Antiche danze ed arie

Respighi produced three suites under the title Antiche danze ed arie per liuto, in 1917, 1923 and 1931, transcribing lute and vihuela pieces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Simone Molinaro, Vincenzo Galilei, Jean-Baptiste Besard and others. He had trained in musicology as well as composition and worked from printed tablatures rather than modern editions. The first two suites are for small orchestra, the third for strings alone. The transcriptions are free: Respighi kept the melodic and harmonic outlines but rescored them.