On May 3 1972 the eponymous album “Banco del mutuo soccorso” was published from Ricordi Dischi, in Milan, on Long Playing vinyl, which was then called simply the “Salvadanaio” due to the shape of its cover.
The first track of the album was called “IN VOLO” and, in its verses recited by Francesco Di Giacomo and Vittorio Nocenzi, was evoked the character of Astolfo and his Hippogrifo, the flying horse, two central figures among the characters of Ludovico Ariosto’s masterpiece “L’Orlando furioso”, the masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance
So this year 2022, May 3rd, is 50 years since its publication, that is, the beginning of the history of the Mutual Aid Bank. We never liked anniversaries celebrated with flute and champagne too much, but we like to celebrate with concrete work the really important moments: that’s why we immediately found the opportunity to put on our cake of the fiftieth anniversary not a simple candle, but a real special cherry: a new album by Banco inspired and dedicated to Orlando. furious.
It’s a bit like going back to that space from where we took off so many years ago, with the desire to start again this story made up of music, ideas, diversity, visions and dreams. We would like to make it relive again with the same desire for amazement, for wonders to be sung, for stories to be glimpsed in that “beyond”, in that “in spite” which are our true life, made up of the utopia of ideas, hopes, surprises and wonders which, in spite of everything, life continues to offer us, if only we are careful to catch them among the lights and shadows of our days.
It all started with my son Michelangelo who came to me one morning and said: – Dad, what do you think if you and Francesco write a new album, inspired by “Orlando Furioso” by Ariosto? It would be like going back to the same place where you started so many years ago ... listen, I wrote this piece that could be Orlando’s declaration of love to Angelica, and she instead rejects it ...
Orlando, the most courageous of the emperor’s paladins, has just given up running to the aid of his comrades who are being attacked by the enemy, who is exterminating them, to save Angelica, the woman he loves, taken by the savages who are about to kill her...
And instead she rejects him, because she has fallen in love with a Saracen, Medoro, one of the enemies, a modest, unknown and worthless soldier, preferred to the strongest of the Emperor’s Paladins!
A love rejected, of course, but behind this story of the rejected lover there is much more: a great war between West and East, between Christians and Saracens, Muslims ...
And then many other love stories, this feeling is declined in all possible ways, which the human being has managed to grasp and make his own ...
Besides the “LOVE REJECTED”, just like the one of Orlando and Angelica, there is the “UNEXPECTED LOVE”, the one that sees Medoro as the object of Angelica’s love: he, so insignificant, is passionately loved by the most beautiful woman in the world!
There is FRATERNAL LOVE, just like the Astolfo’s one, who decides to risk his life to save the one of his friend Orlando, crazy for love: Astolfo, who decides to go all the way to the moon to recover Orlando’s mind and to bring him back to earth to heal him of his madness!
And here we cannot fail to say what a marvelous image is the Ariosto’s invention, that transforms the moon from a romantic symbol par excellence to a “dump” of dreams that humans have given up, of abandoned ideals ... The moon, where the minds of many men go to waste, becomes a great dump full of garbage, of waste, of human waivers...
Then there is the REFUSE OF LOVE, told by the war itself, which is, par excellence, the triumph of hate and the erasure of love...
There is the POSSESSIVE LOVE just like the one of the sorceress Alcina for Astolfo who, wanting to leave, is locked up by the sorceress in a hollow tree trunk and held prisoner there, considered therefore not a source of love but a real possession, when the beloved becomes “property”, something that is only “ours” and to which we leave no other meanings ... Or, again, FORBIDDEN LOVE, as like the one between Ruggero the saracen and the christian Bradamante, an impossible love, hindered till the end by Atlas the Wizard! (Ruggero and Bradamante are the Ariosto's Giulietta and Romeo).
Fairy inventions such as the flying horse and the ring of invisibility (500 years before J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the "Fellowship of the Ring" ... !!!). Sorceress, Wizards and so much more!
Once we decided to tell the story of Orlando furioso, before starting to write the music and the lyrics we had to face a series of fundamental questions: should we use the octaves of the original verses and set them to music?
And which, among the countless adventures, would we have chosen to set to music, having decided not to put the whole Orlando to music because, in our opinion, the original text was perhaps too broad and dispersive, with too many characters and too many adventurous events, at least for the contemporary taste.
But then, with what criteria we could choose which was the right episodes and which was not?
Could we judge Ariosto’s masterpiece as if we were judges of a contemporary TV talk show? Which adventures to send to the finals and which not?
Simply absurd!
And yet ANOTHER SERIES OF QUESTIONS: 1. In what era should we set our Orlando furioso?2.In which location? That of the Mediterranean, France and North Africa as in the original, or did the places have to be different?
3. If we did not use the original verses, what language would we have chosen? A contemporary language or perhaps a language of invention, which had similarities with the language of the 1500s used by Ariosto?
4. Should the original text be only a free reference, on which we could dare to use other inventions, or should we strictly adhere to the original lines and structure?
We finally realized that the answers to these questions had to be given from the beginning, otherwise the whole work would have failed. So: Ariosto himself to write his Orlando furioso, was freely inspired by the work of another poet who had written before him on the same subject, to the point of making the Orlando Furioso seem like a real sequel, as we would say today: I am obviously referring to the “Orlando inamorato” of the Boiardo.
So we took the courage to do the same, in the sense that if we felt the need to add some narrative circumstance, we could do it, as long as everything worked lyrically.
From here the step was short in thinking, in all honesty, that we could dare if the path we chose to follow was clear. So we chose the key episodes of the original story, considering central those episodes that served as essential links for a narrative that wanted and had to be different from the original.
The main question had become, for us, "what is the point of setting this masterpiece to music 500 years after its publication?" By “the point” we mean the artistic, emotional and creative meaning of taking license from the original and structuring a narrative that is, in broad therms, respectful, coherent and based on the essential contents of the original work.
Then we understood that Orlando's strength lay in its unsuspected modernity and contemporaneity: our age is still experiencing, to begin with, after 500 years, a confrontation / clash between the West and the Middle East!
The Mediterranean is furrowed by countless streams of men fleeing war that still bathe, in fratricidal blood, the beaches of the former mare nostrum!
It occurred to us that it would have been opportune to emphasize this content of contemporaneity: and here we thought to set our Orlando in a timeless time, neither in the past, nor in the present or in the future and as a backdrop, a Mediterranean completely drained of all its water.
A single source of fresh water, in the middle of a valley with red soil, is all that remains of the present sea (among other things, it seems to be a condition really occurred thousands of years ago according to scientists). This surviving source of drinking water is immediately surrounded by walls by the Guardians of the water, but this is also, at the same time, the destination of hundreds of caravans of men, women and children who, devoured by thirst, do not cross the former Mediterranean by boat, they head on foot towards the walls surrounding the source, in caravans of dispersed and desperate humanity.
It seemed to us an important opportunity to use the story of Orlando furioso as a response to terrorist violence, the choice of using art as a confrontation and poetry as an offer of pacification, seemed to us a path to be indicated as possible, or even better necessary, by rereading a poem whose author - Ariosto - was always, throughout his story, a balanced third party between the Christian and Saracen armies, never involved in the fratricidal war between the Middle East and the West in taking one side to the detriment of the other. Choosing to indicate poetry and music as a path of peace even to our contemporaries, it seemed to us an opportunity not to be missed, because it was a consistent approach with the way of thinking of the Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso, always pacifist and anti-militarist!
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
We have ideally dedicated this passage to the form of ”told” love, as this is the main object of Ariosto’s poem.
The first words of the song are the original verses, one of the most famous incipit of all European literature. Thus begins the "Orlando Furioso", written by Ludovico Ariosto in 1516, the masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance in the world.
“I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds…”
“Le donne, i cavalier, l’armi e gli amori, le *cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto …”
*How beautiful is the Italian term “cortesie” (courtesies/courtly chivalry), to indicate the knightly rites of the Renaissance courts?
Ariosto informs the readers that he will speak about the love of ladies and knights, the customs and the common rituals in the noble courts of that time (le cortesie) and of the war stories, in the days when the Moros crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and reached France to ravage and attack those lands. There was a fierce fight between Christians and Arabs, as in the mythical battle of Poitier, sung by European minstrels among the most glorious deeds of the knights of Emperor Charlemagne.
THE MUSIC
It is one of the very few cases in which Nocenzi wrote music on words, having almost always happened in his long career the opposite: first the music and then the text. But the incipit of the Orlando furioso is a mythical page, it has a unique metric and phonetic beauty, and therefore the temptation to put it to music was indispensable … And then here is the melodic writing articulated in such a way that each note of the vocal melody contains a syllable of the original text.
In addition, musical writing, with its monodic trend, wanted to freely evoke those medieval cadences from which the whole saga of the European Troubadours and minstrels was born, of which Orlando furioso is the Baroque epilogue.
In the orchestration, among the timbres used, the choice of the initial wave form with which the theme is exposed and then taken up by the voice, wants to suggest an inner, emotional narration, well suggested by this sound timbre.
Furthermore, it is a sound already used in Eterna transiberiana, and its return creates the conditions to be able to speak, here and there, of “typical Banco’s sounds", or “typical Banco’s arrangements", as we can also say for the cadences harmonics in countermelody of the two electric guitars that take the place of ideal cellos, or of the acoustic guitar solo by Nico Di Gia, to underline the varied potential of this Banco’s line-up that makes use of two different and complementary guitars.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
We have defined the Red Plain as Love Denied, because what else is war if not the denial of love?
The song has a fairly complex and articulated narrative, because there are many protagonists in this story (Canto XIV, octave 1-46; 98-134).
We witness the arrival of the thirsty, the Saracens, under the walls that surround the water sources whose defense is watched over by Western soldiers, the "Water Guardians”.
When the long caravan of the thirsty arrived under the walls, a fierce battle broke out between the two groups. This story refers to the battle under the walls of Paris, with which the original story begins in Ariosto's Orlando furioso.
Atlas the wizard
To complicate the narration of the episode of the battle for the water source, there is another parallel and contemporary tale, that of Atlas the wizard, who is following everything from the "castle of power" where he resides.
Atlas is in the monitor room, through which he follows not only the battle in progress, but also the entire history of the man, cynically detached from the deaths of the fighters he sees parading on the screens. For him it is nothing more than “wargames”, a game where only the joysticks are missing to take direct action in the war duels.
The wizard Atlas represents the "occult powers", the jackals who are always behind every war, those who transform the blood of the fallen into business for their own benefit. He does not care at all who wins and who loses, his true nourishment is war itself, but because wars feed his power.
THE MUSIC
The composition uses, especially when the thirsty Saracens sing, a harmonic minor scale, which by its nature recalls the cadences of Arabic music. In evoking the warlike clash of the actual battle, timbral elements were often used, simple but "characterizing", to identify each of the two groups, without however falling into excesses of onomatopoeia that would have trivialized everything, leaving the possibility to metaphors of the story to poetically inspire even the compositional and orchestral solutions.
For example, in this work of sound identification of the two opposing groups, when the narration concerns the Saracens, ethnic percussion and Sitar sounds are often used; while when Western soldiers respond with their war songs, the symphonic sounds of a brass section and orchestral timpani are substituted for the ethnic timbres, to represent the West tonally, just as the tabla and sitar represent the East.
By resorting to Arabic scales and ethnic sounds as opposed to symphonic ones, thus acting both at a compositional level and at the level of orchestration, the two parties in the field, in addition to "feeling" each other, "see" each other with the mind's eye, and the listening becomes a “sound projection” rather than a visual one, which we believe is very effective. Sudden and incisive unisons performed by the whole band make the song an evident page of progressive music.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
This passage represents the form of renounced love, because the text tells of an Orlando who makes his feelings come after his duty, his ideals (Canto I, octave 5-7). Until his loneliness becomes unbearable ... He too needs to love and to be loved …
Right after the furious battle with the thirsty Saracens, Orlando is alone on the walls that enclose the source of water. The Paladin meets Bradamante, the champion of Christians, and reproaches her for not having seen her fight as usual, with all her heroism.
Orlando knows that Bradamante is madly in love with a Saracen champion, Ruggero, and thinks that the woman did not fight with all her valor because her love could have been among the enemies. Bradamante reproaches Orlando for his inability to love. From this accusation comes the inspiring idea of the text of "Orlando is needed now”.
Orlando tells Bradamante that he also “knows how to love”, a lot! But his sense of duty compels him to deny himself love: he now serves the war, he serves his comrades in arms, he has a mission. The sweetness of love can wait.
We wanted to give Orlando a more “human” and less heroic and epic vision, the words of the lyrics make us see him alone, sad, standing out on the night sky…almost according to the classic romantic iconography.
His humanity leads us to love him, as if he was any other of us, and not an unreachable hero, so strong, a myth, and the contrast so deliberately created between his warlike figure and the poignant sweetness of the sung melody, It makes an emotional premise to the love declaration that Orlando will make to Angelica, who instead will reject him (“ I’m no longer afraid of love”).
THE MUSIC
The composition makes use of a very moving introduction, from the point of view of harmonies and leading themes, however entrusted to sounds that are anything but sweet, honeyed, indeed remarkably pungent as the electric guitars and the Hammond organ are, while at the piano and at the acoustic guitars are entrusted the cadence of the accompaniment part, on which the electric guitar and the organ expose the theme that will be taken up by the vocal melody.
The obbligato, written for guitar and keyboards are now a characteristic of the Banco, which chooses this expressive mode to keep the “compact” nature of the band always very focused. These solos written as "obbligati" for two solo instruments allow the band to never give up on giving the image of a cohesive, compact collective, both in aggressive and rhythmic moments and in the most lyrical parts.
After the instrumental introduction, the sung theme makes its debut, starting with a first melody articulated with several jumps of variable intervals, then followed in the second part by a new melodic line that almost stops insistently on a single note, repeated with disperate passion, to act as a pedal as a common note to the two chords of D- and A+, the tonic and its dominant, as simple as it can be. Nonetheless the final outcome, that humanly sympathetic participation in the tragic destiny of Orlando "rejected in love", who involves us in listening, is obtained by creating a repetitive, hypnotic pattern, almost like a slow South American Milonga, which in its relentless and inexorable but persuasive course, it makes us share the intimate pain of a rejected Orlando, who feels so lost that he stands alone in front of the dark night sky, on those same desperately defended walls..
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
Despite all the sense of duty that prompted Orlando to put aside his love for Angelica, the strength of his love is so great that it becomes inevitable, a destiny that he no longer wants to escape (Canto II, octave 1).
Orlando, the champion of the Emperor Charlemagne’s Paladins, falls hopelessly in love with Princess Angelica, and declares it openly, without hesitation, confident that she will be his and nobody else’s. After all, how could she possibly refuse him? He is the most powerful and admired knight in the empire. How can a woman resist to his court and say no to him? For him it is absolutely unthinkable that this could happen. It was the emperor himself who promised the most valiant knight the hand of Angelica as a reward (Canto I, octaves 8-11). So... how can Angelica refuse? It’s impossible... At least that’s what Orlando thinks.
At the end of this passage, Orlando reads his refusal in Angelica's silence and indifference. In Furioso, Orlando's discovery that Angelica does not accept his love, is expressed differently by Ariosto, who tells how Orlando, looking for Angelica, finds the cave in which Angelica and Medoro had taken refuge, and in the cave he reads the writings on the wall about their love (Canto XXIII, octave 101 and following). This cue was so strong that it deserved a single song about it. This is why we opted for a less romantic but more concise narrative, because we wanted to make Orlando's statement more dramatic, combining it with Angelica's immediate rejection.
THE MUSIC
This piece starts attached to the previous “Orlando is needed now", because with it it originally constituted a single composition, the first that Michelangelo Nocenzi made Vittorio and Francesco Di Giacomo listen, to explain to them the idea of putting the Orlando furioso into music for the fiftieth anniversary of the Banco.
They are, not surprisingly, written in the same key as D-, and leaving them united and consequential, allowed us to increase the emotion of the moment when Orlando, alone on the walls around the source of water, feels inside himself all the strength of his love for Angelica, and in that moment the rhythmic pulsations of the tango begin to strike the song.
The composition, entrusted to guitars and voice, passes through the crescendo of a musical Bridge that increases the general yearning, and then frees itself, each time, on the resumption of the main theme. After the first two expositions of the theme, left to the magnificent electric guitar made by Filippo Marcheggiani, the vocal singing debuts, which highlights the power of Tony D'Alessio's voice, combined with his interpretative sensitivity, because of the naturalness with which he intones the highest notes of the melody (up to a Bb, one tone only below the high C), adds a series of timbral colors of the voice that enhance the poignant nature of the lyrics and of the melody itself.
One of the characteristics of this song is that the main theme is first performed by the solo of the electric guitar and then by the voice, and from time to time they alternate in its performance, throughout the song.
By alternating guitar and voice, we create emotional settling rooms that amplify the visceral strokes of the lyrics! In other words, by having the lead guitar repeat the melody just sung by the voice, the words heard resonate further, enriching themselves with emotion, while the rhythmic pulsations of the cadence strike the song. These instrumental rooms have the function of a resonant space, precisely as an "acoustic chamber", in which to further vibrate the emotions just felt by listening to the words and notes of the sung theme.
The song can ideally be divided into two parts; the initial one of the real tango, which makes its sudden debut with the entry of the tango rhythmic section, and the final, dissonant one, which expresses the outbreak of madness in Orlando's head, following Angelica's rejection: to his words of passionate love she answers with a silence that for Orlando is chilling, inconceivable!
Here that’s when the music becomes turbid, almost polluted, in the sense that from the initial tonal music, you find yourself immersed, in this final part, in a music ferociously pulled between one tonality and the other, to express precisely the growing awareness of Orlando of his unrequited love. And then it becomes explicitly dissonant, with the accelerated cadences of the final piano, due to the explosion of madness in his head and heart. Without Angelica's love, Orlando feels like a nobody, he’s no longer the invincible knight, superior to any other person ...
From this moment on he is only a refused person …
Vittorio says:- The musical idea of the arrangement, comes from my love for argentine tango. This is probably the first Rock Progressive - Tango in the history of music. But precisely because of its transversality, deliberately beyond the fences of musical genres, it well represents the best progressive spirit. Precisely because it is unusual, curious and apparently extravagant, this Orlando tango excites and touches unusual, emotional chords.
The juxtaposition of the accordion and the electric guitar, theoretically so far from each other, are instead closer than you think, if there is an adequate music in tying them, or rather an adequate “feeling".
Vittorio says: again:- When I was in Buenos Aires in the year 2000, the performance of a tango made by two street musicians, an accordion and a violin, remained embedded in my musical soul like precious diamonds, just like listening to the music of the choreography of the “Faust” that Maurice Bejar's ballet staged at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in the ‘70s: that wonderful show, alternated passages from Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem Mass with Argentine Tangos, in a divine mixture, absolutely beautiful, to the point of making me fall in love with Argentine tango forever -.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
Angelica, daughter of the emperor of Katai, is the most beautiful woman in the world and the emperor Charlemagne wants to give her as a prize to the most valiant knight. Everyone knows she will be Orlando's betrothed, the strongest knight among the Paladins.
But Angelica, taking advantage of the attack by the Saracens, benefits of the general turmoil of the battle and runs away from the Christian camp. (Canto I, octave 13 and 14; 33-39), (Canto XII, Octave 36-39).
We wanted to think that Ariosto makes Angelica escape because in some way he anticipates the contemporary sensibility that now feels unacceptable the subjection of the role of woman to man.
Among the various licenses that we allowed ourselves, thinking about it carefully, there was also that of interpreting some choices of Ariosto's narrative. It did not seem to us a "casual" choice by Ariosto, to let Princess Angelica escape from Charlemagne's camp, it was not enough as an explanation to create another succession of chivalrous actions, rather we liked to read within Ariosto's intention to consider Angelica / woman as an autonomous being, a "person", able to choose her own destiny even in times where all this was taken for granted and could not fail to happen, given the submission of women to male power … We preferred to think like this, also because the escape of the Princess of Katai, otherwise, would remain narratively inexplicable. For those times, refusing to marry a Prince like Orlando, fleeing away, would have been really hard to understand ...
Angelica’s escape across the battlefield, however, does not go unnoticed. She is beautiful and is immediately noticed by Rodomonte, the Saracen champion, who begins his pursuit, at the same time of Orlando, warned of her escape. But it is Ferraù, another Saracen champion who reaches her (Canto I, octave 14).
Rinaldo, Orlando's cousin, also sets out on the trail of Angelica. So the lyrics sung about Angelica's fear, a real panic, as she runs away among the shrubs of the forest, feeling her pursuers close.
IL SIGNIFICATO “IDEALE” DEL TESTO
This episode is dedicated to the condemnation of violence against women of yesterday and today. Angelica during her escape, assailed by the most anguished fear, helpless and alone, had right away all our solidarity, and made us immediately think of the need to take a cue from this episode, to speak clearly about how unacceptable it is violence against women.
In our mind we have seen a woman running in panic among the brushwoods that hurt her face, legs, arms, while terror rises in her heart and overwhelms her …
THE MUSIC
The rhythm of the song is a 7/8, odd time par excellence, full of "stumbles", of suspensions, chosen to underline the panic of Angelica who is running away, alone, in the woods.
The sound of the initial wooden percussions is inspired by the noises of the wooden swords of the Sicilian puppets when they tell the exploits of Orlando and the Paladins of Emperor Charlemagne against the Saracens…
All the pathos of this piece starts from these relentless and percussive wooden subdivisions, which goes silent coinciding with the sudden transition from the initial 6/8 of the introduction to the anxiety of the rhythm in 7/8 in which it will start the sung part.
The 7/8 is introduced by the cadences of the electric guitars, alternated with the dialogue between keyboards and wooden percussions which also resume in the 7/8, but never under the vocals, to create more space for listening to the voice and lyrics… The dynamism and anxiety of the escape, is expressed by the rhythmic tension that creates the synthesizer in 6/8 (2+2+2), but with binary and non ternary subdivisions (2+2+2 and not 3+3), in polyrhythm with a game of octave entrusted to the piano. The melody of the verse of the song makes its debut on this new harmonic-rhythmic trend, sung entirely in 7/8 by Tony D’Alessio. And when the chorus arrives, as the central opening of the song, it is almost the conquest of a new liberating hope, almost a momentary protective port, safe and far from evil …
The fusion between the content of the text and the musical writing is almost complete, one at the entire service of the other and vice versa.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
Before the definitive title, the working title was "The Castle of Power", to totally identify the song with the lair of Atlas, from where the Magician tirelessly follows every fact that may interest him.
While the battle with the Saracens is taking place around the walls of the spring, defended by the Guardians of the water, all the actions of the battle are carefully followed by Atlas the wizard. The Castle of Power is the place inside the battle forest where, sooner or later, all the protagonists of the Orlando Furioso story mysteriously come and go: Bradamante, Ruggero, Orlando, Angelica (Canto XII, ottave 21-33), (canto XIII, ottave 49-53). The Wizard makes all of them believe that in the castle there are people or things they are looking for, but it is a deception of Atlas: the wonderful Castle of power, with its false images of people and things, closely reminds us of the virtual realities, to which we, men of the 21st century are becoming more and more accustomed. The episode is a metaphor for our life, conceived as an eternal search for something unattainable.
Furthermore, Atlas the wizard, in reality, defends Ruggero from his fate, which is to die the moment he meets the woman he loves, Bradamante (Canto XII, Ottave 1- 37).
THE MUSIC
The song starts in G+, in an apparently calm 4/4. And there is a small instrumental cadence that uses the sound of a waveform, as if to imitate the computer sounds: we are in the control room of the Castle of Power, where Atlas the wizard, sitting in front of his monitors, controls everything. It’s the power, the occult one, which, without being seen, follows the things that may affect it. And when the Wizard sings he expresses an unusual evil cynicism …
The only means of the lives of others is of being used when their "nothingness" can make them a little interesting! "Circles of thoughts are trivial limits for the deserted souls of the world!" “To finding and to understand are drops of honey, precious gift for VIPs!”, as if to say that knowledge can only be available to important people … I’ve been watching for thousands of years waiting for something new to happen! "..." I am always looking for special kind of men in the silence of history, but there is nothing but noise! " ... "Lives lost, depressed silences, I scan your days!" … After all this evil, the conductive phrase, entrusted to the electric guitars of Marcheggiani and Di Gia and the powerful drumming of Moresco enters vigorously. And Atlas gives the best of himself and of his own evil nature: "Alone with my everything, I grow nothingness, and I delude myself that it blooms but nothingness is nothingness!”. On the boundless contempt, nurtured by Atlas towards humanity, the notes of a synthesizer make their debut playing a sequence with a square-shaped sound, which freezes everything, making it even more inhumane if possible … And the singing voice gives way to a solo of Vittorio's miniMoog which concludes the song, leaving the last flash to the guitars with a hypnotically repeated cadence.
The song ends with a minimalist musical phrase repeated by acoustic guitars, accompanied by the rhythm of a bass synthesizer, with the intention of creating a visionary bubble …
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
The escape into private life, faced with the inability to change the world, has had, over time, different paths. In this passage we wanted to tell about the illusion of being able to stay away from reality, from responsibilities, from society, not knowing how to accept defeat while taking refuge in drugs or in various trendy cults …
The song “The happy island” tells about the episode of Orlando furioso in which Alcina The Sorceress locks her lover Astolfo in a hollow tree trunk, because she is afraid that he is about to leave her (Canto VI, Octave 17-53), (Canto VIII, Octave 21).
In this way it’s perfectly represented that kind of possessive love that human beings often feel towards the object of their feeling, a kind of sense of ownership that she or he arouses in them, as an object of their love.
Ruggero, fleeing on horseback of the Hippogryph from the Castle of Power, where he was held prisoner by Atlas the wizard, lands on the island of Alcina the sorceress (Canto VI, Octave 17-53).
The narrating voice at the beginning of the song, recites the original verses that describe the slow descent of the Hippogriff on the Happy Island: the winged horse glides over the island making large concentric circles, until it lands (Canto VIII, Ottava 21). And while walking along the beach on the seashore, in complete solitude, enjoying the beauty of the place, Ruggero also gives in to the allurements of escaping reality, until he hears the voice of someone talking to him, but there is no one around, and Ruggero does not understand who is talking or where the voice comes from. And when that voice is revealed, he understands that it is Prince Astolfo, prisoner in a hollow tree trunk, imprisoned there by his lover Alcina ... It is the same Astolfo who begs Ruggero to free him, to escape together from the deceiving island ...
THE MUSIC
We have felt all the charm of Ariosto's narrative, and this story immediately became a beautiful broad musical theme, with a melody that is articulated on many notes, in an ordinary 4/4 rhythm, but marked on the subdivisions into sixteenths. Those notes are performed by the moog and by the left hand on the piano, as well as by a marimba alternating with a xylophone … During the song, there was a need to change the natural sound of Tony's voice for two reasons: the first of a narrative nature, playing Tony, vocally, two different characters, first Ruggero and then the prisoner Astolfo; the second was an emotional motivation: the sound of Astolfo's voice had to express in some way also his being a prisoner in the hollow trunk of the tree. The solution was simple: using an equalization that altered the natural timbre of Tony's voice in favor of a sound enriched by many more medium frequencies, almost emulating the voice inside a megaphone: everything was focused with greater narrative and emotional accuracy. The suspension of the rhythm marked by the drums, has also helped to underline the exceptional situation within the story, that of an invisible man who speaks to another in a deserted place, obviously creating suspension of time and space, in favor of a general sound that suddenly changes as well as the mood of Ruggero, the main character of the episode, surprised by the unexpected voice of an invisible Astolfo. In these cases there is only one great danger, that of becoming excessively didactic ... but if we continue to give priority to the search for the poetry of sounds, musical writing and therefore both composition and sound arrangement, we can easily avoid this disastrous own goal. It is important to make use of choices in addition to the writing of the parts, I would say especially to choices that are particularly careful and sensitive to the timbres of the instruments that are chosen to orchestrate the story. And here is the use of the soft and evocative Pad, to which we entrusted the harmonies of this track section, together with the suspension of the rhythmic scanning of the drums and the electric bass, replaced only by the sixteenth note sequence entrusted to the moog.
At the same time, the dosage of its frequency filter continuously changes, making its sound always different, passing from darker tones to lighter tones, resonating with the emphasis of the frequency cuts that enhance the harmonic sounds. All this together acts as an emotional underlining of the episode, which appears very incisive, clear, at the same time endowed with narrative clarity and evocative power and therefore emotional. And all this while managing to stay at a safe distance from the abyss of the didactic effect.
The choice not to go back to the song’s first movement, with its eventual reprise, was made because we wanted the figure of Astolfo prisoner inside the tree to stand out as an emotion of breaking the narrative, to underline the visionary strength of Ariosto’s story, who never ceases to search for effects, unusual situations to the limits of the improbable, creating a continuous reference between the most intimate part of human nature, central to the strongest emotions of man. Just like love, and the stories created by the imagination, by the visions of that “beyond” which has always fascinated our minds.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
In the Orlando Furioso, somewhere along the way, Ariosto sows discord and rivalry between the ranks of the Saracens, in their camp, to play the Arab champions against each other (Canto XIV, Octave 78-97)..
Willing to revisit Orlando furioso through the various forms of human love, this episode suggested us to dedicate the song to THE BACKBITING, to the envy that a great love can spark into others, malicious spectators of so much happiness … And if love is attacked by backbiting, it has only one way to defend itself: with the sweetness!
When two people love each other, they often arouse the envy of others and their slander ... And if love is attacked by slander it has only one way to defend itself, it has only one weapon left, the only one that evil can never to have: the sweetness ...
THE MUSIC
This is one of the two instrumental tracks on the album. Inspired by the episode in which Ariosto causes tares and rivalries that wind through the ranks of the Saracens, he tells of the outbreak of quarrels in the Arab camp between the Saracen Champions.
The track is divided into two parts: the first part with a complex and a very chromatic theme that represents backbiting. The chromaticity of the thematic melody, performed by the Moog, recalls the saying and not saying of the slanderer. Furthermore, this same chromatic nature of the leading theme, expresses its apparent elusiveness and also the emotional instability of both the envious and their victims …
The complex elusiveness of the chromatic theme, seemed to us just suitable for representing the slander often hissed in the ears of others, with subtle perfidy; and the second part, consisting of a very sweet “barcarola”, that expresses the self-defense of love, its use of sweetness, with its own lightness of feelings and breath.
First Part
The very pressing segment in octaves, entrusted both to the bass of Capozi and to the left hand of the piano and subsequently also to the organ, together with the relentless drumming of Moresco, support all the energy of the main theme, with sudden flashes of sounds recorded in reverse. which repeatedly whip the general sound. The use of wooden percussion in sixteenths adds further frenzy and tension.
The very vigorous ensemble, wants to express all the warlike energy necessary to tell the episode of the quarrels between the Saracen Champions.
The main theme is performed by Marcheggiani's guitars and Nocenzi's Moog, in unison. Beyond its chromaticity, the nature of the leading theme is almost like a "musical theater", that is, it is almost "dialogic", like a hypothetical dialogue with two or more voices, which avoids the "thematic cantability" because it is not an intimate feeling , ideal, which he wants to evoke, but a dynamic of confrontation and clash between different opinions …
The tidy flow of the song breaks with the change of rhythm, when it passes from 4/4 to 3/4 + 3/4 + 2/4, and the imperious unison of octave electric guitars debuts, and then changes again … We are in the midst of the quarrels… A synthesizer in eighths enters, the castanets go into sixteenths and the drumming stops. A new rhythmic part begins that makes electric guitars, percussion and drums (with snare drum) dialogue with each other: the instruments "challenge" each other by passing rhythmic figures from one to the other. The electric bass and the organ are added in unison, and then all resume the first part of the composition with the timpani that mark the general trend, until the resumption of the unison of the guitars and the piano on which a frantic solo by minimaog starts. It is at this point, in which all the tension seems to implode in an apparent general disorder, that starts the
Second Part
The "self-defense of love". Expressed by the arpeggiated acoustic guitars on which a very sweet synthesizer sings, it is the part that preludes the concluding "barcarola cantabile", with which the entire piece ends in sweetness. In this second final part an important role is played by Capozi's cantabile bass, which chooses cadences of particularly valuable notes for this conclusion.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
This episode is the background to the madness that explodes in Orlando's mind at the moment of his rejection by Angelica. In fact, to go and save the Princess from the savages who are about to kill her, Orlando abandons his fellow soldiers to their fate, while Rodomonte, the champion of the Saracens, was killing them. Orlando, by doing so, betrays all those chivalrous codes of honor that had always been of primary importance to him. And, despite this great proof of love, Angelica will reject Orlando because she is in love with Medoro, a Saracen, a simple, insignificant soldier … It will be too much for Orlando's mind and he will go crazy...
THE EPISODE
Orlando is in his tent, in the Guardians' camp, when he is reached by two messengers: one gives him the news that his fellow soldiers are under attack by the Saracens; everyone is calling on his name to come to their rescue … The other messenger tells him that Princess Angelica has been kidnapped by savages and is about to be killed …
Orlando must choose whether to follow the path of honor and save the other soldiers or rescue Angelica, the woman he loves. Orlando, the first Paladin of the emperor, chooses the path of love and runs to Angelica's aid.
This is why her rejection will be so devastating.
THE MUSIC
The musical beginning of this track is entrusted to the sound of the sampled strings that alone mark the groove (the rhythmic trend) on which the piece will be articulated with the band’s entry. While awaiting the entry of the cantato, they lead the piano, the organ and the guitar, while a polyphonic Synt marks the sixteenth notes with the repeated chords.
The vocal melody uses many repetitions of the same notes, to underline the drama of the situation and to accommodate as many syllables as possible to be entrusted to the narration of the text. The voice then arrives at the leading phrase, almost a unison riff for rock band, with which Paladin Orlando's dilemma is clearly expressed: Choose what you want to be, a Paladin or a man in love !! Do you want to follow honor or listen to your heart?
Musically, one of the most beautiful moments of this episode is Filippo Marcheggiani's electric guitar solo, with a "thematic" personality so strong that it becomes a "written duet" for the guitar itself and for Vittorio's Moog which never expires in sterile virtuosity despite its technical “spectacularity”, because it always remains at the service of the emotion of the narration. After the guitar - moog duet, the second part debuts, with its own marked lyricism, typically at the Banco. The piece thus becomes ready to welcome the most intimate part of the text, the one in which Orlando feels torn between his duty and love … The sound of Marcheggiani's slide guitar, which flies on the arpeggios of the acoustics expresses all the sadness of Orlando's soul:
Musically, the final part entrusts the leading theme to a section of sampled brass, on which the solo entrusted to Vittorio's Hammond organ unfolds.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
The song is inspired by the episode of Angelica's rescue. In The Orlando Furioso, the princess is saved by Ruggero and not by Orlando, as two famous paintings also recall, one by Tiepolo and the other by the French painter Ingres. But we wanted to give strength to the tragic nature of Orlando's rejected love, and the fact that he had also been the Princess's savior made her disappointment and therefore her madness stronger.
THE MUSIC
To tell this circumstance we needed a muscular, dynamic song and this is what we wrote and interpreted, with yet another "written" solo that gives life to a duet, an "obbligato" for electric guitar and synthesizer, once again Filippo and Vittorio.
With the orchestration, Vittorio ideally wanted to pay tribute to Frank Zappa's orchestrations (the use of marimbas and xylophones for example for large thematic unison): but even in this case they are free interpretations, more ideals than content … The initial thematic phrase, performed by the piano, is taken up by the whole band, expressing a “rock” verve that, played only by the piano, had not “expressed” it fully. And then off with the overlapping of polyrhythms entrusted to the rhythmic electric guitar and to Moresco's drumming, in a fast paroxysmal rhythmic crescendo that arrives at a frenetic cadence performed in thirty-second by the piano, then by the organ and the marimbas, counterpointed by the brake of Brass samples: it is the struggle between the savior and the savages that becomes music. Even the technological limits of a monophonic synthesizer can become a "timbral gimmick": playing "tremolo" octaves enhances the "unhooking" of the monophonic sound, creating a "new" timbre that, in unison with the marimbas, brings the leading theme to life .
On the very rhythmic general trend, the very fast "obbligato" duet of Marcheggiani and Nocenzi starts again, unfolding on the exasperatedly chromatic phrasing of guitar and synthesizer, almost an electric and electronic "Flight of the Bumblebee", which crashes into a "rewinding of a magnetic tape", and the whole rhythmic flow is interrupted to relaunch the reprise of the main theme performed in unison by the musicians of the band that brings us in another rhythmic vision (3/4 + 3/4 + 4/4) on which electric guitars are practiced in an ostinato. It is the prelude to the last reprise of the main theme that closes the track.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
Angelica, perfectly understands that Orlando's love is sincere, but she simply cannot accept it because she will not be able to match it; despite being saved by the Paladin, she refuses his love, but not in an ungrateful way, she does it with delicacy, almost being sorry! It is not her fault if she love someone else, her heart now belongs to Medoro. In this passage there is all the regret of those who understand that love happens, as something unexpected and uncontrollable. For Angelica, this event that cannot be controlled is precisely the encounter with Medoro (Canto XII, Octave 65/66).
The young Arab, during an expedition outside the Saracen camp to recover the body of one of their commander, is wounded and left in the woods because he is believed dead. In that same wood Angelica is fleeing, finding him and lovingly caring for him, with a spirit initially only charitable, but which then, in front of the beauty of the young Saracen's face, progressively becomes love (Canto XIX, Octave 33 and 38).
The narration of our lyrics is the honest answer that Angelica gives to Orlando, explaining why she will not be able to love him. She reminds him that you cannot decide to love someone, love happens suddenly and like the wind it carries you away.
It seemed right that Orlando should receive an explanation for the rejection of such a painful declaration of love. It wasn't enough to say to him: - I love another man -. The narrative had to give space and importance to this refusal both for the tragic things that will ensue, and because the figures of Orlando and Angelica required it.
THE MUSIC
It is the first time that a vocal piece has been entrusted to a female voice on a Banco’s record. But Angelica just could not be interpreted by the tenor voice of the great Tony.
The theme is very lyrical. Verse and chorus permeate each other with extreme naturalness. The secret of writing this song, lies in avoiding the most obvious notes dictated by harmonies. Do not use in every way possible the harmonic triad, tonic third and fifth. The chorus, that is the segment to which the most singable part is normally entrusted, starts from a ninth as the initial note, then a minor fifth and then again a ninth … yet everything flows limpidly without ever indulging in conceptualisms that would have killed the main feeling that was to express the graceful purity of a loving heart.
And he needed a FEMALE VOICE, because we wanted to underline with a very evident discontinuity the importance of Angelica's refusal, which will cause Orlando's madness! Other characters, in other Banco’s albums, were all sung by the same voice, but never the character of a woman. Furthermore, Angelica remains in the common imagination the "co-starring" of the whole story together with Orlando, she was not just any character among the many described in the poem. In our opinion, it was entitled to a special emphasis and so, then, changing vocal timbre became an important sign of discontinuity. In addition, the sound of VIOLA's voice, so ethereal, interior, was well suited to the Angelica character we had in mind: a woman aware of her uniqueness and importance as a “person". It was therefore all very “natural”, as if everything had already been written and decided in other places in the world !!!
Like the fact that, to make him declare his love to Angelica, a Tango was written for Orlando, and to make Angelica express the reason for her refusal, it happened to write a slow, romantic and fascinating Waltz.
With the same naturalness it happened to ask Viola Nocenzi to be our Angelica.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
Orlando, completely mad after Angelica's refusal, is destroyed by grief, he attacks his comrades in arms instead of the Saracen enemies ... He tooks a horse by the tail and spun it in the air! In short, he is morally and psychologically destroyed by the rejection of the woman he loves so much, he is unrecognizable. In a moment of total despair he lets himself fall to the ground at the side of the road, and so his dearest friend Astolfo finds him, who recognizes his dear Orlando in that pile of rags at the side of the road!!! Desperate for the discovery, he takes him in his arms: at that moment a large full moon rises in the sky, and Astolfo realizes as if by a miracle, that he must risk his own life to go up there, till the Moon, to find Orlando’s lost sense and bring it back to Earth. So he will heal his friend and he will save him from death!
And here on the Hippogriff, ASTOLFO LEAVES FOR THE MOON.
THE MUSIC
The song is written like a blues, although harmonically it is totally different, due to the basses that marks quite different harmonies from the typical succession of I, IV, I IV, V, IV, I. The music tells all the drama of its narration, resorting to an unusual harmonic sequence due to its chromatic nature, while having recourse in its rhythmic cadence to a 12/8 triplet marked by the conductor piano, supported by the work of the electric guitars that, with an arpeggio, they insert their own liquid sounds into the triplets of the piano very naturally. On top of everything, as well as the melody sung by Tony, there is the incredible solo of the tenor sax made by Carlo Micheli, a very welcome guest in this song.
Micheli’s solo is really great, performed only once and in a single recording, improvising and dialoguing with his own gaze with Vittorio: a moment of total creative and expressive symbiosis which is documented by this recording, it seems to be written note by note despite the jazz improvisation of the sax, full of impossible super highs, fits very naturally into a dialogue with the singer’s voice, as if it had been written note by note around the vocal melody...
About halfway through the sax solo is added the solo of Vittorio’s minimaog, which is replaced in the dialogue with the sax voice. Vittorio’s synthesizer revolves around the sax solo often using musical imitation, i.e. repeating short fragments of sax themes, as a trend of "classical imitation”.The intention was to give voice to the TWO SOULS OF THE TWO FRIENDS, one desperate to see his fraternal friend almost dying, completely unrecognizable, and the other, Orlando, desperate to give such an atrocious spectacle of himself to Astolfo, his best friend ever!
The dissonances and the harshness of this three-way dialogue create a heartbreaking, desperate listening, which points precisely to the most intimate part of the listener's emotions ...
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
At the beginning of Canto XXXV (Octave I), Ariosto wonders who would do for him what Astolfo is doing for Orlando, that is capable of reaching the Moon to save him by bringing back his sense … This is the utmost love of a fraternal friend who would do anything for you! Astolfo, riding the Hippogriff, prepares for his impossible mission: to recover Orlando's sense on the moon. In the “Furioso", actually, Astolfo goes to the Moon using Elia's chariot, the chariot of the sun, but we wanted to imagine him on the Hippogriff as a tribute to the verses of "In volo", the first song of Banco's "Salvadanaio" from 1972.
Once he has ascended into space and reached the highest peaks of the atmosphere, Astolfo looks around and is amazed by the beauty of the panorama of the Cosmos. Among the things that strike him, he notices a "waterfall of light", which turns out to be a huge tunnel of energy from which he is suddenly sucked. Having passed through the cascade of light, Astolfo lands on the Moon and finds himself, in the absence of an atmosphere, floating without gravity between the lunar furrows, rolling around seeing the whole world and reality overturned. He, then, finally arrives in the “VALLE DEI SENNI” (The Wisdom Valley) (Canto XXXIV, Octave 71/92), a lunar space full of ampoules containing the desires, the illusions and the virtues of man. Ariosto brilliantly transforms The Moon, from a romantic symbol of human love, into a huge landfill, where the noblest visions of the human soul have ended up.
Once he has found the ampoule containing Orlando's sense, Astolfo continues his exploration when, suddenly, he sees three gloomy figures standing out silently and austere: THE THREE PARCAE that hold the threads of the destiny of men, they question him about why he is there (Canto XXXV, Octaves 89/92).
IT IS AN EXISTENTIAL JOURNEY, REPRESENTS THE COURAGE TO REACH THE IMPOSSIBLE.
“(Time) You are incomprehensible, violent and dark, Time that rolls away, in a place I cannot reach; don’t rip my fingers off, that are hanging by a thread, I just want to figure out where you are taking us and why…” it is not a simple answer or request but it represents the journey of life that Astolfo (and all of us) undertake, to face his fears and the passing time. After passing the Parcae, Astolfo is ready with the Hippogriff to go back to bring the cruet of judgment to his friend Orlando.
THE MUSIC
The suite is divided into THREE MOVEMENTS:
I) THE FLIGHT TO THE MOON, in turn divided into:
a) The Flight to the Moon
b) The Panorama of the cosmos
c) Waterfall of light;
II) THE MOON LANDING, in turn divided into:
d) Moon landing,
e) The Wisdom Valley
f) Parcae and Time;
III) THE RETURN TO EARTH.
On the journey to the Moon, the beating of the Hippogriff's wings is evoked, almost in an onomatopoeic way, through a repeated arpeggio of a hexagonal chord. In the PANORAMA OF THE COSMOS (Canto XXXV, Octaves 70/71) the opening in Eb major is tonally supported by a space synth and a guitar that express Astolfo's pause in the void of space as he looks around in amazement and admires the Earth from above.
Entering the waterfall of light, the scenery changes: the telluric rhythm of the bass and drums support the ostinato of guitars, piano and synths that make us "see" the explosions of energy inside the tunnel.
Beyond the waterfall of light we arrive at the moon landing, lulled by an arpeggio in Bb major / B diminished and by a guitar sound of silver and then arrive at WISDOM VALLEY (Canto XXXV, Octave 72/83) where a guitar with tremulus describes the surreal atmosphere of the moon.
In the PARCAE AND TIME, we are guided by the ticking of the cosmic clock, up to the opening entrusted to the piano, which represents Astolfo's clear awareness of the progress of time.
Suddenly you hear the SOUND OF A CASSETTE TAPE THAT REWINDS VIOLENTLY and brings to the listener the leading theme of “In Volo", to represent the conceptual line of continuity between “Salvadanaio” (with its idea of Hippogriff at the time) and “Orlando Furioso” and then resume the initial musical theme. The rewinding tape also rewinds the past 50 years with it.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
Unexpected love is what Medoro, an ordinary Saracen soldier with no history, suddenly finds himself living when Angelica, the beautiful princess of Cataio, the one all champions are in love with, finds him dying in the woods. This is how Angelica finds him (Canto XXII, Octave 65/66) and not only she cures and dedicates herself to him, but, in doing so, she falls in love with him. Medoro, humble foot soldier, lives all this with the amazement with which one witnesses miracles, since he finds himself the object of love for the most beautiful woman in the world !! (Canto XIX, Octaves 33-38) "How did you happen to be here?!?”
"I am barren land, when the sky is on fire!" this is how Medoro defines himself, to whose eyes Angelica appears as the "Rain of March, ship leaving, this is you!!!”. “And stacked behind all my years, they make sense now that you're here… !!” "Just a moment like that’s enough for me ...!" Medoro's humble exclamation at the end of the song expresses his simple and amazed wonder ...
THE MUSIC
The notes of the piano on which the vocal singing develops are like a transparent embroidery on which the voice melody rests with extreme naturalness. Both the words and the harmonies with the melody, communicate the sensation of amazement, almost an unexpected happiness.
This is the real state of mind of Medoro who "widens his eyes" in front of the miracle of love of the beautiful Angelica, who looks at him unequivocally.
Both the composition and the arrangement want to concretize this amazement of Medoro in the most direct and simple way possible using, in this case, rather than special effects, "naturalness" as the main expressive key to paint such an intimate, particular moment… "Not even the stars shine like this!” “What a surprise you are for me! How did it happen that you are here?!? “.
The journey of love, which appears as a sublime vision in Medoro, is evoked by the very natural pace of both the rhythm and the luminous harmonies of the piece, entrusted to the cadences of the piano and guitars. Speaking of guitar sounds, it seems right to underline Marcheggiani's taste that is never predictable in choosing the timbres for his instrument, with which to play the narrations of each song. In this romantic ballade made of "intimacy", Filippo relies on the sound of an Ebow to help create the sweetness of the overall sound of the song, with his guitar he plays phrases dialoguing with the melody of the voice, then moving on to a very elegant sound with which he takes the lead melody left by D'Alessio's voice.
THE STORYTELLING OF THE SONG
This passage expresses that feeling that overwhelms our existence when we meet the love of our life, that "love forever”.
At the end of his Poem, Ariosto adds another 5 concluding cantos to tell the story of the meeting between Ruggero and Bradamante, because, according to him, the Este dynasty would descend from this meeting.
We were not particularly inspired by Ariosto's encomiastic / dynastic purpose, so we thought of trying to change the Ariosto’s ending by telling that Atlas opposes the meeting between Bradamante and Ruggero due to the fate of the latter which foresaw Ruggero’s death at the moment of the meeting with the woman of his life. For Atlas, love, after all, can only produce pain, because like all human things, sooner or later it ends and, at the moment of love’s end, the pain will be tremendous. And so our story imagines Atlante showing everyone what would have happened if Bradamante and Ruggero had met. We imagined Ruggero's funeral pyre, and Bradamante, who is in despair crushed by pain, that sings his last goodbye to Ruggero …
As with all the songs of "Orlando: The Shapes Of Love", if the words of the lyrics are subtracted from the episode of the concept album to which they are linked, they do not lose their strength and meaning, they can be made their own by every listener as if they concerned him directly, because despite everything, we all continue to focus on our love.
THE MUSIC
Ruggero and Bradamante are Ariosto's Giulietta and Romeo, and they inspired us a song full of passion, pain, in which the unhappy love of the two protagonists is expressed by a melody that digs into your heart.
The long instrumental introduction is entrusted to the chords of the keyboards that play with voicing, with the turning of the chords themselves, to weave a kind of countermelody under the one played by the electric guitar, which will resume immediately after the lead voice. Another musical key, which prepares the soul in an adequate way to finally welcome the lead voice, are the counter-melodies that the second guitar makes to the solo melody of the first guitar. And when the voice debuts with the singing of the leading theme, the listener's heart is thus ready, tuned to the shipwreck of the protagonist of the lyrics: "Like thorn tight against the volcano’s side”. And then, perhaps, the most poignant verses of Latin poetry entrusted to Catullus when he writes to his Lesbia: “ and I will give you a thousand kisses under the sky, give me a thousand kisses and then a hundred more once our brief light has set, there is one eternal night to be slept. Give me other kisses and then a hundred more”...
The extreme freedom of inspiration of this album is also evidenced by this free quotation of poetic, existential and artistic references in general. The ballade ends with another "obbligato" solo for guitar and synthesizer, Filippo and Vittorio sign the conclusion of the song and the album itself with a lyrical and poignant solo. The duet is born from an improvisation of the guitar alone which then, "transcribed", becomes an obbligato duet in which the synthesizer is sometimes added, harmonizing its part on the notes of the guitar, alternating the harmonized parts with those in unison.
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