Gabor Gado 19 March 2005 in Dresden to the world of jazz festival. (Photo: Dietrich Flechtner)
Undeterred, the man who admonish, the musician. Guitarist Gábor Gado is his sprawling, bizarre and profound music once again acting in a context of social history of cross-base diagnoses. His current album he calls "Byzantium," typographically altered with a twisted "z". "Z" is the last letter of the alphabet - the end is so twisted, wrong, wrong.
Byzantium and Byzantium means those ancient settlement on the south exit of the Bosporus, which was rebuilt because of its favorable position 326-330 by the Roman Emperor Constantine I as the new capital of the Roman Empire (Constantinople). Byzantium as a symbol of civilization for a fresh start and are equally Resume point of human development to destruction, as a symbolic place for the start of the so-called Constantinian shift, in the course of the formerly state discrimination and phase as bloodily persecuted Christian Church is first tolerated, then legally privileged institution, and was finally Theodosius a Reich Church.
The picture puzzle design of the Art Smart CD Covers Yasar Meral and Gábor Bachman's could refer to these Constantinian shift, it shows on the one hand, an ancient hunting scene on the other a threatening Jesus scene, especially the latter indicated by the devil figures pointed out that the evil enemy, but a son of Christianity - a view which is in the symbolism Gadó'schen happens only once.
The CD is attached a fictitious apocryphal text on the Apocalypse of the 21st century, extra Dolinszky Miklós, the Hungarian musicologist sure most significant of the present in old Hungarian-language for "Byzantium" is written. Dolinszky: "As a musicologist, and the literary interests are not strange, I opted for a linguistic game that the language of the first Hungarian translation of the Bible from the 16th Century paraphrases (some specific quotations from the Old Testament and from Henry David Thoreau's "Walden. Or Life in the Woods" involved with), despite the fact that it has to do in a direct way with Gábor Gados music to actually do anything. "
Again, this text begins with the statement that evil, the devil, a consequence of human Selbstapotheose is. "For by themselves perceive as God, it is also said that the devil exists in the world." And again reminded the fragment because the absence of evil is not identical with the good, the absence of the devil not the same as the divine was. And the apocalyptic text ends with the description of human social life after Armageddon: "The houses, roads, bridges and homes were destroyed and Together with them were also the states, parties, companies, organizations, bodies and institutions dissolved, which had destroyed not least, the humanity. And the people came closer together again, not only physically but in spirit: For the walls that had built up the people in rock, existed long ago in their heads. And now there was nothing that separated the people. "
Sun is not it a coincidence that the last track on the CD" Юродивий is named. " The Russian word means an imbecile, a fool - even in the sense of a fool, the impunity the terrible must tell the truth.
Then you could think of Erasmus of Rotterdam's Praise of Folly "(1509), for the" folly in the healing and the true wisdom in the wisdom of the true imaginary folly "was. One should not ignore that, then what was later called the freedom to fool, is not an achievement of Christianity. The present law, in art characters that are disrespectful to God and man, it was in ancient times. What then, since the Renaissance, only the "fool" (Jester) was allowed, each task is thinker to point out the rotten state of human society and give pointers to where the evil stirring. One of Gábor Gados replies: "Byzantium".
It seems logical that take individual tracks on the CD that deliberately created the context reference. - Examples?
"Mirandola" focuses on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), the large, early late philosopher of the Renaissance.
Mirandola was the first Christian who, without even being Jewish, is intensely involved with the Kabbalah. In Rome, he wanted to defend 900 philosophical and theological theses which he had written publicly before all interested scholars of the world. He invited them to a large European Congress, which in should take place the presence of the Pope and the College of Cardinals. His goal was to show a fundamental agreement of all those philosophical and religious teachings, which were finally included in all Christianity, and thus to contribute to peace and global understanding. Was planned for the January 1487 public disputation not take place because Pope Innocent VIII began a sixteen-member commission to examine the orthodoxy of the views expressed in the theses. Mirandola was not prepared to appear before the Commission. After intense debate, the Commission concluded, thirteen of the theses were heretical and should therefore be condemned. The music Gábor Gados reflected the dramatic dynamics of the event, which is soaring up hope, turns out to doubts, the risk of attacks, breaking light of optimism and the fall in the depths of defeat against - and in five minutes and fifty-one seconds.
"Avicenna" is the most famous philosophers and scientists "of Islam and perhaps of all time" (George Sarton), Abū Alī al-Husayn ibn Abdullah ibn Sina (980-1037), dedicated - designed with soft saxophone Gitarrre-unison runs, (truthfully) searching, scanning, ...
The title track gives finally the ensemble of clarinet, Bass clarinet, bass, drums a staccato-like serenity that - now comes Gados guitar into the game - to bustling, vibrant temptations and doubts out to make a duo of saxophone and guitar, a dragon dance between threat and promise - the end is left open .
Gábor Gados "Byzantium" - this is not jazz. This is a beacon of musical history.
Gabor Gado: Byzantium, BMC CD 137
The text of Miklós Dolinszky in German in a rough translation from the old English version here.
