-──────────────── ▄██▄ ────────
▀█████▄
-── ███ ███ ─ ▄██▄ ▀█████▄ ────
▐███ ███▌ ▀██▀ ▄██████▄
-─ ████ ████ ▄▄▄ ▄██████████▄
▐█████████▌ ███▌▐████▀ ▀████▀
███████████ ████ ██▀ ─── ▀▀
▐█████ █████▌▐███ ▀
██████ ██████ ▀██ ──────────
███████ ███████▄ █ -.2ooo.-
─────── ▄▄▄ ────────────────
"HiGH ▀ iNTELLiGeNCE tRoLLS"
_______________________________________________________________________
a r t i s t : Jozef Van Wissem
t i t l e : Retrograde Renaissance Lute
d a t e : 2000
l a b e l : Persephone 002
g e n r e : Instrumental
r l s. d a t e : Oct-2004
t r a c k s : 06
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 48,8 MB
_______________________________________________________________________
Some of the most basic lessons in any composition class are:
First, a composer needs more than one idea to base a piece on,
and, second, if more pages in the same mood are required,
simply turn the music that has already been written upside
down. The technique works particularly well with the
mathematically precise music of composers from Bach's era, so
why not Renaissance lute music? This Dutch performer, who plays
an instrument called a ten-course Renaissance lute, may seem to
have an obsession with backwards music, as he followed up this
recording with another disc in which the compositions were
partially based on palindromes. It all may seem a trifle
precious and arty, yet the concept of backwards and forwards
are important in music as well as traffic flow, cropping up in
many different genres. The '60s rock generation spent hours
trying to play Beatles records backwards to find out what they
really meant, while the 2002 autobiography of jazz pianist
Oscar Peterson includes an account of just what he did to
vanquish another hotshot keyboard man in a cutting contest:
Peterson took one of the fellow's pet tricky phrases and played
it backwards. Yet one of the lessons of the aforementioned
composition class technique is that the reverse gear does not
create anything particularly new within the music in terms of
content or movement. Thus, while the music here is credited to
Van Wissem, it very much sounds like something written
centuries before his time. Subtitling the album as a
"deconstruction" might also not provide the right impression,
as this phrase usually is used in conjunction with a much more
radical assault on a musical format. These new pieces play as
delicately, evenly and freshly as Renaissance lute music does
when moving in the proper direction, which is a lot more than
can be said for the average American car in reverse gear. Van
Wissem improvised the rhythmic movement within the pieces he
chose to subject to his theory of retrograde motion. This may
have been neither necessary nor conceptually sound, but adheres
to a law that perhaps is not stressed enough in composition
class: that the composer has the right to do whatever they want
to. Here's hoping Van Wissem keeps doing just that, as his
contemporary take on the lute makes for relaxing as well as
refreshing music, right up the alley for the fan of all
acoustic string music, not just classical.
Jozef Van Wissem - lute
_______________________________________________________________________
01-Prelude [05:47]
02-Fantasie-Die Wandervogel [04:07]
03-Fantasie-The Golden Dawn [04:41]
04-Pavan-The Secret Doctrine [07:12]
05-Interlude [01:33]
06-Fantasie-Ultima Thule [04:42]
-------
28:02 min
_______________________________________________________________________