Visions du Diable - Johanna Rose

 

We live in a rising AI world. 
Our habits, the pages we visit, our writings and articles, our tastes, arguments, and opinions are all parts of the almost-infinite matrix. That's how it happened that YouTube, where so-called 'self-learning systems' roam, brought this video into my horizon, which I hadn't known until now.

Which, I must honestly admit, completely amazed me. Because it has something in it that deeply interests me. Mostly the seriousness, the immense musical concentration, and that interesting sound 'friction' that will be discussed later. Johanna Rose frequently plays bourdon here, but it’s something very special, because she is exactly the one who 'rubs' the most. Following the video, one could write pages about the metaphysics of male-female relationships too – maybe another time. So, in connection with this, I found this CD, which I knew would really interest me, and which also arrived in the past few days.

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Visions du Diable.

Two composers, Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray, the two greatest viola da gamba masters, the two biggest rivals at the Sun King's court. We've talked about both of them, we've mentioned that Marais is 'angelic', Forqueray 'diabolical', and now on one album, the two composers, the two kinds of music, the contrast is bound to be huge, an interesting idea—but we've seen this before, and moreover, the average level of viola da gamba performances is delightfully high, you can find plenty of really good albums.

Listening to the album, though, we realize that this is something completely different from the rest. The story is much more complicated. Much, much more. The threads you can pick up on go really far, and we can drift very far away from our easily expressible average world.

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The first thing that stands out is the sound. The viola da gamba is a particularly performer-sensitive instrument, and I would even go so far as to say it’s music-sensitive too. The 'Voix Humaines' phenomenon, which was observed on the gamba long ago, is also backed up by modern spectrum analyses: the frequency distribution almost exactly matches the bell curve of the average male speaking voice.

For someone who listens to a lot of this, it's kinda cliché. But here you can hear something like the sound isn't 'speech-like', it actually 'speaks'. J. R. with some secret trick sometimes almost 'coaxes' the instrument to whisper, the live tone is so strong that when you listen on a good system, it makes you look up; and even though I've heard gambas live a thousand times, it's only now that I realize what they really meant on this Voix Humaines.

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Then, this 'friction'. It's called friction because out of our vocabulary of over roughly 100,000 words, this is the only one that comes to mind that somewhat conveys the feeling.

That which lies far beyond the field of linguistic meaning. That something rubs gently against our more or less stable sense of harmony. That we're a bit halfway toward going off-key, but at least the signpost is up. Maybe it's something with the tuning, I don't know.

That J. R. emphasizes those intervals and sequences that aim exactly for this slightly weird feeling. It's a bit similar to what the early keyboard players did back in the times before the desert of equal temperament, when they deliberately approached/touched the forbidden areas marked by the Pythagorean comma.

The strange thing is that the more we listen to the record, the more it feels like this is the 'pure' one, and this is the real thing, this is Harmony itself. You can hear it a bit in Marais' works too, but then in Forqueray's pieces it's really clear.

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Then, the music itself. How this template, this angelic / devilish cliché classification falls apart. Because you can actually hear that Marais, the embodiment of precision and the greatest expression of delicacy and a model of excellence, could indeed be 'angelic.' Forqueray, on the other hand, was genuinely difficult by nature, he could never get along with his son, he beat his wife, allegedly often talked back to the king, and there were times when only his influential friends saved him from execution. Forqueray was the one who forbade the printing and publication of his works; his musical expression is strongly improvisational and template-breaking – but the music itself, the kind we can listen to now, is something entirely different from what you would piece together analogically from these somewhat messy biographical fragments.

Because strangely enough, it seems truer and more human. And more beautiful, fuller, and harmonious. Especially in this performance. Because Forqueray is specifically sensitive to performers. It can be a bit hard for those with a more sensitive disposition to like him. Because we are full of recordings that overemphasize eccentricity. J. R. didn’t get on that tempting merry-go-round that, for example, sticks the 'we went crazy' label on the end of the relatively well-known 'Jupiter,' with empty and meaningless virtuosity. No. She stays within variations, in the Renaissance ostinato magic, even when things get especially complicated.

It seems that the somewhat 'raw' approach is just shedding the manners, avoiding affectation, and emphasizing tactful honesty. Could the connection even be closer to the Renaissance ideal of Beauty, like this, without any sugar-coating?

We can no longer immerse ourselves in the court of Louis XIV, but even from afar, it's clear that Forqueray, whatever his nature was, was very, very respected, and his music was highly valued.

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I really love in this performance that you can envision how J. R. specifically and particularly likes something, and she can direct my attention to it. I don't know how, maybe it slows down a tiny bit 'unjustifiably' there, or maybe she just handles the bow differently.

Or maybe she's just breathing differently, who knows, really, I'm not even sure if she could give any sort of explanation for this. It's like she likes exactly the same parts as myself.

Or maybe it's just that the resonance is strong, a kind of personal enchantment, that's all. But I constantly feel like she lets things breathe a bit more.

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You can't just pass by without mentioning the harpsichord accompaniment.
Javier Nunez.

 
They are in a kind of harmony that's rare. And some gorgeous instrument sounds, multiplying each other's beauty.

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By the way, the whole approach to it, this whole attitude somehow reminds me of Psyché, the 'Klavier Studium'.

Brokat ablak-kárpit dupla szárnya
Nap-fényt enged a setét Salonba,
Ferde tsóva, át-látszó világos,
Benne kóválognak porszemetskék.
A homályos hátsó falon ráma
Őrzi eggy Rákóczi Déd-anyámat,
Ott setétűl a Klavier alatta,
Mint nagy medve,
Pleyel instrumentom,
S áll mellette a Mester Lavotta.
Nagy szag árad zsíros tsizmájárúl,
Széles arczát bibirtsesre itta,
Rekkent vatskos hangon ő vezérel.
Elsőként Christinka űl ijetten
A setétlő medve fog-sorához,
 Melly naponta kis leányt ebédel.
Tejszín bőre, kássa szőkesége
 Versent villog a gyér nap-sugárral,
 Eggy könyörgés kövérkés alakja,
 Szurkol, fél az óriás tehénke.
 Lassan el-kezd hang sort pettyegetni,
 Ám a Mester rőt vastag kezével
 Ujjatskáit másként igazíttya:
- La-sol la-sol, Christina Comtesska,
 Ez meg itten fa-re-mi, nem érti? -
 Köny kút nyillik, tseppel, majd özönnel,
 Gyász futás a harczbúl.

Én jövök most,
És a do-re-mi-hez én sem értek.
Mit tehessek? Praeventiv haraggal
A mord medve fog-sorába vágok:
Bestye reszkess, itt a hős oroszlán!
Majd le nem rogy, még a fája is nyög,
A hogy móldva tánczot kalapálok,
Maior s minor mind eggy-másba frettsen.
Fejet tsóvál jó Lavotta Mester:

- A kis-asszony a fekete ördög,
A kis-asszonyt én meg nem taníttom.

Tállya, 1812.

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Freedom.  

There’s this strange sense of freedom running through the whole album. It’s not exactly tied to the music itself, but more like something inside you says, 'yes, this is it,' and 'yes, exactly like this.'

So yeah, I really like it.

I’ve been listening to nothing but this album for days.

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Thank you for the images.
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