A brand new album reboots historic music : NPR

Barbara Hannigan is fearless within the face of latest music. The Canadian soprano has sung the world premiere of over 100 new works, and final yr launched a recording of songs by the up to date American composer John Zorn that even she claimed (at first) had been unsingable. So it’s one thing of a shock that Hannigan’s new album is impressed by very previous music.

Alongside along with her musical companions — veteran pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque and electronics wiz and composer David Chalmin — Hannigan has fallen below the spell of the Twelfth century German abbess Hildegard von Bingen. The consequence, Electrical Fields, is an album that unfolds like a fever dream, as in the event you’ve fallen asleep in a time machine.

Hildegard was a visionary poet, scientist, diplomat and composer. Her music, which continues to draw followers, is over 900 years previous, however Hannigan and firm view it by way of a singular twenty first century lens. You’ll be able to hear the strategy as quickly because the album opens. “O virga mediatrix” (O department and mediator) is a mesmerizing, melismatic curtain raiser, with Hannigan’s voice drenched in reverb, backed by an artificial organ and delicate, droning electronics due to Chalmin’s evocative association.

Hildegard could share the album with different ladies composers of way back, however she looms massive — even over the newly composed items. There are two contemporary works by The Nationwide‘s Bryce Dessner wherein the Labèque sisters provide beautiful thickets of rippling, virtually minimalist sound. However Dessner’s textual content for “O orzchis Ecclesia” (O measureless Church) and “O nobilissima viriditas” (O most noble greenness) is crafted from the key language Hildegard invented for her fellow nuns.

These musicians dare to tinker with classics, unearth uncommon music and pull all of it aside. Within the music “Che t’ho fatt’io,” by seventeenth century composer Francesca Caccini (the primary lady identified to have composed an opera), Hannigan and Chalmin shuffle melodic fragments from the unique tune with membership beats and spiky digital blips. It is a dizzying haze of Baroque magnificence wearing trippy results.

The brand new album Electrical Fields finds inspiration within the music of the 12 century abbess and composer Hildegard von Bingen.
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I love Hannigan and firm, working outdoors their consolation zones, improvising with reside electronics, even in live performance. Electrical Fields took 10 years to appreciate, and even now the musicians say they don’t seem to be precisely positive what they’ve created.

Two variations of a music by Barbara Strozzi, one other uncared for seventeenth century composer, display the old-new divide on Electrical Fields. One rendition of “Che si può fare” (What may be carried out) is offered pretty straightforwardly, though it devolves right into a storm for 2 pianos and gurgling synths. The opposite model is an improvisation, practically unrecognizable because the music amid its flurry of overdubbed voices and tolling pianos, culminating in a chaotic nightmare of digital results. At eight minutes lengthy, it will probably sound noodling at occasions. Nonetheless, it successfully contributes to the bigger dreamscape.

The album is each ethereal and sensual due to the inventive preparations and the miracle that’s Hannigan’s voice. Even when obscured by audio remedies and mental ideas, it is nonetheless recognizable for its signature magnificence — a pure, shiny, gleaming instrument, providing emotional depth with refined phrasing and long-breathed strains.

In its incantatory ultimate monitor, the album returns to Hildegard in a slowly paced, hypnotic association of “O vis aeternitatis” (O power of eternity). Once they speak about seeing that nice white gentle someplace between life and dying, this efficiency would make a becoming soundtrack for that unknowable journey. It ends, actually, on a excessive be aware: A 19-second-long, luscious and hovering excessive C, the likes of which solely Hannigan can ship.

Electrical Fields is an experiment that might have gone terribly unsuitable. Nevertheless it turned out to be a fortunate assembly of disparate musicians who sparked just a little dreamy magic whereas connecting the previous with the brand new.