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Ottorino Respighi (born in Bologna on July 9,
1879, died in Rome on April 18, 1936) was an
Italy|Italian composer and musicologist. He is
perhaps best known for his three suites of Ancient
Airs and Dances.

Respighi's father was a piano teacher, who taught
the child violin and piano. Ottorino continued
studying violin with Federico Sarti at the Liceo
Musicale in Bologna, and composition with Giuseppe
Martucci and the early music scholar Luigi Torchi.
Later Respighi briefly studied composition with
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov|Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia,
and considered these lessons very important. He
also had composition lessons with Max Bruch. 

Respighi was also a musicologist, a devoted
scholar of Italian music of the 16th-18th
centuries. He published editions of the music of
Claudio Monteverdi and Antonio Vivaldi, and of
Benedetto Marcello's Didone. Because of his
devotion to these older sources (which worked its
way to many of his compositions), many would start
to consider him as a typical exponent of
Neoclassicism (music)|Neo-classicism (while
Neo-Renaissance or Neo-Baroque would probably be
more accurate to describe most of his compositions
based on older work). In fact, different from the
style of most Neoclassicism (music)|neo-classicist
compositions, Respighi kept more or less clear
from the musical idiom of the Classical music
era|classical period: he rather combined
pre-classical musical forms (like suite|dance
suites) with a typical 19th century romantic music
era|romantic idiom (e.g. the musical idiom
associated with symphonic poems in the romantic
period).

Some of his compositions:
* His most known symphonic poems (most of them
symphonic poem suites), which now belong to the
standard orchestral repertoire:
** Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)  (1923-1924)
** Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome) 
(1915-1916)
** Feste Romane (1928)
** Brazilian Impressions (1928)
* His operas, from the early Semirâma to the late
Lucrezia, on the other hand, are hardly ever
played or recorded nowadays.
* His most popular works involving older sources:
** The Ancient Airs and Dances Suite No. 1 of 1917
is an orchestral piece based on Renaissance
music|Renaissance lute pieces by Simone Molinaro,
Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo Galilei), and
additional anonymous composers.
** In 1918 Sergei Diaghilev commissioned a ballet
from Respighi, who then wrote La Boutique
Fantasque, which borrows tunes from the 19th
century composer Rossini.
** Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances Suite No. 2
of 1924 is based on pieces for lute, archlute, and
viol by Fabrizio Caroso, Jean-Baptiste Besard,
Bernardo Gianoncelli, and an anonymous composer,
plus Antoine Boësset's famous song "Divine
Amaryllis".
** Following the success of this suite, Respighi
wrote Gli Uccelli ("The birds") in 1927, based on
Baroque pieces imitating birds.
** Then in 1932, he wrote Ancient Airs and Dances
Suite No. 3, which differs from the previous two
suites in being arranged for string
instrument|strings only and somewhat melancholy in
overall mood. It is based on lute songs by Besard,
a piece for guitar|baroque guitar by Lodovico
Roncalli, and lute pieces by Santino Garsi da
Parma and additional anonymous composers.

Respighi's wife Elsa (née Olivieri-Sangiacomo)
made ballets of the Ancient Airs and Dances
Suites.

From 1923 to 1926 Respighi was director of the
Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, and until 1935
taught composition there. In 1925 he collaborated
with Luciani on an elementary textbook entitled
Orpheus.