Conductor and composer Salvatore Di Vittorio completed several of Respighi's incomplete and previously unpublished works, including the finished Violin Concerto in A major (1903) which premiered in 2010.

The third and youngest child of Giuseppe and Ersilia (née Putti) Respighi, he had a middle class upbringing with his sister Amelia; his brother Alberto died at age nine.

[3] Giuseppe, a postal worker, was an accomplished pianist who studied the instrument with Stefano Golinelli and taught music at the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna.

[7] After being taught basic piano and violin from his father Respighi began formal tuition in the latter, but quit abruptly after his teacher hit his hand with a ruler for playing a passage incorrectly.

[13] He enrolled at the Liceo Musicale di Bologna in the following year, studying the violin and viola with Federico Sarti and organ, counterpoint, and fugue with Cesare Dall'Olio.

[16] During this time he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a composer Respighi greatly admired, who gave him valuable and influential lessons in orchestration and composition across five months.

Between 1903 and 1910, as his local reputation was on the rise, Respighi's principal activities were performing at the Teatro Comunale and as first violinist in composer Bruno Mugellini's touring chamber quintet.

He collaborated with various singers, in particular Chiarina Fino-Savio, who performed several of Respighi's songs written for solo voice and piano and set to words by poets Ada Negri and Carlo Zangarini.

This second stay in Germany lasted for almost a year, after Hungarian soprano Etelka Gerster hired Respighi as an accompanist at her singing school which greatly influenced his subsequent vocal compositions.

[24] Respighi met Arthur Nikisch, then conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, who arranged to conduct his Monteverdi transcription in concert with famed singer Julia Culp as soloist.

Biographer Michael Webb considered this a milestone in the rediscovery of Monteverdi's output, and the critical success of the performance encouraged Respighi to produce further transcriptions of older works.

[16][4] It premiered at the Teatro Comunale in November 1910 to considerable success; two years later, critic Giannotto Bastianelli wrote that the piece marked a transition in Respighi's style from verismo to Decadentism, and praised his use of rich polyphony.

[27] In 1910, Respighi was involved in a short lived group named the Lega dei Cinque (a take on the famous Russian "Five"), which included Bastianelli and fellow composers Ildebrando Pizzetti, Gian Francesco Malipiero, and Renzo Bossi.

Among his students during this time were composers Vittorio Rieti, Ennio Porrino, and Daniele Amfitheatrof, conductors Antonio Pedrotti and Mario Rossi, pianist Pietro Scarpini, and organist Fernando Germani.

The premiere was originally scheduled in late 1916, but the concert ended early due to the hostile audience reaction to music by Richard Wagner performed in the opening half.

[39] Following the premiere he toured Italy and Switzerland in another chamber group, this time with Fino-Savio, violinist Arrigo Serato, and pianist Ernesto Consolo.

Diaghilev wished to stage La Boutique fantasque, a new production based on the baroque and classical periods, to which Respighi accepted 1,500 lire to orchestrate the ballet, for which he used piano pieces from Péchés de vieillesse by Gioachino Rossini.

[41][42] A turning point in Respighi's career arrived in February 1918, when conductor Arturo Toscanini had asked him to select a composition to be performed in a series of 12 concerts in Milan.

The concerts were a huge success and placed Respighi as one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century, prompting the start of a longterm, though sometimes tumultuous, relationship with Toscanini.

[44] Later in 1918 he succumbed to illness with a mild case of the Spanish flu, and entered negotiations to translate and publish Theory of Harmony (1922) by Arnold Schoenberg and a book on counterpoint by Sergei Taneyev, but these never materialised.

[47] In 1922, Respighi composed the opera La bella dormente nel bosco for Vittorio Podrecca's puppet company, itself based on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty".

[48] Respighi's employers at the Liceo Musicale were not happy with his extended absence, and sent him a letter suggesting he returned to fulfil his teaching duties for the remainder of the academic year.

[50] Respighi steered a neutral course towards Benito Mussolini's Fascist government from 1922, and his growing international fame granted him some amount of freedom, but at the same time encouraged the regime to exploit his music for political purposes.

The musical style and local customs inspired Respighi, who told the press of his intention to return in the following year with a five-part orchestral suite based on his visit.

[54] In September 1927, Respighi conducted the premiere of his Trittico Botticelliano, a three-movement orchestral piece inspired by three paintings by Sandro Botticelli in Vienna.

Having completed the work, Respighi felt that he had incorporated the "maximum of orchestral sonority and colour" from the orchestra and could no longer write such large scale pieces.

[57] At the end of 1929, Respighi had conductor Serge Koussevitzky forward a proposal to Sergei Rachmaninoff which involved permission to orchestrate a selection of piano pieces from his two Études-Tableaux, Op.

[16] Among his final works was Huntingtower: Ballad for Band in 1932, a commission from Edwin Franko Goldman and the American Bandmasters Association in honor of the recent death of composer and conductor John Philip Sousa.

[65] By May 1935, Respighi had cancelled several engagements due to ill health, including a scheduled trip to conduct a series of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

His body lay in state at Santa Maria del Popolo until the spring of 1937, when the remains were re-interred at the Certosa di Bologna, next to poet Giosuè Carducci and painter Giorgio Morandi.