Fabrizio de André
Tutti morimmo a stento

The year 1968 is a turning point. In terms of music, composition, and (in a certain sense) also poetry. Regarding the latter, it is necessary to grasp the perspective of remarkable innovation that this Work introduces to the listener, never forgetting that the Author himself (in this case, as can be perceived from the start of his compositions, with a clear self-awareness of his talent) does not lose sight of the contemporary artistic scene (both international and Italian), capturing and reinterpreting the intuitive ideas he has already absorbed. This, at the risk of opening an (unnecessary) additional excursus, applies to everyone: the most universal measure for assessing anyone's Work is their ability to maintain a synoptic contact with the fervor of their era.

"Tutti morimmo a stento" is absolutely the first concept album produced in Italy, as well as the first of four thematic albums (Works in every respect) by Fabrizio de André, where, through a "panel" narrative, a story is told or a theme is developed that, by its nature, cannot be "exhausted" or "fitted" into the space of a single song. We are at the end of the '60s: across the Ocean, the Velvet Underground (of the future Singer-songwriter Lou Reed) anticipate the American New Wave by a decade, across the Channel, Pink Floyd (of the future Singer-songwriter "devoted to opera" Roger Waters, and the largely unexpressed genius of Syd Barrett) developing an intuitive path of the Beatles will pave the way for the so-called "Space Rock", a genre whose evolution will occur practically inseparably from that of Progressive Rock, of Genesis with Peter Gabriel (world's top representatives) and in Italy, Premiata Forneria Marconi (Italy's most authoritative interpreters). The preferred expressive form of these genres, which assert themselves in this decade span, is precisely that of the "concept album". To adopt the same definition by de André it's a song form "in which all tracks are connected by symphonic interludes and have as their least common denominator being in the same key, and dealing with the same subject". (reported on http://www.ondarock.it/pietremiliari/deandre_tutti.htm).

The absolute musical novelty is the union, which occurs at a magical encounter point, between De André's traditional acoustic arpeggio and the Italian Song, sanctioned by the collaboration with Gianpiero Reverberi, taking form in a more complex, orchestral musical articulation, which includes strings, keyboards, and percussion. Thematically the work embraces an ideal horizon that (as the title suggests) extends to death and life, and the human existence that lies between these two terminal points. To be precise (in my impression), it seems that the unrest and the main source of the dramatic and lyrical tension that pervades the entire work is to be found in the awareness of death that crosses life, and vice versa, of life that as a fragment, as the last frame, as a tear crystallized in an eternal poetic intuition, restores human dignity and beauty to death.

The work unfolds in eleven episodes, crossing varied and polychromatic musical and literary registers. From the overture with the "Cantico dei Drogati", where through a scenographic vision comparable to Dantean atmospheres, or to the Prophets of the Apocalypse, comes the quiet and desperate invocation of the protagonist ("who will speak again of bright tomorrows / where the mute will sing / and the boring will silence / when I will hear again / the wind through the leaves / whisper the silences / that the evening gathers") at once the guardian of the most delicately suffered and lyrical part of Poetry seems to almost offer an (imaginatively) autobiographical glimpse. The text, stunning, was written four-handed with Genoese Poet Riccardo Mannerini; the symphony is created by the Orchestra Philarminica di Roma. The "First intermezzo" musical, where De André's minor arpeggio regains the foreground, fades into the "Legend of Christmas": the atmosphere is fairytale-like, light, sweet, emphasized by a male choral singing and very delicate orchestral openings, yet despite this (less explicitly declarative than "La Canzone di Marinella") comes the chilling ending ("and gifts of gold and silver shone / but the eyes were cold and were not good"). The "Second Intermezzo" opens to the focal point of the entire work: "Ballad of the Hanged". The atmosphere is more "folk-Morriconian" (the cinematic suggestions also extend to Federico Fellini), the text is drawn from "Ballade des Pendus" by François Villon (French "Maudit" poet). The progression is sculptural and sharp, the text is the culmination of the dramatic tension, one imagines (something never happened before) the moment of death ("All died with difficulty / swallowing even the last voice / kicking the wind / we saw the light fade"). The sarcastic register merges with the enveloping climate of grim foreboding, yet perhaps the Author De André does not forget that the flip side of that death is, indeed, Life. A sort of "ode to the disdain of mean Humanity", or a "pamphlet against the disdain of Life", not at all "defended", but crudely, hallucinatorily, poetically "told" through its alter ego: death, indeed ("who the earth scattered on the bones / and resumed the path calmly / may he also arrive distraught at the grave / with the fog of the first morning").

With the B-side of the record, the dramatic tension (at least initially) is tempered which had reached its peak in the mentioned track. "Inverno" does not tell of the condemned to death, does not speak of people, but of places ("Fog rises on white fields / like a cypress in cemeteries / a bell tower that doesn't seem real / marks the boundary between earth and sky"). Almost as if that boundary between a Humanity devoid of other references, except within its own madness, its own degradation, could sense there is a line of demarcation between earth and sky, a higher dimension, to reestablish distances and measures, to return peace and silence ("But you who go, but you remain you will see the snow will leave tomorrow / past joys will bloom again / with the warm wind of another summer"). A soft invitation to grasp in that pale stretch of sky (albeit for now) a distant premonition of an "elsewhere", in the time and space of Human existence. Almost, one might venture, an opening of hope.
"Girotondo", a bizarre nursery rhyme where a children's choir counterpoints De André's voice that seems to attempt to reassure them about the fear of war, which assumes, in a grotesque and surreal crescendo, the dimensions of a post-apocalyptic scenario ("War is everywhere, Marcondiro'ndera / the earth is all in mourning, who will console her?") up to the striking idea that, being the Earth completely devoid of men, it will be the Children who will play as they believe best. This game, in the children’s eerie and evocative chorus almost "Kubrickian" scenarios is indeed the war: "The earth is all ours, Marcondiro'ndera / we will make it a great carousel, Marcondiro'ndà. / We have the whole earth Marcondiro'ndera / we will play at war, Marcondiro'ndà...".
In the effect of the vinyl's acceleration the relationship between tragic and grotesque is felt: it seems like another dramatic peak, but it's not: it's a reference to Surrealism and Fellini's cinematography (the carousel is a recurring image: the accelerating record is a metaphor for the game’s intoxication that can become a tragedy).
After the "Third Intermezzo" comes the "Recitativo (two invocations and an accusation)", an invective in poetic form

"We sailed on fragile vessels
to face the world’s storm
and had eyes too beautiful:
may pity not remain in your pocket.

 

Elected judges, men of law
we who still dance in your dreams
we are the desolate herd
of those who died with a noose.

How many innocents to the horrible agony
voted deciding their fate
and how right do you think it is
a sentence that decrees death?"

With the counterpoint of the Choir of the Roman Basilicas by Piero Carapellucci, the second part of the choral closes (and closes the entire album) with "The Legend of the Unhappy King": those who seek happiness in wealth, those who seek happiness in giving to receive in return, and the final verses

"Do not seek happiness
in all those to whom you
have given
to get a reward
but only in you
in your heart
if you have given
only for pity
for pity
for pity..."

leave a somewhat reassuring, inevitable, open ending.

Comments

Along with Leonard Cohen's "The Future" and Tom Waits' "Night On Earth", De André's "Tutti Morimmo a Stento" will find an absolutely "appropriate" placement. The adherence to the Baroque style perhaps marks this Work's most considerable limit, strictly musically. But this is debatable, as History is not only "contemporary".

Assonances

Try listening to George Brassens's "Album N 6", or Sophia's "Technology Won't Save Us", in addition to the mentioned works. Beyond the sadness, the depth, and poetic intensity one will notice that the use of the word (which is no longer spoken word but sung word) combined with Music (which, as it combines with the word is neither Symphonic, nor Sacred, nor Classical but becomes Song), to try to understand how distances (especially temporal) are quite relative, and forms (beyond poetic and literary content) are trans-temporal.