Contamination and the third dimension

For centuries our culture and the dominant aesthetics have professed - and in a way dictated - a very definite and specific separation between different realms of the expression, styles, nomenclatures, according to criteria of convenience and appropriateness, and very much in line with correspondent social, political, philosophical divisions.

In the age of homologation, globalization, social - theoretically universal - equality, in the age of contamination, crossover, flexibility of genres and demolition of rigid aesthetical categories, nothing seems anymore inappropriate or incompatible, even the things that instinctively would appear the furthest away and the most unrelated - like a Norwegian saxophonist and Renaissance Spain, like the Book of Job and the Officium Defunctorum, with their sense of profound Christian mysticism on one hand, and the solipsistic, urban melancholic pathos of the tenor sax on the other. Today, under many respects, we are passed that time of contamination: the idea does not sound new anymore, even if the exploration keeps going in so many different directions. In a way, we are in the age when nothing can be surprising, astounding, and provocative enough. Today, a collaboration between a jazz musician like Jan Garbarek and the British “Hilliard Ensemble”, a male vocal quartet specialized in Gregorian chant, may not sound like anything new to our ears - and it is in fact a dated project (their first release, on the CD Officium, dates from 1994); but, listening to the “Parce mihi Domine” from their album, I find the artistic result of this collaboration still an appealing, fascinating, emotionally engaging musical experience.

In a way no two things can be found more tightly related and close to each other than the transcendental aspiration deriving from the sense of prosternation of a Christian in the presence of death and the Supreme Being, and the same longing that comes from solitude, from the annihilated impotence and despair of human being in a modern world less and less responsive to the most profound spiritual needs. From whichever side we approach these sensations, and we may access a deep and secluded place of our soul, moved maybe to some sort of mystical sense of universal belonging, or maybe to very private, individual feelings, I find that the saxophone of Garbarek floating on the calm, transparent, yet embracing texture of the four voices very much vibrate at the same time and resonate with our breath and with our soul. The repetitive, steady-paced framework of De Morales’s verses, with the balanced voicing in an almost constant homophonic writing, and the suspended, pensive quality of modality, create a perfect aural dimension for the improvisations of the saxophone, never intrusive, summoned from silence to ripple at times the polished surface of the vocal ensemble with its troubled, unanswered interrogations - the unanswered questions of which the text of “Parce mihi Domine” is entirely composed… The two elements together create a spacious, three-dimensional environment, and the result is one of profound calmness and openness, in which the listener’s perceptions slowly, gradually expand, in space and time; and gradually the internal dialogue between the two elements becomes one thing, that is close and distant at the same time, and gently pulls you in all directions and suspends your feeling of time - like a caressing but vibrant invitation to “let go”, to abandon yourself to this emotional and spiritual ‘drifting away’.