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Rating:
For nine very long years, it remained her last album of original songs. Only a few months ago, she broke a silence that was starting to become concerning, even though from an authentic artist like Loreena McKennitt, completely unrelated to commercial logic, one certainly cannot expect the flat routine of an album every year or, at most, every two, perhaps filled with fillers but released at the right time to please the record label. At least because the record label (Quinlan Road) is her personal one, and this, aside from allowing her total expressive freedom, guarantees us listeners unique records, painstakingly crafted with meticulous care and artisanal passion, which stand out sharply amid the industrial "products" that crowd and often plague the music market.
It seems that with the very recent "An Ancient Muse" this extraordinary Canadian singer and multi-instrumentalist (she plays the harp, piano, and all kinds of keyboards) has confirmed her vocation as an ethnic musician in the broad sense, with horizons far wider than the essentially Celtic ones of her beginnings. While waiting to know something about it, one can already grasp the breadth of these horizons in "The Book Of Secrets" (1997), an album that, due to its care and contents, comes close to absolute perfection. Just take a look at the list of ethnic instruments used, worthy of a Peter Gabriel, to get an idea of the work underlying it and thus justify the long waits that Loreena imposes on us, even though in this specific case it was only three years, with moreover a precious Christmas gift in between like "A Winter Garden" (1995), an enchanting mini-album of only five tracks.
Another justification can be found by browsing her official site: Loreena is not only a sensitive artist but also a person committed as much as possible to fighting the distortions of the world, especially in the field of human rights, as evidenced by her close ties with Amnesty International. It's not surprising then if for some years she may have prioritized this activity, to then return to using the medium most familiar to her, music, to make a world that is not only unjust and cruel but also full of useless and annoying noises a better place, and who knows, maybe the two things are connected.
The scaruffian legend wants "The Book Of Secrets" to have been conceived during a journey undertaken by Loreena along the fascinating route of the Trans-Siberian. Other sources instead give this journey a more symbolic value, limiting the direct cause-effect relationship to only one track (the mysterious nocturnal ballad "Night Ride Across The Caucasus"). Be that as it may, like the two previous ones, this book of secrets by the red-haired Canadian also outlines itself as the story of a journey, both in space (from the Caucasus to the "Serenissima," from the East visited by Marco Polo to Dante's Florence) and in time (retrieving ancient, pre-Bachian sounds, especially in the use of strings).
This world is introduced to us by a kind of overture ("Prologue") of intense lyricism, with Loreena wielding her penetrating soprano highs in vocalizations so expressive and passionate that they do not require the support of words. The pulsations of the drums are rarefied and deep; metallic echoes of oriental instruments respond with a pleasant sitar effect. Although there is a break, the entry of "The Mummer's Dance" seems to occur seamlessly, so much is the climate now created. This "Dance of the Mimes" is a classic example of what in classical language would be called "Slow dragging" and also yet another demonstration, if it were still needed, that the strength of a rhythm is not measured by the number of beats per minute. It's not easy to resist these caressed congas, these muffled drums, this Arabic-like singing that accompanies the percussion: personally, I can't do it, and sooner or later I'm forced to move stealthily like the shadows of the nighttime forest described in the text, despite my bulk making this "bear dance" a bit grotesque.
"Skellig" offers us the enlightened seriousness of the spiritual testament of a wise man who is about to serenely pass into the afterlife, leaving us his books and his inner wealth, matured over the years spent inside a monastic cell with rock walls. Loreena recites this true poem with her most inspired singing; the enchanted melody and the perfect weavings of guitars and strings do the rest, melting even the most refractory hearts. In "Marco Polo" a thick carpet of percussion and Middle Eastern instruments provides the ideal backdrop to a heavenly Arabic-like chant, once again without words.
Words, however, abound in the 10 minutes of "The Highwayman": they are those of a poem by Alfred Noyes (in other cases, the lyrics, like the music, are by McKennitt herself). The duration should not frighten: just enter with the first verse into the atmosphere of this intense story of love and death between a bandit (highwayman) and the innkeeper's daughter, to be captivated until the end, which arrives in a flash also thanks to the dark and dramatic colors of the ballad that Loreena has managed to stitch onto these splendid words. "La Serenissima" is an open window to the most mysterious antiquity, a miniature instrumental for harp and strings that takes us back to the full '600s. By contrast, I am reminded of the dreadful mishmash bearing the same title, the work of the infamous (fortunately now defunct) Rondo Veneziano, a bland mix of Vivaldi reheated in a sauce of dull disco-rock arrangements. My goodness, what an abyss between these two "Serenissimas"!
"Night Ride Across The Caucasus" is another valid example of slow dragging: fleeting images of a nocturnal ride unfold to the gently relentless rhythm of the percussion between hills sleeping under the stars and forests dense with shadows, and in this silence resonate echoes, visions, reflections, the eternal questions and answers of one accustomed to reflection on themselves. In the finale, the album reaches its spiritual peak with "Dante's Prayer", the heartfelt prayer of a Dante imagined as not yet out of his "dark forest", in search of something or someone to give "his feet of clay wings to fly and touch the face of the stars". The music lives up to it: a haunting Monteverdian choir wraps the precious central core at the beginning and end in a somber veil, which like an urn contains the true prayer, housed in a finely woven piano and string arrangement and recited by Loreena with a sincerely moved voice.
Far from the new age wellness to which this musician is sometimes superficially associated: albums like this gift deep sensations that leave a mark.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
02 The Mummers' Dance (06:10)
When in the springtime of the year
When the trees are crowned with leaves
When the ash and oak, and the birch and yew
Are dressed in ribbons fair
When owls call the breathless moon
In the blue veil of the night
The shadows of the trees appear
Amidst the lantern light
CHORUS:
We've been rambling all the night
And some time of this day
Now returning back again
We bring a garland gay
Who will go down to those shady groves
And summon the shadows there
And tie a ribbon on those sheltering arms
In the springtime of the year
The songs of birds seem to fill the wood
That when the fiddler plays
All their voices can be heard
Long past their woodland days
CHORUS
And so they linked their hands and danced
Round in circles and in rows
And so the journey of the night descends
When all the shades are gone
A garland gay we bring you here
And at your door we stand
It is a sprout well budded out
The work of our Lord's hand
Chorus
03 Skellig (06:10)
O light the candle, John
The daylight has almost gone
The birds have sung their last
The bells call all to mass
Sit here by my side
For the night is very long
There's something I must tell
Before I pass along
I joined the brotherhood
My books were all to me
I scribed the words of God
And much of history
Many a year was I
Perched out upon the sea
The waves would wash my tears,
The wind, my memory
I'd hear the ocean breathe
Exhale upon the shore
I knew the tempest's blood
Its wrath I would endure
And so the years went by
Within my rocky cell
With only a mouse or bird
My friend; I loved them well
And so it came to pass
I'd come here to Romani
And many a year it took
Till I arrived here with thee
On dusty roads I walked
And over mountains high
Through rivers running deep
Beneath the endless sky
Beneath these jasmine flowers
Amidst these cypress trees
I give you now my books
And all their mysteries
Now take the hourglass
And turn it on its head
For when the sands are still
'Tis then you'll find me dead
O light the candle, John
The daylight is almost gone
The birds have sung their last
The bells call all to mass
05 The Highwayman (10:20)
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon the cloudy seas
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor
And the highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding,
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
He'd a French cocked hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of glaring velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle; his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a chill and a twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark of night,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by the moonlight,
Watch for me by the moonlight,
I'll come to thee by the moonlight, though hell should bar the way.
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.
He did not come at the dawning; he did not come at noon,
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching,
Marching, marching
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at the casement, with muskets at their side!
there was death at every window
hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through the casement,
The road that he would ride.
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" And they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say
"Look for me by the moonlight
Watch for me by the moonlight
I'll come to thee by the moonlight, though hell should bar the way!"
She twisted her hands behind her, but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness and the hours crawled on by like years!
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it!
The trigger at least was hers!
Tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear
Tlot-tlot, in the distance! Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming!
She stood up straight and still!
Tlot in the frosty silence! Tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment! She drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shot her in the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him with her death.
He turned; he spurred to the west; he did not know she stood
bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it; his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky
With a white rope smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were the spurs i' the golden moon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
when they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.
Still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon, tossed upon the cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
The highwayman comes riding,
Riding, riding,
The highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
08 Dante's Prayer (07:11)
When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown
When the priests of pride say there is no other way
I tilled the sorrows of stone
I did not believe because I could not see
Though you came to me in the night
When the dawn seemed forever lost
You showed me your love in the light of the stars
Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me
Then the mountain rose before me
By the deep well of desire
From the fountain of forgiveness
Beyond the ice and fire
Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me
Though we share this humble path, alone
How fragile is the heart
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly
To touch the face of the stars
Breathe life into this feeble heart
Lift this mortal veil of fear
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears
We'll rise above these earthly cares
Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me
Please remember me
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By Hell
She roams, elusive and silent, ethereal like frost; she moves through the fresh mist; she smiles, and sings melodies of yesteryear: suffering and nocturnal melodies, radiant and warm, ancient, yet so touching.
Loreena travels and travels, and her memory elegantly slides on the staff. She paints refined notes, luxurious, angelic.
