Music

Eventually I ended my translation work (on this page).
Hope my English will be at least understandable... and I'll be very grateful to those kind peoples who'll help me correcting errors.

Ambient usually denotes a slow and relaxing kind of music, made up of (often electronical) sustained sounds, whose peaceful flow doesn't follow the usual musical rules, looking instead like the Nature's sounds.

In fact, Brian Eno, the greatest exponent of this genre, during an interview said that he composed one of his works named "Ambient" listening to the wind blowing outside of his recording studio. He tried to compose music which would "sound good" together with the blowing of the wind. In a more general view, his target was to compose an emotionally "neutral" music, which could match with every kind of background noise, music which had not necessarily to be LISTENED TO, but from time to time be ignored or easily introduced in the specific listener's context, whatever it could be.
In this sense, Eno's "ambient music" could be (as he says) music for airports, music for supermarkets, music for dentists. Music which can be introduced in any ambient, music whose role in the ambient is not imposed by the composer but defined by the listener himself.

Some composers went beyond and produced long natural sounds sessions, that is, recordings of brooklet sounds, storm sounds, ocean sounds, forest sounds and so on. Sometimes this ones are real events, more often they are sampled sounds subsequently juxtaposed so that they can be viewed as an artwork in which the artist has a creative role, instead of being a mere "sound discoverer".

Ambient music has a very important role between the lovers of those new mysticism fashions, in vogue in these New Age times. In fact, this kind of music, besides being made of rhythms and sounds such as to induce a feeling of tranquillity and relax in everybody, it aids concentration and introspection so that it is often used by those who practise meditation.

Many artists with a rock background gave themselves up to Ambient music. For example, the already mentioned Brian Eno, who ranged from rock to vanguard and produced colossal names like U2. My favourite Eno's work is AMBIENT #1 (Music for airports) where the "background" role of this kind of music is represented to its utmost.

David Sylvian, after he has been leader of the new-wave group Japan, probed deeply into some merely new-age aspects of its style, collaborating with names of the Riuichi Sakamoto's calibre, and more recently with Robert Fripp. In the Ambient field, he wrote memorable pages in his GONE TO EARTH, and in FLUX+MUTABILITY (in collaboration with Holger Czukay).
The Sakamoto collaboration, to whom he wrote the lyrics of the most renowned MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE, produced the beautiful FORBIDDEN COLORS that's my favourite amongst his works.

It is furthermore worth to listen to that little jewel that's RAINBOW DOME MUSICK by Steve Hillage, having a beauty and pureness such that it evokes visions from Eden garden.
I conclude this paragraph mentioning Harold Budd, a poet, pianist and composer, who in works such as THE PAVILION OF DREAMS and LOVELY THUNDER shows his "oneiric" kind of music, inspiring quietness and serenity.

" In undertaking a work of this length it was my intention to confront directly the problem of musical scale (or time).
The music is placed outside the usual time scale, substituting a non-narrative and extended time sense in its place. It may happen that some listeners, missing the usual musical structures (or landmarks) by which they are used to orient themselves may experience some initial difficulties in actually perceiving the music. However, when it becomes apparent that nothing 'happens' in the usual sense, but that, instead, the gradual acretion of musical material can and does serve as the basis of the listener's attention, then he can perhaps discover another mode of listening - one in which neither memory nor anticipation (the usual psychological devices of programatic music, whether Baroque, Classical, Romantic or Modernistic) have a place in sustaining the texture, quality or reality of the musical experience.
It is hoped that one would then be able to perceive the music as a 'presence', freed of dramatic structure, a pure medium of sound. "

In the minimal music, short musical fragments (patterns) are continuously repeated, overlapping each other in different ways and varying their rhythm, length, height, timbre and so on. Following the techniques explored by masters such as the above Philip Glass, and moreover Steve Reich, Terry Riley and other ones, these plays of joint and modulation create the musical equivalent of a rotating kaleidoscope whose images, although abstract and thus not representative, have their own peculiar and enchanting charm. The armony they produce are, in their simplicty, always various and unpredictable.

Moreover, it has not to be forgotten the hypnotic role of musical repetition, known to all civilizations in the world and often used in tribal dances. Listening to minimal music, together with a special concentration, may bring to a meditative state of consciousness, between sleeping and waking, in which the external stimuli are cloudy and the thoughts seem to run faster.

There have been collaborations between exponents of american minimalism and important names of ethnic music. To mention one of them: Ravi Shankar, who collaborated with Philip Glass mixing up the Indian raga sonorities with Glass' unmistakable style, obtaining very evocative works such as PASSAGES.
Amongst Glass works, furthermore unforgettable are the soundtracks from Godfrey Reggio's films KOYAANISQATSI and POWAQQATSI, which document the reality and contradictions of our world. But Glass composed real theatre operas also, such as AKHNATEN and EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, and a majestic technical exhibition of minimalism in the colossal MUSIC IN 12 PARTS (about 4 hours of music).
My personal favourite is however GLASSWORKS, whose long piano sessions are such intense and profound that they place themselves on the same level as the most romantic piano works.

A place of honour goes besides to Terry Riley, another one among the fathers of minimalism, who in 1964 was ahead of his times composing the renowned IN C, cult-opera in its genre, in which a repeated C is the leading theme in all the 70 minutes of music, and subsequently with A RAINBOW IN CURVED AIR, marvellous suite of circular music which represents well the ebbs and flows of consciousness during meditation.

In Steve Reich music, often, the minimal schema is held up by percussions. In works such as MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS or SEXTET the main parts are assigned to xylophones or marimbas, playing very pleasant dissonances, while organs accompany them and give continuity to the whole. In DRUMMING there are long sessions, fully percussive, with an African flavour.
Aongst Riley's works the one which I prefer is MUSIC FOR A LARGE ENSEMBLE, in which the Glass paradigm about the gradual acretion of musical material is faultlessly fulfilled: the whole piece is an irresistible crescendo of rhythmic and melodic joints that leaves breathless in all its length.

Another one amongst my favourite musicians is Wim Mertens, a Flemish pianist and composer, who introduces in his undoubtedly minimal music a fully personal, emotional wave. His interpretations of petit musique de chambre (little chamber music, as he defines himself his genre) are often so touching as they involve the listener in a quite unexpected way. He made up the soundtrack of a famous Greenaway film, "The belly of an architect".
MAXIMIZING THE AUDIENCE, CLOSE COVER, JARDIN CLOS are peculiar moments of the creative stages he went through, but I think his climax has been LIR, a very long solo piano piece, full of pining romance.

Last but not least an Italian name, Piero Milesi, who in THE NUCLEAR OBSERVATORY OF MR. NANOF made up a visionary kind of symphonic music, in which one can perceive the presence of another kind of reality, the one that's depicted in the homonymous film having this work as its soundtrack.

Many musicians, nowadays, use electronical instruments. The "electronical" music, however, is still quite a different thing. It not only differs from other music 'cause of the predominance, in it, of electronical instruments like synthetizers, or the use of some kind of sharp and mechanical sounds. Its distinction is purely aesthetical.

In the opinion of electronical music lovers, it is a matter of fact that technology HAS GOT its own beauty. And the soul of electronical music rises right from the symbiosis of the creative impulse and the enthusiasm aroused by the mastery of new and amazing technological means.
They live again, in a modern fashion, the feeling aroused in F.T. Marinetti and other first 1900's Futurists: the "aesthetics of velocity", where electronics takes the place of mechanics in their identification with modernity.
Electronical music takes its place in this point of view: among people to whom a sampler, a computer, even a radio, are not merely instruments but symbols of an epoch, our epoch.

In this sense, Kraftwerk have been real enthusiasts, as well as the forerunners of techno-pop in the Seventies. They were conceivers and buiders of their own instruments, and fanatics of a robotism which became the show in their concerts. AUTOBAHN and TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS are worth to be remembered: they share the "travel" subject (the first in a highway, the second in a train) and COMPUTER WORLD and THE MAN-MACHINE are real manifestos of their admiration for technology.

Thanks to his pretty pop vein, Jean-Michel Jarre had an enormous worldwide echo, as well as (also commercial) success making him famous, besides for his music, also for majestic shows worthy of the Parisian grandeur, made up of lights, lasers, special effects and fireworks, all of them in the music time.
But it has not to be forgotten that him too, when in 1976 recorded OXYGENE, was an experimenter of a new genre, and that he has been the conceiver of the most of that musical themes, unconsciously in everybody's ears, which suddenly bring the imagination to a world ruled by electronics.

In the cultural ferment of the Seventies a notable part has been written, in the musical field, by the so-called "cosmic messengers".
These groups, German the most of them, produced music inspired to the Cosmos, which brought the mind to imaginary Space travels, in amazing science fiction adventures. It is a music that represents well the marvel staring at the Universe bigness, and the astonishment in the discovering of each of its infinite treasures, or even in the meeting of some other of its inhabitants.

Precursors (and still the greatest representatives) of this genre have been Tangerine Dream. Their founder and undiscussed leader from 1968, Edgar Froese, formerly a painter and sculptor, together with peoples which subsequently became as many sacred phenomenons of electronical music, like Klaus Schulze and Peter Baumann, opened the way to an infinite group of artists, like Popol Vuh, which found in the synths the mean to express their status of "citizens of the Universe".
Tangerine Dream discography, including LPs, soundtracks, lives, bootlegs and what's more, is virtually infinite. It's worth mentioning STRATOSFEAR, a pearl of cosmic symphony, FORCE MAJEURE, at intervals hypnotic and at intervals psychedelic, and POLAND, recording of an extraordinary concert in Warsaw, where the group performance has palpably been influenced by the East-European culture, carrying sometimes some of its melancholy typical expressions.

Klaus Schulze, a member of the first Tangerine Dream line-up, after he leaved the group he undertook a brilliant solo career, and starting from his cosmic messenger origins, testified by works like IRRLICHT and PICTURE MUSIC, he ended up touching on minimalism in his splendid 1990's DRESDEN PERFORMANCE, my favourite amongst his works: in the fourth section, having a symphonic flavour, synthesized pianos, violins and pizzicato strings, choirs, repeating alternately the same theme for 22 minutes, create a greatly impressive and dramatic atmosphere.

But electronical music is not necessarily cold or alien. Some musicians used the electronical means in a merely emotional way, reaching excellent outcome. It is, for example, the case of the Greek composer and keyboard player Vangelis, the author of most renowned film themes such as the ones from BLADE RUNNER, from CHARIOTS OF FIRE and from 1492.
Nevertheless, instead of his film themes, personally I prefer to mention Vangelis for the very great solemnity in all of his works. In particular SPIRAL, inspired by the dervish dances, the procession with epic tones in THE CITY, ALBEDO 0.39 dedicated to Apollo mission, and THE MASK, with summits of unexpected lyrism.
Yet Vangelis shows a second soul in compositions of unique delicacy and austerity, like SOIL FESTIVITIES, dedicated to the life of little insects, and much more in L'APOCALYPSE DES ANIMAUX and OPERA SAUVAGE, little masterpieces of touching grace.

Kitaro represents a fully Japanese way to interpret electronical music, where neither cosmic messengers nor the devotion to technology find their place. Kitaro expresses instead, with electronical music, the culture of his Country, drawing his inspiration from the harmony reigning in the Nature, and carrying out a charming compound of modernism and oriental exoticism.
His work which I prefer is THE LIGHT OF THE SPIRIT, a kind of "bridge" between east and west, where typical japanese sonorities are blended with a western symphonism, obtaining the best from both of them.

For a long time composers wrote musical scores for a solo instrument or scores where an instrument has a dominant role, so that the performer shows his virtuosity and/or his expressiveness.
Recently this kind of music took on a new role, in a fashion which we should view as an easy-listening of good quality, which almost everybody call new age. Under the impulse of this new sensibility to the romantic role of the music, many musicians rediscovered in a modern way the beauty of a piano sonata or a suite for acoustic guitar.

My favourites are obviously pianists, as long as I have a predilection for this instrument.
So I will mention some of the most famous pianists representing this new tendency, first of all George Winston, who produced a series of records inspired by the passing of seasons. His music is full of an intense yet serene pathos, which draws impressions from the nature, from rain tapping, from slow snow falling, from ocean waving.
My favourite Winston work is DECEMBER, in which the main theme is the Christmas coming, and the visions he produces have the same limpidity as the joy that Christmas can fill a child with.

Another important pianist belonging to this modern tendency is David Lanz, who expresses with a poetical soul the romantic beauty of little things. CRISTOFORI'S DREAM, his most known work and my favourite, is dedicated to the italian Bartolomeo Cristofori, who invented the piano.

Enchanted explorer of the intimacy atmospheres flowing from the piano sound is Michael Jones, a psychologist and sociologist besides being a pianist. He too is inspired by the beauty of the Nature, like in his AFTER THE RAIN in which he expresses the feeling of freshness, renewal and joy in the moments following a rain.

Tha Swiss harpist Andreas Vollenweider is one of the most famous names of modern instrumental music. Son of a musician and autodidact, able to play many different instruments, instinctive musician impermeable to any kind of stylistic framing, Andreas charmed his affectioned public with evocative atmospheres, rich in recalls to fantasy worlds, sometimes with folk tones, sometimes idyllic, sometimes exotic.
Amongst his works my favourite is CAVERNA MAGICA, owing to its immediacy and to the serene simplicity of its shapes, which remind the marvel staring at the quiet, motionless scenery of an underground cave.

In conclusion William Ackerman who, besided being the founder of a famous "new age" record company, is a guitarist with a remarkable sensitiveness. In his PASSAGE he depicted rarefied atmospheres, slight sketches of watercoloured scenes, full of sweet melancholy.

"World" is one of musical categories whose meaning is faint, categories invented to classify modern musicians to whom the existing genres were not precise enough. However, his literal meaning "music from the world" is clear enough.
In my opinion, world music is an extended view of folk music, including the many modern rearrangements of folk classics, modern songs written in a folk fashion, mixing of folk musics from different countries and cultures, and even mixing of folk and modern music such as rock.

These mixing often make sick some "purists", who see them as a deterioration of the cultural patrimony of the nation where they come from. So they forget that culture is alive as long as it is in motion, and it dies when it becomes to stagnation. Culture is above all communication, that is "to put in common".

A wonderful example of this spirit has been Astor Piazzolla, one of my absolutely favourite musicians, as well as one of the reasons which induced me to approach argentine tango.
Piazzolla, who has been THE protagonist of tango rebirth, has known how to join his classical and jazz music background with his first passion, his Buenos Aires tango, building up from the fifties to the eighties what he called Tango Nuevo, on account of which he was repudiated by his own fellow-citizens, and because of which he risked his life more than once.
Nevertheless he absolutely didn't betray the tango spirit, on the contrary he enriched it with new expressive means, keeping intact its peculiar passionateness, the same profound melancholy, pushing instead new fire in its veins, the same fire that burns in the heart of the keenest tanguero.
This is Piazzolla, and this is tango: sadness and passion, romance and pride, sin and innocence. His music winds off, slowly rhythmical, among dissonances and improvisations, swift vehement phrases broken off by a sudden gentle touch, which then becomes a wrapping crescendo with extraordinary intensity, whose climax is nothing but a new prologue, as if the tango would have no ending, as though everything tango sheds would never wear out...
Amongst the many beautiful Piazzolla works, the one which I prefer is THE ROUGH DANCER AND THE CYCLICAL NIGHT, whose TANGO APASIONADO is a perfect synthesis of Piazzolla's Tango Nuevo.

Another example of how to conciliate the traditional music of one's Country with modern music is Enya, Irish singer and composer, who draws inspiration from the soft and clear sound of traditional celtic ballades, reinventing them in a very personal fashion.
The atmospheres which Enya creates, though through synths and modern reverberations, have that ethereal look and that suspense drama which reflects in such a precise way the antiquity of their roots. Enya's songs evoke a fantasy world, the world of Druids who peopled the Celtic history and myths. The songs have, time by time, the martial sound of an epic ballade or the delicate and romantic sound of a sweetheart girl's sigh.
The limpid Enya's voice reflects the peacefulness and the serenity that Irish landscapes infuse in anybody. That serenity which inspires a profound optimism too, tied to a fervid devotion to the music, as can be heard in songs like "How can I keep from singing?".
Enya became famous as a soloist with WATERMARK record, which contains some of the best themes she produced.

Also Nightnoise music has Celtic roots. Yet they combine the various experiences of each of the group members, ranging from Irish folk to classical to jazz music, bringing out a definitely modern mixture, able to create romantic and evocative atmospheres, though often loaded with a considerable energy.

Another artist who renewed the musical folk scene in the last years is Ottmar Liebert, an eclectic guitarist who, having Chinese, German and Hungarian blood in his veins, made his fortune drawing from the Spanish folk tradition. In the records which brought him to the hits, like THE HOURS BETWEEN DAY AND NIGHT and NOUVEAU FLAMENCO he drew by handfuls from Flamenco rhythm, inventing a new melodic aspect in this kind of music.
The result is a definitely catchy music, worth to dance too, which keeps all the typical Flamenco rhythmic richness. His sunny music, so full of life and motion, immediately brings one's mind to the whirling of coloured Andalusian shows: it is impossible to keep from moving or at least clapping hands.

I conclude mentioning a group that in a short time became an object of cult from all folk fans (and not only). Madredeus, a Portoguese group from Lisbon, already had a loving public before they became international celebrities thanks to AINDA, soundtrack of the Wim Wenders film LISBON STORY. This film relates real life in Lisbon, and Madredeus themselves appear in the film, playing the songs which they wrote for the film. I also discovered this group thanks to LISBON STORY. When the film ended, I had only one thought in my mind: I had to buy that record.
The voice of the singer, Teresa, is simply the voice of an angel. The music of this group is so delicate and touching that it makes me want to listen to AINDA again every time it ends. And this doesn't happen only to me: it happened to every people whom I listened to or read the opinion, Wenders included.
The harmony in the group is superb, and the feeling they inspire everybody with, strength and calm, passion and tranquillity, but most of all modesty and a great talent and devotion to the music, made their concerts unforgettable and led them deservedly to a great success.

New age has become a very commercial name, so that I really would like to try to find another one. But I can't, because this name identifies very well the genre I want to refer to.
Someone call it "adult alternative", some other "music for worn-out managers". Brian Eno subtitled one of his records as "music for airports". It remains that it is a mostly relaxing and introspective music. This category (whose name is commercial, as I repeat) puts together genres as Ambient, Electronical, World music, a lot of Instrumental solo music, some Minimalist and even some melodic and soft Jazz/Fusion musicians.
The press produces tons of magazines which enclose CD's of new age (or boasted new age) music. The selections they propose are nearly always diluted with lots of pop music in the disguise of new age.

The New Age music genre takes its name after a very popular movement, whose target is to diffuse a vague not-religious spirituality that boldly mix up meditation, esoteric doctrines, alternative medicine, sui generis ecology, loose philosophy and psychology, folk customs and somewhat all that could look metaphysical, exotic or ascetic.
A sort of 2000's hippie movement, which really doesn't disdain technology but tries to reconcile it with the spiritual needs of humanity.
It could have been a constructive movement, if it had not been monopolized from its beginning by the multinationals of mass-esoterism, making void, in point of fact, the authenticity of its groundwork and ending to be drenched with the most sullen business spirit.

Classifying the art is a nonsense. It is just like classifying people. But it is a nonsense we are used to, and it's acceptable on condition that we keep a fair compromise between the convenience of classification and the respect for individuality.
Some of my favourite musicians don't fit in any category which I know.

Let's consider Mike Oldfield, for example.
Mike Oldfield is Mike Oldfield. He isn't similar to anyone else.
Saying that his music is a rock with folk roots which doesn't disdain a bit of electronical, without nevertheless disregarding some ambiental touch nor sporadic blues influences - .. is like saying that a tree is a set of wood, leaves and roots. It is reductive. Often the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (yes, I am an holistic!).
Mike Oldfield is my all-times absolutely favourite musician.
He is basically a guitarist, but he is able to play many other instruments so that, around 1970 when he was 17, he composed and played almost entirely by himself, using a personal overdubbing technique, his mythical TUBULAR BELLS, the first record produced by the - then new-born - Virgin label.
Mike Oldfield has a very peculiar and unique style, which his estimators are able to recognize immediately. A guitar, in his hands, is not anymore only a guitar. Its strings vibrate echoing in the deepest recesses of the soul. His symphonies are like journeys, the landscapes they depict are enchanting, infinitely far from reality, imaginary yet neat and detailed. And the care for details is a quality of ambitious people, whose works tend by nature to perfection.
One of the details immediately identifying Mike Oldfield are the guitar climax: they surely are the parts, in Oldfield's music, which satisfy the most. An endless emotion, feeling that the harmony strains and starts to rise, knowing that it is the beginning of a way inevitably leading up, feeling that the vibrations drag you up in a poliphony that becomes more and more complex and tight, 'til to the climax moment, when the tension explodes and melts returning to a more quiet melody...
Mike Oldfield is a curious artist, alway looking for new stimuli, and his music is changed a great deal from 1973 'til today. But his mark didn't change, and it is the reason inducing his fans to wait anxiously and to welcome enthusiastically each of his new works.

Simon Jeffes' Penguin Cafe` Orchestra is an acoustic ensemble made up of musician without bounds. From violins to synths, from harpsichord to experimental noises, to 70's electric guitars to grand piano.
About this orchestra someone used the adjectives "languid and relaxed, demode' and a little decadent, intriguing and malicious". I have to say that I can't find a better way to define them. But I feel that the following anecdote, found on their home page, is very significant:
A day in 1982 they found in Kyoto, in a pile of rubbish, an abandoned harmonium. After they was certain that no-one would claim it and that it had really been thrown away, they recovered it, they found that it worked and they wrote and played with it a song, Music for a found harmonium, which can be heard on their LP Broadcasting from home.

In conclusion, the Tuxedomoon, other impossible-to-define characters, able to produce delicate love songs like In a manner of speaking and dark techno-rock pieces like Incubus, or to re-propose ironical Russian folk motifs like Ninoschkna, or to touch on the Jazz/Fusion like in Roman P., and often to produce very catchy little pop songs, followed by disquietingly noisy pieces.
Quoting the biography of Blaine Reininger, leader and founder of this group, there are two types of artists: the ones who follow the wave and the ones who make it. The former are reasonable people, who adapt themselves to the world and to its rules. The latter are unreasonable people, who want the world to adapt to them. They are uncontrollable, lacking of creative inhibitions, in one sense they are anarchic barbarians.
And they are the innovating geniuses of this world.

Who's interested may view my list of CDs, discs, cassettes etc. (updated January 5, 1998).

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