Lucio Dalla’s Caruso

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Qui dove il mare luccica e dove tira forte il vento Su una vecchia terrazza davanti al golfo di Sorriento…
Here, where the seas shines, and the wind howls, on the old terrace beside the gulf of Sorrento…

On an afternoon in the summer of 1986 the Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla (1943-2012) wrote what was to become one of the most beautiful and heartrending songs of recent times. It has been covered by an impressive number of the world’s finest singers on a diverse range of stages and in different tones. The song is the unforgettable Caruso.[1] The story behind its inspiration was revealed by Dalla himself in an interview he gave to an Italian newspaper. He relates a story told to him by the owners of a hotel in Sorrento where Dalla lodged for some nights.[2] It was the hotel where the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso himself had stayed shortly before his death from peritonitis in 1921. He was aged 48. At the time he was suffering from pleurisy and empyema and was in awful pain. The celebrated Caruso was giving singing lessons to a young girl with whom he would become infatuated. Lucio Dalla stayed in the same room, the “Caruso suite”. It was this impromptu story, of an impossible love emanating from a dying man who looks into the eyes of a beautiful girl in full bloom, which inspired the singer-songwriter and registered the song into our imagination.[3]

E’ una catena ormai Che scioglie il sangue dint’e vene sai…
It is a chain by now that heats the blood inside the veins, you know…

I first heard Caruso from Pavarotti and Bocelli. It resonated deeply from the start for its mesmerizing melody and elegiac lyrics. Even so, it was only when I was older that it struck me for all of its other implications. This happened when I unearthed the breath-taking Lara Fabian who gives perhaps the most impressionable of all the performances. Mercedes Sossa, the legendary Argentine singer known as “La Negra”, is probably the most soulful. I listen to the song often. It transports me to different destinations. Not only as I grow older and consider the decay and ruin of my own flesh, but particularly when I reflect on the relationship I have with my wife and on the miraculous circumstances which brought us together.

Ti volti e vedi la tua vita come la scia di un’elica…
You turn and see your life through the white wash astern…

The English philosopher Roger Scruton who specializes in aesthetics (the study of beauty and taste) has recently published a marvellously engaging and intelligent piece on the BBC’s A Point of View where he considers what it is that makes for great music.[4] One of his key contentions is that good music is “a language shaped by our deepest feelings” and not “put together on a computer from a repertoire of standard effects”. Dalla’s delicate song in the celebrated tradition of the canzone Napoletana does sit comfortably in the first category.

Vladimir Vavilov’s Ave Maria

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Newtown, Sydney

I was delighted the upload of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence resonated with you. It was touching to read from one young person that listening to the spoken lyrics by Leonard Cohen helped him during some difficult days. And to hear from my dear friend, the country and western singer Sand Sheff himself, who emailed to say the song also holds a special place in his heart. Music is indeed, the universal language. It is the common space, the hearth, where we have met for thousands of years to “speak” though we might not have understood each other’s tongue.

Encouraged by this warm response I share with you another beautiful song from my “soundtrack”. This time it is an aria (an expressive melody) from the Russian guitarist and composer Vladimir Vavilov (1925-1973),[1] the enrapturing Ave Maria.[2] The composer recorded it and published it himself on the Melodiya label ascribing it to “Anonymous”.[3] It is dated to 1970.[4] Since the death of Vavilov it has often been incorrectly attributed in one of the great musical hoaxes, to the late Renaissance composer and instrumentalist Giulio Caccini.[5] It is distinct from the more well-known Schubert and J.S. Bach/ Charles Gounod versions.

There are grand pieces of ART which transcend cultures and creeds. They are profound creations which resonate throughout the ages. And this melody which speaks to us of the great grace of the Mother of our Lord, and indeed of the love and benevolence of mothers everywhere, is one of these grand pieces. One does not have to be religious to appreciate the overwhelming beauty of this song, any more than one has to be atheist to have compassion for the suffering and philosophical insights of a Friedrich Nietzsche.

Of interest the text has only the two words… the Ave Maria.   

It is a spiritual mantra, or a prayer of the heart.

Any attempts to find cynical or political influences in Vavilov’s composition have yielded no results. The composer died in poverty suffering from pancreatic cancer, at the early age of 48.

The aria became known to a wider audience when it was performed by Inese Galante and then released in her debut album Debut in 1995. The composition gained even more recognition and worldwide interest four years later in 1999 when Andrea Bocelli performed it and released it in his Sacred Arias. Also of note is the incredible performance of the counter-tenor, the Korean David DQ Lee. There are now many covers here as well. The very best of these performances given the high calibre singer who will attempt the aria (normally the classical female singing voice of a mezzo-soprano) are often referred to as performances of “effortless perfection”. Below I have selected the singers which have specifically appealed to me. Each of the performances is truly moving and magnificent in their own right. And yet if you only have time to listen to just one, then please let that be the “irreproachable” Irina Arkhipova.

Irina Arkhipova, Andrea Bocelli, Inese Galante, Denyce Graves, Ewa Izykowska, Sumi Jo, Elisabeth Kulman, David DQ Lee, Olga Pyatigorskaya

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vavilov_(composer)

[2] Ave Maria (Hail Mary) also referred to as “The Angelical Salutation”, is the traditional and most familiar prayer in the Roman Catholic Church in honour of the Blessed Lady. It is inspired by the angel’s salutation of the Blessed Virgin (Lk 1:28).

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Vavilov)

[4] Ibid.

[5] http://www.origenmusic.com/ave-maria-vavilov.html

The soundtrack of our lives

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Kiama, NSW

Songs, great songs, have the power to transport us back to significant years or moments in our lives. Some speak of this evocative effect as a ‘soundtrack’ which is embedded within us… and try as we might we can neither delete nor outrun it. At other times a song can prepare us for what is still ahead and make it more bearable, or force us to re-evaluate our relationships and even our beliefs. One of these “great songs” for a large number of people is Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence.[1] The haunting and unforgettable lyrical ode to the deep aching of loneliness and insufferable loss: “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again…” In 2013 the song was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress “for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically important.”[2] But even today it is being discovered anew outside any allegiances to genres. Why? It speaks to the core of our shared sense of alienation, of our needs and fears, of what we could confess to each other when down and vulnerable. It is a song with soul it has been somewhere said. “In restless dreams I walk alone/ Narrow streets of cobblestone…”

The song has been covered countless times, sometimes very well, other times brilliantly and yet on other occasions very poorly. Not surprisingly, it is one of the most-performed songs of the 20th century.[3] When I fall in love with a song I will invariably seek out covers, and quite often I am amazed at how beautiful and true to the spirit many of these covers are. Sometimes we find that the cover can be even more powerful (or at least equal) to the original, and here I am particularly thinking of Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails disturbing and yet surprisingly redeeming Hurt.[4] The covers of Paul Simon’s folk rock classic offered here are outstanding examples of how a great song can be reinterpreted to express different nuances or to reach a new audience without damage to the intent of the original. Of interest from these offerings below: a poetical reading from Leonard Cohen; a startling delivery from Sharleen Spiteri; and yet another from the heavy metal American band, Disturbed.

“We human beings are tuned such that we crave great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody writes a great song, it’s timeless…” (Art Garfunkel, b. November 5th 1941)

“Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.” (Paul Simon, b. October 13th 1941)

“This deep relation which music has to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it.” (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860)

On a personal note, The Sound of Silence has been on my ‘soundtrack’ since about the time of the First Gulf War (1990-91). When during those imperilled months I was preparing to leave for London and Madrid, to come face-to-face with a much smaller crisis of my own.

“But my words like silent raindrops fell, And echoed/ In the wells of silence…”

 

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, Disturbed, Mike Masse and Jeff Hall, Sharleen Spiteri, Nouela, Emilίana Torrini, Leonard Cohen, Dana Winner

 

[1] The song was recorded and released by Columbia Records in October, 1964. It was included in Simon and Garfunkel’s first studio album, Wednesday Morning, 3AM. It was famously written by Paul Simon over a number of months.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound_of_Silence

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound_of_Silence

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5p