Saturday, February 12, 2005

"Path to the Invisible" by Pilgrimage 9 Songs of Ecstasy

If you're wondering why I would have a CD with the word "ecstasy" in the title, I have to admit that I ordered the wrong CD from Barnes and Nobles. Instead of getting Mozart's Piano Concerto in A, I ended up getting 9 song of ecstasy, a combination of hip hop and gregorian chant. This is definitely an interesting combination to say the least. I think we should seriously consider studying this kind of gregorian chant in Music History! While listening to this piece, one feels as though they are floating through the solar system drifting between past and present and reality and fiction. The piece begins with a pulsing tonic that gives the feeling of a helicoter taking off. Then there are bells that repeat a do re pattern. A sequence of wind eventually enters. Then, as one imagines deranged voices are going to enter, the most beautiful, pure sounds of latin chant begin. This female voice goes through a symmetrical contrasting period before the instrumental music enters again, this time adding percussion. The second time the voice enters, she sings a double contrasting period. It's actually very challenging to analyze form since free rhythm and mode forms are used and I haven't studied these enough to understand them. All of the periods or phrase groups seem to end on authentic cadences. The last section of the piece sounds like an Egyptian snake call. Very exciting.

1 comment:

Mily said...

My husband bought me my second copy of this CD just this month after somehow losing the one I had purchased back in the late 90's. I love it that much. The point I would like to make, though is that the vocals are not Gregorian Chant. I do not remember my first copy supplying the song information (besides title) that this copy seems to have, such as the St. Martial MS, Seven Cantigas de Amigos, Codex de Las Huelgas, etc. I looked most of them up online, and lo, and behold, they all date back to the late medieval period, from all over Europe. The lyrics themselves seem to be sung in several different languages: a little English, some very old Portugese/Galatian. a lot of Latin. But I am still trying to find a source that will give me the lyrics and translations! Anybody out there know where I can find them?