Recoge los trabajos presentados en el II Congreso sobre arte, literatura y cultura gótica urbana, celebrado en mayo 2013 en la Universidad Autónoma de MadridThe 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
