Fabrizio De André
La Buona Novella

In the book "Passaggi di Tempo," the most authoritative biographer and expert on the music and poetry of Fabrizio De André, the writer Doriano Fasoli (*) divides the content of the volume into two parts: the first is a more or less (informal) interview, the second a complete analysis of the entire discography of "Faber" (I highly recommend it to anyone: the cost is not prohibitive and it is the most comprehensive work currently available on the market).

There is a specific and targeted question to which De André responds a bit unexpectedly:

"Would you be able to say which of your albums is the best?"
"Without a doubt, I answer you: La Buona Novella; it is the best written, the most successful."
The Author (Roman, a scholar of the relationships between expressive forms, mass media, and psychoanalysis among other interests) interjects, saying, "You know, I was almost sure you would instead answer me: Tutti Morimmo a Stento? Why this choice?"
Answer "No, that is a dusty, baroque album, and let us not forget that under the Baroque there was the weight of the Counter-Reformation..."

As is well known among listeners and lovers of De André's work, the prevailing opinion is that "Tutti Morimmo a Stento" is the "best album" of all time. Perhaps it is so. The fact is, it would be an impossible task to define which is the "best album of the Beatles": "Sgt. Pepper's..." or the "White Album"? or "Let It Be"? The same can be said for all the Greats: Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Rolling Stones, Lucio Battisti... and therefore De André himself.

"La Buona Novella" is among the conceptual albums (the second) where the refinement of lexical choice, the ease of rhetorical instrument, and the beauty of the evoked images metaphorically, metonymically, parabolically, blend perfectly with the stories being told, the story being told (that of the New Testament through the unprecedented perspective of the Apocryphal Gospels) and, allegorically, what it represents: the Story, tout-court, of Humanity, both in making the filigree of the plot transparent (the underlying egalitarian and human meanings and values), through the enchanting power of splendid images (the plot), and with the suggestions that radiate from the sounds, and which are more directly linked to the scenographic representation of the space in which this story takes place. A structure and poetry, therefore, refined to the most sublime perfection, interwoven in a perfect synthesis (like the luminous surfaces and shadows in a sculpture), as well as an immense work. But successful: La Buona Novella is one of the greatest masterpieces of Music of all time.

In the vinyl edition, the work is divided into two (conventional) "acts," marked by side A and side B.

The incipit with the choir "Laudate Dominum" (the Heavens) and the excipit with "Laudate Hominem" (the Earth) almost philosophically (daring a bit) "Augustinian" encapsulate as two symbolic riverine limits the "Mesopotamian" Work that is its conduit, through the narrative, fairy-tale, moving, and exhilarating story.
The entire work, in the theatrical scanning of the narrative paintings, allegorically represents the connecting path between the sacredness of God, made Man and died on the cross by the hands of other men, and the Human being who, throughout life, travels a symbolic "calvary" that in ascending draws closer to God.

The themes are, therefore, of a scope that could not be wider.

"L'Infanzia di Maria" introduces the key character: Mary, who will be the Mother of God (the supreme mystery of the Trinity is already sculpted in the initial verses) is depicted as a three-year-old girl who at this age is brought to a Temple in Judea. In the portrait, it is noted that (as De André himself would say many years later) the protagonists lose an aura of sacredness to gain, perhaps, greater humanity.
It is all occasionally enveloped in a fairy-tale-like atmosphere, like a dream. However, from the (alluded) sadness of the austere Temple (and a monastic life), at 13, the teenage Mary is first expelled ("but for the priests, your budding virginity was a sin that stained red"); then, according to the custom of the time, a "lottery" is organized among the bachelors and widowers to "give away" the girl as a prize.
The choice falls on an elderly carpenter, Joseph, characterized by sadness, already weary from life, and with many children: the delicacy with which "Faber" paints Joseph's kindness is moving "a veteran of the past, carpenter by necessity, father by profession, having you assigned by a rude fate an extra daughter without any reason, a child you had no intention for"

The choral interludes animate the human scenario, also bringing in the voices of the town.

In the end, Joseph will have to leave "for work awaiting him outside Judea; he stayed away for four years".

"Il Ritorno di Giuseppe", which happens after the "conception" (discussed in the following "dream"), is musically accompanied by oriental-style arpeggios (you can almost hear the echo of a sitar), depicting a Minor Asia between imaginary allegory and the reality of the time: "before you the desert, a sea of sawdust, tiny fragments of Nature's labor," culminating poetically to stir the soul of anyone who listens "the sandmen have assassin profiles, shut in the silences of a boundaryless prison". The conclusion coincides with Mary's tearful confession of her pregnant state, without Mary having a clear explanation, only "the remnants of a hidden dream".

"Il Sogno di Maria", indeed, reprises the same musical theme but in a different key, with a softer touch, almost brushing the delicacy of the images: splendid images, useless to describe, try to read a brief account "then suddenly he took my hands, and my arms became wings, when he asked me 'do you know summer?' I, for a day, for a moment, ran to see the color of the wind". The "Dream" unfolds like a flight with the angel, "then we glided beyond flowery valleys, where the olive embraces the vine", until its abrupt end "the long shadows of the Priests forced the dream into a circle of voices, with the wings of before I tried to escape but the arm was bare, and I couldn't fly, then I saw the angel turn into a comet, and their faces became stone, their arms profiles of branches, in the immobile gestures of another life, hands like leaves, fingers like thorns".
Poetically, the lyrical tension marries the instrumental sounds, predominantly acoustic; stylistically, the verses recall in several passages Virgil and the Metamorphic Poets of Antiquity (the highly refined vegetal metaphors allude to an identification of Man with Nature).

"Ave Maria" is another choral song, closing the phase of conception to make space for a prosopopoeia of the entire Country, and an imaginary dialogue with "a carpenter," intent on making the three crosses the day after the death sentence of Dimaco, Tito, and Jesus.

In the vinyl, "Maria Nella Bottega di un Falegname" opens side B. The musical flow changes: percussion appears, choirs (very PFM...) keyboards (a bit prog-rock) and above all that recorder with that drum that will remain etched in the memory for ages...
Emblematic are the verses "my hammer does not strike, my plane does not cut, to forge new legs for those who offered them in battle but three crosses, two for those who deserted to steal, the largest for those who invited to desert war"

"Tre Madri" (allegorically, the figure of the three women from the frescoes in the villas of Ancient Rome to Canova's sculptures will be practically revisited by all visual artists) are the mothers of Tito, Dimaco, and Jesus. The first is of the two thieves the one who would later repent/convert on the cross, Dimaco the other thief: the verses "with too many tears, you weep, Maria, almost the portrait of agony, you know that at life on the third day, your son will return..." is an allusion to the theme of the Sepulchre (on the "third day" indeed Jesus would have risen), but the painting of the three mothers is in absolute the most painful and heartbreaking moment "had you not been the son of God, I still would have had you as my son".

After the last interlude "Via della Croce", one reaches the "Testamento di Tito": the thief, through a precise refutation of the 10 commandments, comes to the end, observing Jesus for what he is, realizing that there is no distance between God and Man "see that Nazarene die, and a thief dies no less" until conversion and closure, the culmination of the entire journey of Man "in compassion that yields not to resentment, mother, I learned love".

There is nothing else to add, also because, like every discourse that remains open, it will not be the writer who ends their (very modest) discourse, but perhaps who will follow the sun, "The Same Old Sun" that disappears, in the end, beyond the harsh dunes of Judea, to illuminate new and (hopefully) less tormented lives.

(*thanks to Iside for this reference, and this discovery)