Gothic Spirits

IN THE LAST DECADES of the fourteenth century, composers working in the French tradition were sometimes musicians of profligate imagination. In addition to polyrhythms, extravagant melodic sequences and sudden dissonances, they sometimes created a sense of forward momentum in their compositions by sheer crowding of the texture, a legacy reaching back to the leading composer of the French Ars nova, Guillaume de Machaut (d1377). The music of Machaut, represented here by the exotic four-part ballade, Il m’est avis, was still being enjoyed in Italy around 1430 according to the theorist Ugolino of Orvieto, and even the most flamboyant aspects of late fourteenth-century style, fostered by Machaut’s successors, did not perish entirely in the 1400s.

From Spirits and Ghosts (Score for a Dark Christmas) is the second classical and Christmas album, and the seventh studio album released by the Finnish soprano Tarja Turunen.On the 22 September 2017, earMUSIC released a video announcing the existence of the album. A music video was released on the 6th of October, with Tarja singing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel". With the album release comes also Tarja Turunen's first ever graphic novel "From Spirits and Ghosts (Novel for a dark Christmas)". The 40-page novel will take you to the world of dark Christmas with the beautiful art of Conor Boyle. The “novel for a dark Christmas” revolves around Tarja’s two characters, the dark and light one, bringing together lonely souls during the festive season.