Quotations of the Middle Ages in the music of the ‘Gothic’ movement. An analytical survey

Abstract

The article deals with bands making the “Ethereal” type of music and their use of quotations of the Middle Ages. The first example is the track Il bagatto (2000) by Ataraxia. The primary source for Ataraxia’s music is a French dance published in 1530 which, in turn, reveals harmonic connections with an Italian one published in 1578. The two ancient dances, French and Italian, seem to have been conceived as separate developments from a common archaic tune. The Italian one was used in the Seventies by Angelo Branduardi, who added a text taken from the famous fresco of Pinzolo portraying the “danse macabre” (1539). Considering that the lyrics of Ataraxia’s Il bagatto show strong connections with Branduardi’s ones, we could say that the general network of ancient-modern references reveals its intriguing circular shape. The second example is the Troubadour song Reis glorios (12th century), put into music by Ordo Equitum Solis (1992) and Estampie (2000). Ordo Equitum Solis’ version shows characteristics that are typical of the philological ensembles: among the others, the efforts to follow the inner rhythm of the words and the renounce to any chordal support. Estampie’s version, on the contrary, aims to change the ancient tune into a sort of “pop song”, in the attempt to trap the text into a constant rhythm and to put it into a precise harmonic structure. To end, the common background of these bands shows how this kind of quotations can be traced back to the period following the production of Dead Can Dance in the years 1987-1990.