Coro Musicanova - Ombre di luce (2019)

In suggesting a listening key for the pieces that make up this collection, let us consider the way in which the language of music is used to evoke the universal opposites of darkness and light. The contrasts between the planes and the forts, between consonant and dissonant harmony, make up fragments that reflect the disturbances and the wonder of existence.

A collection of pieces composed by authors far from each other in history and style, but close in the investigation of the beauty that the choir tries to fix in sound and in interpretation. The listener enters a journey of sensations and emotions, minute by minute, from the experience of darkness that becomes the premise of the discovery of light. We suffer, we get passionate, we despair, letting ourselves be overwhelmed at the end by music.

The artistic and musical path is dynamic, rich in nuances, never quiet. Starting from the darkness of the Perpetual Lux by Fabrizio Barchi and the Requiem aeternam by John Rutter, we find ourselves in a deep tunnel of pain where despair and hope alternate in listening to the strong and expressive contrapuntal dissonances of Antonio Lotti's Crucifixus, of the Hear my prayer by Henry Purcell, of Christus factus est by Michael Haydn, or in the daring, irreverent and futuristic harmonies of Gesualdo da Venosa in his Tristis est.

Trudging through the darkness, the cry of pain with which Jesus from the cross invokes the Father in Eli, Eli of Bárdos, comes to us with tears, but with his face turned to the comfort of perpetual light we turn to God invoking his mercy in the Kyrie of Barchi. Return Rutter; let us dwell on the beginning entrusted to the cello and its ineluctable descriptive solitude of Out of the deep: music transforms pain into hope.

The night becomes a radiant light: Christmas Eve is what Mendelssohn, with his stylistic clarity, describes in his Weinachten. Intense, complex and intimate light of Whitacre's Lux aurumque, contrasting with the calm and serene melody of Rutter's The Lord is my shepherd.

A dense and introverted emotion accompanies Grieg's Hvad est du dog skjøn, first of his 4 psalms op. 74; the play of contrasts becomes evident also in this case when listening to the elegant and radiant Pater noster, a double choir composition by Jacobus Gallus. This journey begun in doubt and in the disturbance of the human soul ends with the certainty of light embodied in the melodic fluidity and in the luminous accordions of the motet Surge illuminare by Palestrina.

Maybe it's not just musical beauty, but reflection, harmony. The shadows become quiet and the listener lets himself be lulled into the idea of ​​relying on this game of opposing elements yet necessary for each other to make sense, coming to understand their deep meaning and starting a personal but shared search for depth, of intensity, of wonder, of truth.

Where lights and shadows are integrated, they fade and delineate reality.
Where we discover ourselves and renew our gaze on the things of the world.