocence That You Love Me" (Vivacissimo), with the first song returning to close the movement.

Respighi calls the third movement, generically, "Siciliana," but the melody is the anonymous "Spagnoletta," which was popular in a multitude of arrangements in seventeenth century Spain and Italy. It's a poised, rather pastoral yet somehow formal and slightly melancholy piece that Respighi sends through a couple of variations, with a comparatively loud and extroverted version preceding the lower-key final treatment.

By the standards of these suites, the concluding Passacaglia borders on tragedy (it sometimes calls to mind the final movement of Brahms' Symphony No. 4). Based on the concluding item in Ludovico Roncalli's Capricci Armonici for Baroque guitar, the movement is a series of increasingly dramatic variations over a repeating bass line.

© All Music Guide