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Meditation and reconciliation with the essence of existence today represent the results of an exorcism.
Art - as long as it is true, meaning independent and disinterested - is perhaps the only thing that can sublimate a being in its intrinsic uselessness and universal solitude. It is tantamount to screaming oneself, but elevating the scream to a kind of superhuman level, and this is the only thing that can really be done.
Minimalist music is somewhat the transposition of this totalizing vision into a hypothetical musical classification. It is the genre that gives me the most sense of music in the purest sense of the word. The manneristic programmaticity and even the slightest sign of effort found in a work make it seem counterfeit, marred, false; in minimalism, where abandonment resides more than ever, a tiny part of music is represented (often the repetition of a few elements in an extended time), but in its form so bare and essential that it is as if to perceive its entirety at the same time. Like a crack in a wall, a fissure in a rock (allowing, even if slightly, to see its unaltered interior).
Steve Reich, a living monument to this type of music, the author of masterpieces such as Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians said already in 1974 for his Drumming: "I have found that the most interesting music is simply aligning the loops in unison and letting them slowly phase out of sync with each other." and he revolutionized temporal spatiality in music by creating a kind of "rhythmic illusion" achieved through the gradual and mathematical phasing of identical patterns, almost as if to reproduce the aleatory structure of reality at a quantum level (practically the poetics of reality’s language).
If Reich, along with a good portion of classical avant-gardists in which Philip Glass, Wim Mertens, Meredith Monk excel, nevertheless, carries out his experiments with a rigorous and scientific spirit, resulting in a music as deep and primitive as it is glacial (sometimes risking "declining" into mere stylistic exercises), Alvin Curran, in this work, seems in part to use the colleague’s expedient but transfiguring it, giving it vital warmth, operating on a more macroscopic scale, and going, from a certain point of view, beyond Reich. If Reich’s abandonment is partly due to hypnosis, Curran's is more due to poetry.
In Canti Illuminati, he creates a complex landscape from scratch in the form of multi-layered vocals not simply formed by repeated phrases, but by phrases each second different from the previous one, aided by drones and effects and embellishments of all kinds (from synthetic instruments and chimes to concrete noises and multimedia fragments).
On one hand, the high complexity makes this piece a minimalism I would label as baroque, ideally distancing itself from the concept of minimal purity; on the other hand, the absolute care in the arrangement, the elegant organization of layers, and the naturalness in execution paradoxically restore to it the breath of the most naive spontaneity.
Rarely have I been so amazed by the imagination and creativity of an artist as during this listening.
After an austere and silent beginning dominated by human artifacts (ships, steamboats, port sound impulses), prolonged nasal vocals rise slowly, like drafts of a light breeze, gradually becoming predominant. From a single (tonal and timbral) fantasy develops an increasingly rich and suggestive inflorescence of mantric vocal patterns overlapping and organically alternating, supported by drones of different nature that punctuate the single tonality. The dynamics of the vocal swarm are very aleatory, but the "current" flows continuously, changing its features: from sorrowful chants to mysterious buzzing swarms, passing through dark rotating sound clouds, adrift.
It is impressive how the shape-shifting flow, composed practically of an infinity of different small clumps and segments, flows smoothly as if it were one single thing without the listener perceiving the slightest artificiality (the sensation is of a natural sound structure, devoid of human hand). Equally impressive is the presence of a strong emotional charge in this experimental complexity.
The multitude of chants mixes and sometimes confuses, leaving no gaps in the intricate weave, sometimes morphing into more linear and almost rhythmic paths, ultimately reaching a density that finds a certain stability. Solemn blows from a synthetic bass randomly organized accentuate the tension, further enriching the atmosphere.
Soaring arches, bundled pillars, protuberances, spires, reaching firm divine heights; decorations, asymmetries, a teeming of details, reaching toward a thousand escapes: it is a Gothic/Baroque cathedral of voices.
The microtonal chanting, now droning, is blessed by a continuous celestial tinkling: it is like being suspended in paradise, in a holy perpetual indefinition. Each vibration in this frantic proliferation exudes an intense spirituality that seems to sing of the elegant indifference (and inhumanity) of nature and of the mystery in its incomprehensibility.
If the first section is a continuum, the second is distinctly fragmented and more disordered, almost giving the impression of a De Chirican metaphysical and surreal landscape.
Delightful micro-symphonies of vocal and synthetic drones (the influence of Ligeti is total) succeed one another fragmentarily, alternating with shards of ‘30s songs and Italian washerwomen's chants appearing here and there, with which the same dronic pillars interfere. Behind all this, gradually appears, like the projection of a monster, a disjointed Shepard Scale, with different vocal registers emerging from all sides, interposed by dissonant and impending Ligeti-like vocalizations, only more meditative.
Unease rules in this chaos.
But halfway through, a celestial piano arpeggio emerges from the dark matrix, which, in its velvety solitary advance, carries with it only the most ethereal "remnants" of it. Joining the delicate sound idyll is the androgynous and indescribable voice of Mother Nature, which begins to move sinuously in the boundless space. It is the most evocative section.
The light wind dances, occupying the entirety of the immense volume without barriers; it freely sways the silvery sea of grass. You are catapulted into an elevated expanse, among slight elevations and stately mountains. Much separates us from civilization in this lost space. The lively and reassuring warmth of the Sun, already leaning westward, interspersed with more melancholic moments where clouds intervene between us and it, contrasts with a sharp breeze, creating a bittersweet sensation that fills the soul, irresistibly eager to soar into space, far from the shell.
Time does not exist in this music, everything unfolds in a fragment of eternity, in symbiosis with nature, as pure and seductive as it is ruthless and devoid of sentiments. It is as close to the inorganic as possible, free from the mocking weight of meaning, of construction; you are simply an integral part of this (tautologically) perfect randomness, identical to every other of its parts, you are nothing more, finally free from yourself.
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