Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
In 2017, Toronto artist Nurgul Jones released the blackgaze album Upper and Lower Hell어퍼와 로어 지옥. Through soft, atmospheric industrial sounds, each track creates a dreamscape that might send the listener on a journey from “Circle 1: Limbo아지태” all the way to”Circle 9: The Traitorous배 교자.” A circle of Dante’s Inferno takes a titular spotlight on each one of the nine tracks.
Listen to and download the album on bandcamp here.
“Inferno is my first solo album for cello and is a musical interpretation of the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno. [. . .]
“Dante visits twenty-eight distinct locations and I have tried to represent them all through music. Some are thematically linked, some stand alone, some paint a sonic landscape or mood, while others follow the drama of the text. As Dante invites the reader of his text to join him on his pilgrimage so too, I hope, does my music invite the listener on a journey.” –Elliot Murphy, elliotmurphymusic, September 30, 2021
Dublin Castle’s Coach House Gallery also hosts the Commedia lithographs by Liam Ó Broin. See the related post here.
Contributed by Elliot Murphy
how the night came is a soundscape creator and instrumental music artist based in Japan. In fall 2019 how the night came released three albums based on each of the three canticles of Dante’s Commedia: Dante’s Inferno (September 7, 2019), Dante’s Purgatory (October 12, 2019), and Dante’s Paradise (October 27, 2019). Each of these (especially Inferno and Purgatory) are grounded in close interpretation of and serious reflection on the poem, as evidenced by the descriptions given in the liner notes.
Of particular interest is how the night came’s sonic interpretation of Dante’s Purgatory. The description explains, “Since the setting of Purgatory is an earthquake prone mountain covered with walls of rock, massive boulders, stone steps, white marble carvings, the prideful being punished by bearing the weight of heavy rocks, stone effigies, and pavements, I wanted to incorporate stone into my composition.” Some of the album’s sounds are created using acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin, keyboard, stones, chopsticks, and silence. Of the theme “BEATRICE,” which marks the arrival of Beatrice in Purgatorio 30 (15:57-16:30 in the album’s single track), the artist writes:
“BEATRICE is 33 seconds of silence. Her demolition of Dante is a staggering moment of world literature. Here, we read a medieval male poet attacking himself through the voice of a female. Initially, Beatrice turns to the angels to lambaste Dante, and when she finally addresses him… it is extremely painful for us to hear. I tried several musical themes for this moment, but they all failed miserably. I then recalled the scene in Taxi Driver when Travis (Robert De Niro) makes a humiliating phone call to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) – Martin Scorcese has the camera turn away, as if to spare us seeing another human being suffer the pain of rejection. And thus silence – in this case, the musical equivalent of pulling the camera away – finally offered itself as the most fitting means for communicating Dante’s sense of loss, guilt, shame and inadequacy.
“(Perhaps this silence can also be heard as an expression of the absence of Virgil, who left Dante at the end of Canto 27).
“The silence is broken by the return of the Earthly Paradise theme, but this time it is quantized, the newly punctuated rhythms signifying the beginning of the strict realignment of Dante’s soul.” —how the night came’s WordPress site (accessed May 18, 2021)
Listen on YouTube, bandcamp, or Soundcloud.
“This is such a daring and visionary album, a contemporary masterpiece of composition. Multilayered, rich and colourful. Dark and radiant at the same time, thrilling and mesmerizing.” [. . .] — Erkka Lehmus, Bandcamp, 2016
Abandon All Hope is an album by guitarist and composer Gretchen Menn released on December 12, 2016. Learn more about this artist on her website.
The track list below includes links to the songs on Bandcamp:
“Perhaps the most surprising thing about Mono making a record inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy is that it took them nine albums to do it. Since their dramatic 2001 debut Under the Pipal Tree, the Japanese ensemble’s arrangements have only swelled, growing ever grander and more orchestral—like a lot of instrumental post-rock bands, they’ve often struggled with how to one-up themselves. So on Requiem for Hell, their ninth album, they look to nothing less than the mother of all epics, Dante’s account of the journey of man’s soul, on a song cycle patterned around the rhythms of life and death. If that all sounds lofty, it is, but no more so than any other Mono album from the last decade. At this point in their career, going big is their default play.” — Evan Rytlewski, “Mono: Requiem for Hell: Album Review,” Pitchfork.com
Contributed by Pete Maiers
