Johann Sebastian Bach - Hilliard Ensemble - Christoph Poppen
Morimur

"Chi ha intelligenza, calcoli il numero della bestia, perché è un numero d'uomo; e il suo numero è seicentosessantasei"

With this simple phrase, good John of Patmos (the real one...) made 666 a "satanic" number. But why? And why exactly 666? The answer lies in a particular "code," typical of the Hebrew alphabet, where each letter corresponds to a number. Thus, the Hebrew translation of "Nero Caesar," the pyromaniac emperor who persecuted Christians, in the language of gematria gives precisely 666. From then on, 666 became Satan, the adversary, "the beast." But gematria is just one of the many mystical and subliminal numerologies that have traversed human symbolism and that today create much "fashion" and "esotericism" (just consider, for example, the enormous success of "The Da Vinci Code").

Are there subliminal "codes" in the world of music? Is there a musical gematria? According to an illustrious German musicologist, Helga Thoene, there certainly is. And Johann Sebastian Bach is its prophet. On the other hand, it is well known that the immense Johann Sebastian had a passion for "codes." Just think of the mathematical structure that animates works like the "Goldberg Variations" or the "Art of Fugue." But the idea that he used gematria or sent subliminal messages through his music is certainly a much more fascinating concept, and it is the idea at the basis of this "Morimur," one of the albums on which Manfred Eicher and his ECM have invested more energy, not only musical but also promotional.

The idea of Helga Thoene, from which this CD was born, is simple and fascinating at the same time. According to Thoene, the monumental Chaconne that closes the Partita in D minor for solo violin BWV 1008 would actually be an epitaph on the death of Bach's first wife, Maria Barbara. In support of her idea, the German musicologist points out a simple fact. In the rich and flourishing musical line that the violin weaves in the Chaconne, a large number of Bachian chorales, mostly funeral, are clearly recognizable here and there, with a particular insistence on the theme of "Christ lag in Todes Banden," BWV 4. From this intuition of Helga Thoene "Morimur" was born. A CD that alternates the splendid solos of the violin of Partita BWV 1008 (magnificently interpreted by Christoph Poppen) with the chorales that Bach "hid" in the Chaconne (rendered in a chamber manner by a Hilliard Ensemble in brilliant form). But the true highlight of the album is naturally constituted by the "vocal" performance of the Chaconne, where the violin is overlaid by the voices of the Hilliard, bringing out from the silence the texts of the chorales that Bach had interspersed. So far the academy. But what is the result upon listening? The result is truly strange, and perhaps not entirely convincing. It is as if the "St. Matthew Passion" were overlaid with the sounds of "Officium." It is as if the absolute musical of the violin digging into the silence were overlaid with vocal phantoms that frighten, that evoke an idea of abandonment and unrest. It is perhaps no coincidence that in the first thirty seconds of the Chaconne the voices of the Hilliard repeat at least three or four times the words "Den Tod" (death). In short, a difficult and steep album. An album that more than a review would require ten theses. A listening experience, this of "Morimur," that unfortunately must necessarily pass through the head before the heart. And that, in order to reveal the hidden secrets in the Chaconne, perhaps loses the enjoyment of listening, that idea of the absolute that Bach wanted to convey with a page of such magnitude. Because in the end, as we know, sometimes secrets are better left as such.