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+ Sueños +
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Part I
'Ego Promitto Domino' : near
coming Middle Ages
(crusade, farewell and carousing songs)
"Parti de mal"
(traditional 'chanson de croisade'
dated 1189). That song was born during the '99 summer
tour, a tribute to the chivalrous ideal that unites us.
It's a traditional song but completely reinvented. Known
only by one of us it was a birth for the others. We were
in Mainz in a very suggestive cellar and we sang that tune
which has become in some way the seal of our mission.
"Saderaladon"
(traditional French 'ministrel
song'). This is the second song born during that
afternoon in Mainz and played live for the first time the
following day in Heidelberg. This track gives us lots of
energy and liveliness, it's a panacea, we cannot explain
the reason why each time we play it we find ourselves radiant.
A traditional song completely re- elaborated and revisited.
An hymn.
"Belle Jolande"
(music by ATARAXIA, lyrics
extracted from 'Chanson de toile' anonym of the XIIth century,
langue d'oïl). After a painful period of tension
and negative events, we found ourselves in green fields
strewn with yellow striking up middle age songs in the spring
which had became an early summer. In our opinion this is
one of the most beautiful medieval tracks belonging to our
intense musical history. Played at the foot of the hill
among the rows of vine and the curious cats witnessing the
creation, it will remain imprinted for a long time in my
memory.
"Il bagatto"
(French Renaissance ballad,
lyrics by Vittorio Vandelli). A French Renaissance
song played and re-elaborated by many musical ensembles.
Our version reinvented, reinterpreted and carried naturally
in the Italy of the communes during Humanism is a tribute
to our rich cultural tradition.
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Part II
L'âme d'eau : underwater
flowings of the soul
(notes of water, of nostalgia and silence)
"Mon Âme Sorcière".
A waltz of French inspiration made of accordeon, clarinet
and grey of pond getting coloured and changing of colours
quickly. The song I would have always wanted to sing being
like a part of me, I have a sorceress soul made of confetti
and eyes that fall in well and potions of life with which
I poison myself. That motif is strong and solitary, made
of this loneliness which is not heavy but makes us regain
our wild and courageous spirit. I think of "La Malédiction
d'Ondine" again and I feel that this song is the daughter
of 'June', it's 'June' the way I would have always wanted
to do it.
"Eleven". Crossing the
Mediterranean sea on the deck of a ferry-boat to get Greece............
"Mnemosine". Very sad
and elegiac music. It belongs to these beautiful and harrowing
compositions of Vittorio which still have the power to surprise
me. This is one of these motives that when it's written
immediately belongs to everybody since we all have made
it our own living and rewritten it with our suffering. This
is again a song linked to a child and water or maybe to
the rings of water concealing the child who struggles in
such a big silence and in such a wide extending of surfaces
of experience that separate what was united.
"I love every waving thing".
We can't restrain the impulse to speak of water through
music. This ethereal and bewitching track, full of spirals
is made of some Pessoa's words and the intense grey water
of the Atlantic ocean when on a windy cliff of the Lusitanian
coast you stop there and intensely desire to be carried
away, to disappear in the foam, to close the circle. A track
of water and sad childhood that has never ended. "I
spent the fly of my days spying the sea, there are waves
in my soul.
.
Part III
'Sandy dunes' : the Orient and
the Mediterranean
(solemn airs, marches and flamenco)
"Encrucijada" (part
I / part II). Dramatic, myterious, fiery track but
at the same time dry like the earth. A ritual of love and
death that becomes bloody after an incessant emotional tension
and then vanishes. That motif depicts the hispanic universe
as we perceived and elaborated it at one time. Passion and
blood : a gothic flamenco
"Funeral in Datça".
Some summers ago we found ourselves in a peninsula in the
south-west of Turkey and we decided to visit an antique
Greek site. On the way along a cleared and dusty road we
heard laments and saw a long line of people moving with
an ondulatory movement. It was a modest and dignified Moslem
funeral, the thing that most struck us was that coffin of
unusual dimensions, of a warm colour, a bright brown with
on top a rainbow-coloured carpet. My eyes are still wandering
with this ondulating coffin that was travelling quickly
on the hands of those people who were passing it each other.
The little envelope was sailing lightly and shining between
the earth and the sky in the spreading of the crowd. I remember
also the long braids of the women, young and old, red braids,
black, auburn, brilliant like the threads of the carpet
on the flying little coffin. I felt that sooner or later
I'll have to write this memory and the lyrics came first,
then the music, a march with deep vocals and then a rising
up into the limpid air.
"The corals of Aqaba".
The first time I heard that song born for the classical
guitar I thought immediately of the spring that precedes
the Easter days and the childhood I lived wild and swift
in the Emiliane mountains. The crystal sound was the one
of the river, of the bells in the distance, of the murmur
of the grass in which I ran untamed, of this pure essence,
fighting and courageous that was in me in my childhood.
I've associated all that to the thousands refractions of
the corals in the gulf of Aqaba. "My steps bring me
far-away, in places that I visited in the dazzle of the
sleep or during the long summer wakefullnesses when I made
me grassy expanse hearing the sound of the flute on the
shore of the river."
"Nemrut Dagi (To
the Mighty)". A powerful and rhythmic march
sung with virile but graceful voices, an hymn to the mighty
of the world who disappeared leaving traces of themselves
through mausoleum and monuments eroded and consumed by history.
Nemrut Dagi (the mount Nemrut in Anatolia) is the place
where is situated in open air the majestic mausoleum of
Antioco I, some immense statues of symbolic animals and
his face made of stone rising up on the high plateau are
eroded since centuries burned by the sun and whipped by
the snows and winter winds. A place of the imagination belonging
to our journey that Giovanni has skillfully depicted.
piece of writing by Francesca Nicoli
kindly translated into English by Nicolas Ramain
.
ATARAXIA are :
Francesca Nicoli :
voice, lyrics, flute, cymbal, bells
Vittorio Vandelli : classic guitar, chitarra battente,
acoustic guitar,
electric guitar, percussions, drums, vocals
Giovanni Pagliari : keyboards, vocals
special guest in "Sueños"
:
Francesco Banchini : clarinet, traverse flute, drums, vocals
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