Studio Ars

This anthology of Christmas carols from the European tradition is not as banal a collection as it may seem. Paul Hillier's intention here is to place himself in the context of history and musicology, his work being similar to that of Arthur Honegger, who at the end of his life composed A Christmas Cantata, which was based on various traditional songs, motets and folk songs.

Only a single manuscript transmits Hildegard’s ordo virtutum: the Wiesbaden Codex (also known as the Rupertsberger Riesencodex), which was started in the scriptorium of her monastery in Bingen during the last years of her life and finished after her death. Today it is considered to be her legacy: Hildegard has not only the authoress of the individual works collected here, but also had influence on the overall composition of the codex. She wanted her work to be transmitted only in this and not in any other way.

Gargantua’s music provides a mind-boggling abundance of colors, moods and compositional schemes. Dense polyphonic structures are interwoven with seemingly harmless, “mock-heroic” tunes, morphing into either jagged interplay of guitar and replicated violin, or irreverent choral enunciations, electronic soundscapes and piano staccatos. Carnival fights here with Lent, seriousness with the grotesque, corporeality with sterility, baroque excess with ascetic introspection. This is a truly “Pantagruelian” vision of music that is self-conscious, self-mocking and highly goal-oriented. And surprising as it may sound, its intransigent, mathematical logic does not prevent the Polish artists from playing with a sharp rocky edge…