There is one album that caught my attention as soon as it came out.
With its physical appearance, a high-art digipack, the high aesthetic tangibility of a disappearing media format. The artwork is so beautiful that I liked the music on it before I even opened it.
And then by its appearance at my place, because it came from a dear friend in Portugal. It travelled 3016 km before it arrived in the mailbox.
As well informed as I am about Early Music, this composer's name is now completely unknown to me. The Internet doesn't help either; the Portuguese origin is correct, because it's the name of a province in the other hemisphere, Brazil, but that's about it.
But there is one Portuguese composer who has recently emerged from oblivion: José Ferreira Cordovil,
It's about Bach contemporary, but from much further West.
Only scattered references are known about his life.
He graduated as a doctor from the University of Coimbra in 1707, and lived and practised medicine in the small town of Castelo de Vide.
The Evangelist Luke was also a doctor.
His other self as a composer is revealed by the extensive correspondence that has survived, in which the most important Portuguese composers of the time engaged in serious discussions on various musicological topics. Cordovil was not a trained musician, he was a layman ('practical', as he was called), but it is clear from this that he was respected nonetheless, and his words carried considerable weight in these discussions. He was, for example the first to introduce the seventh syllable as a common syllable in the
solfège system at that time/there, breaking away from the ancient system of the divine Hexachord.
On the other hand, more interesting for us now, are his surviving works. The transcriptions of which have been scattered or included in various codices; they have been found at the University of Coimbra, the National Library of Portugal and in the music libraries of the Gulbenkian Foundation.
This disc is made of them.
*
And what happens?
Well, quite simply, it enchants.
Subtlety, intimacy, closeness. A strange desire to listen.
A fascinating musical empire unfolds.
There is a piece as melodious as that of the best Alfabeto composers in Italy,
And some take you in a more meditative direction.
How is this possible?
The answer is not simple.
An indirect approach and analogical thinking can provide an attempted answer.
So, listening, it's totally like a slow walk; it guides us around, showing the harmonies from all sides. A 3D image slowly unfolds in our consciousness, with different lighting, from all kinds of angles.
A series of point of view shifts.
This is always very important.
Point of view.
The Perspective.
Do we still remember the Adventures Of Tom Sawyer?
[Tom is in punishment, he has to whitewash a fence; his friend approaches, playing steamboat]
Take a turn round that stump with the
bight of it ! Stand by that stage, now let her go ! Done with the engines, sir ! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stit! s'A't/ sh't!" (trying the gauge-cocks.)
Tom went on whitewashing paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and then said :
"
Hi-jy// You re up a stump, ain't you ! "
No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist; then he
gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben
ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck
to his work.
Ben said:
" Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey ? "
Tom wheeled suddenly and said:
" Why it's you Ben ! I warn't noticing."
"Say I'm going in a swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd druther work wouldn't you? Course you would ! "
Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:
" What do you call work ? "
" Why ain't that work ? "
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and
answered carelessly:
"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it aint. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer."
"Oh come, now, you don't mean to
let on that you like it ?
" The brusji continued to move."
"Like it? Well I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day ? "
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom
swept his brush daintily back and
forth stepped back to note the effect added a touch here and there criticised the effect again. Ben watching
every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed.
Presently he said:
"Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little."
Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:
"No no I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful
particular about this fence right here on the street, you know but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about
this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a
thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done.
"No is that so? Oh come, now lemme just try. Only just a little I'd let you, if you was me, Tom."
[Then he made all her friends pass by to whitewash a fence, taking their treasures in return.]
*
Being able to change your perspective. This is great science. Not as much of course, turned 180 degrees like Tom Sawyer. Smaller ones, and several times in a row. And no, I don't mean scholastic-flavored rather-analyses, which e.g. they would try to guide you through the differences in tone, - they would only try because we would definitely get bored halfway through, and the whole thing would drown in sterile indifference -, it's not like, e.g. let's look at the whole thing from the point of view of the musical structures of the time, or let's say the connection to the Iberian folk melodies.
Not. Something much more complicated is going on.
It's not quite traceable.
In variation forms, the change in viewing angles is very small; so much so that, superficially, approx. it looks the same. However, our consciousness, strangely enough, reacts to ever-diminishing differences with ever-increasing sensitivity. Sometimes we get our heads around a difference of just a little bit more than when a new form suddenly starts. These tiny deviations, like when secret doors open on relatively hard, stable musical/melody surfaces, show the way to somewhere inside.
Mostly up.
Actually, this music is like a slow walk while we think about Beauty.
Cordovil, Tiago, and now me too. There is no analysis, and there is no associative pattern recall, which would otherwise be our basic cognitive functioning. These are turned off. The situation is very similar when we taste a sip of fine wine. Our [Hungarian] language is very nice. Because this is the 'ízlelgetés', [found in the original Hungarian text] it means that we perform many small 'taste manoeuvres' and try not to focus on which other vintage it resembles, but instead look for the real, independent, real, ab ovo taste.
*
I had a very, very good math teacher; maybe that's why I still love math to this day. I remember well when he once said that such a situation may arise in mathematics, and in life too where we are faced with an alarmingly complicated task that at first seems insoluble to us. Because it is simply too difficult or too complicated.
In such cases, we should try to forget the solutions of other similar tasks, the formulas, the toolboxes, and even the categories. Let's not start untangling the complexity right away. Let's look at it from a little further away, try to taste it, try something, e.g. to find beauty or anything in it. Let's empty ourselves a little and not even think about the task, but just see it as a formation. It's like we're just looking around. And meanwhile we secretly observe what flashes, what images, what even crumbs of ideas floating on the edge of impossibility, or rather intuitions appear.
Because the solution often comes from there.
That's exactly what's happening here.
Later, after many years, in medieval Christian mysticism, I encountered this approach again with Meister Ekhart. The one who said with a crystal clear, almost naive logic, around 1300, that when we succeed in emptying our consciousness, then the Divine will inevitably flow in, because that is the basic existence of the world, that is the only true reality.
Obviously, if we listen it like the Art Of The Fugue, we won't get very far. If we listen to it 'just like that', then invisible horizons can open up, which is far above structural acrobatics.
Another very important factor plays an essential role here. What certainly connects Cordovil, Tiago, and today's listeners: this is sound beauty. It is playing so beautiful that the sound aesthetics itself is impressive. They had the instrument in their hands that sounded/sounds so beautifully, I was given the hi-fi system that can transmit it so well.
Yes, we also needed the brilliant sound engineer; I can hear the trace of his hand, which taste world is already well known from the Noa-Noa records.
*
Tiago Matias.
The performance is quite extraordinary.
Why? Few people probably really understand this.
That relatively simple musical structures and variation forms, together, are thus an extremely swampy area. Perhaps the most difficult task for a performer. Because he can't hide behind the protective shield of structural complications and near-unplayability, which, after successfully overcoming them, are a guaranteed success for the audience used to it.
Something different is needed here, something more is needed; something that saves variation forms from being boring, and that can enchant even if only a single, simple chord is strummed. Does this mean that playing 4 or 5 strings even once, at a time, would require such serious skill?
I'm afraid so.
The ancients knew exactly this, it was that inexplicable, famous-incomprehensible 'grâce'. What cannot be learned cannot be taught. You either have it or you don't. It was considered a gift from above. Which then very simply decides whether it is good to listen or not.
Muse kiss?
It can be.
I hear all nine of them left the mark of their lips there.
Yes, here on this disc.
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Thank you for the images: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14
