Ombre (Shadows)

2012
Daria Baiocchi

Ombre (Shadows) is a composition for electronic music (four-channels, where possible) and piano with the possibility of a live performance. The Milan tube and The Divine Comedy written by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri is the Leitmotiv of the composition. The “Hell-3th chant” with Charon, the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron, is of particular focus in the work. Ombre is a reflection on the experience of travel, both in isolation and with companions. When in the the presence of others, those around us become shadows, but we rarely consider that we are also a shadow for others. Voices, tube noises, and the mind’s lines work together to build this mystical composition.

"Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost.
Justice incited my sublime Creator;
Created me divine Omnipotence,
The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.
Before me there were no created things,
Only eterne, and I eternal last.
All hope abandon, ye who enter in!
And he to me, as one experienced:
Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned,
All cowardice must needs be here extinct.

And he to me, as one experienced:
Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned,
All cowardice must needs be here extinct.
We to the place have come, where I have told thee
Thou shalt behold the people dolorous
Who have foregone the good of intellect

There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud
Resounded through the air without a star,
Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat.
Languages diverse, horrible dialects,
Accents of anger, words of agony,
And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands,
Made up a tumult that goes whirling on
For ever in that air for ever black,
Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes."

—Excerpted from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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