Giacomo Leopardi was indeed a real genius but he also possessed an incredible culture. Personally, I think that there cannot be creativity without culture. Every artist should know what the others made before him, how they made it and why. This sets the starting point for creating new art. No one can really come out of the blue claiming he invented something new. It just doesn’t work like this. Read about all the biggest musicians, writers, painters and so on, and you’ll discover how much they studied before creating something able to cross the time and to be valuable even after centuries.

Ok, let’s head back to the main topic.

Leopardi made a deep analysis of the “Batrachomyomachia” and he translated it from ancient greek to italian three times during his life. This happened for various reasons: first of all there’s no way to know who is the author of the poem. For centuries many eggheads thought it was Homer, because the style is the same as the one of his better known epics, the Iliad and the Odissey.

But Giacomo Leopardi disagreed with this attribution for various stylistic and historical reasons. For exemple there are words in the “Batrachomyomachia” that Homer never used in both the Iliad and the Odissey, and no one seems to talk about this epic-comic poem before the III century B.C..

However, it’s still impossible to determine who the author is, and Leopardi thought that this is a shame because he really wanted to tribute all the honors to the genius who wrote that poem!

Then there are the reasons why someone would ever write about a war between frogs and mice. Various critics of the past found out quite a bunch of them:

- to teach the kids about the danger of riots;

- to teach the kids about the virtues of a frugal life;

- as a stylistic introduction to the Iliad and the Odissey.

But above all, the “Batrachomyomachia” is a big parody of the Iliad.The story, the characters, the gods, the weapons, the art of war, Homer’s writing style. Everything. And this makes it beautiful.

Jean Leclerc said that the reason for this parody to be written was that the war between frogs and mice was worth the gods’ intervention just like the Trojan War described by Homer. Giacomo Leopardi fully agreed with this vision of things.

But why three italian translations? Because Leopardi read the existing ones and found out they all sucked. Indeed. He was a perfectionist!

Uhm… this post is turning to be quite long and boring, so you’ll have to wait until the next one to know the story described in the “Batrachomyomachia”. Believe me, it’s really cool!

Stay tuned for more…

Gadjet

As I stated here and here, we’re currently working on our new album, and we’re really thrilled about it so far! Since the concept starts from a work of Giacomo Leopardi, I think it could be useful to know better this poet, what he did and why we find him so interesting.

I don’t know if school teahcers around the world make you study italian poetry. Here in Italy we get to know only the principal artists from abroad, but you know: we’re the cradle of culture!

I’m sure you all know Dante Alighieri and his metaphisic journey known as the “Divine Comedy”. Metal fans use to like epic poems! Well, this work appeared in so many movies, books, comics and videogames it’s impossible that someone didn’t notice it.

Giacomo Leopardi didn’t write epic poems, but is known as the biggest italian poet after Dante Alighieri. Why? Because of his deep vision of nature, society, politics. His way of thinking about the meaning of life itself made him create the concept of “solid nothing”. It would be way too long to explain its meaning here, so I suggest you to read some of his works.

Born in 1798, Giacomo Leopardi suffered for his entire life of various phisical deseases. His continuous study undermined his already fragile physical constitution, and his illness denied him youth’s simplest pleasures. This draw a huge mark on his poems and on his vision of life.

He read a lot the classics from ancient Greece, so much that his first poems were in greek language! This deep knowledge led him to translate many of these classics. Among them, I’d like to point my finger to the “Batrachomyomachia”, which is the starting point to our musical concept. Therefore, on the next post I’ll write a brief description of this epic so you can get to know better what we’re working at!

Stay tuned

Gadjet

Let’s make the point!

First of all, the album title: we’re still deciding between “De iure belli” and “Ius ad bellum”. The meaning is quite the same, always regarding the right to make war, but the two choices have slightly different meanings. If you want, internet offers a lot of documentation about this thread. The goal is to find out which of those fits better with what we’re trying to say on this cd.

Then, obviously, there’s the music. Let’s see something about the new songs:

1. Ouverture: an instrumental opening for symphonic orchestra, which has been completed already (we’re still defining some drum parts, but the main thing is ok). This opening introduces the listener to the main musical theme, the one you’ll find here and there on many of the other songs. It’s huge. It’s bombastic. It’s epic. You’re gonna love it, we know!

We promise we’re going to find out a suitable title for this track soon!

2. A Handful of Dust: this song is turning to be quite troublesome. We wanted to start with a good guitar riff, very heavy, and we found it. However, we’re still deciding whether singing over a straight pattern or over an odd one. The chorus is kind of catchy, and this is good!

This kind of work reminds me the one I made for “Another Soul” on the Fit to Die album. I wrote that songs in a loooooong time, always changing things until we entered the studio. I was very worried about the final result, but then it became my favourite song of that cd. Thus, I’m optimistic about this one!

3. Libra: this is the song I wrote on easter day! Every album should have some song that comes to mind in one single shot, from the beginning to the end (On the last album there were two of this kind: Awakening the Ghosts and Stories to Tell. Could you guess? ). This one is very interesting for a guitar player, it has some picking peculiarities that make us be very soft with the right hand. It’s not my usual writing style, but I think it works very well!

4. Me, My Enemy, Myself: it starts with a 5/4 killer riff by Pablic and half of the chorus is played in tapping. Do you want more? It’s a killer tune, believe me!

5. Just War: this song is the one that’s closer to the “title track” status. It seems to be a tradition that our title tracks are mostly written by Pablic. Anyway, it’s a tune with a very prog rock vibe, minor and major acoustic parts, heavy metal riffing… It’s melodic, yet very difficult to play! When I started remembering all the parts, I found this song very funny to play!

6. No Country for Heroes: the last time I wrote a ballad has been back in 2003, for our first demo, and it’s title was “Seasons of Loleniness”. A song I’ve always been kind of proud of, and maybe one day we’ll work again on it. Anyway, I thought that a slow and emotional tune could fit the lyrics Pablic wrote for this song. It’s a very dark theme, so realistic it hurts. The chorus’ armony is a citation from Giuseppe Verdi’s “Attila”, where he cited another great composer from the 17th century. I’m not gonna tell you who it was, ’cause you’ll find too easy to understand how this song will sound like. You must wait! Ok, I admit I’m freaking teasing you…

Three songs left. Stay tuned for more news…

Gadjet

The songs are:

1. Instrumental overture (yet untitled)
2. A Handful of Dust
3. Libra
4. Me, My Enemy, Myself
5. Just War (Bellum Justum)
6. No Country for Heroes
7. Exile
8. Nothing but Words
9. The Never Ending Quest

The 10th song is a cover of a popular choir song in the Friulan language, which is my mother tongue. More details on it will be available in the future!

We decided to pay a tribute to the great italian composers of the XIX Century (when Italy was a world-renowned culture capital) like Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Donizetti. For this reason we will feature a complete symphonic orchestra and choir arrangement on the whole album!
It’s not going to be easy-listening-mainstream music. We want people to listen to it and think about the message we want to give. It’s going to have more heavy metal, more prog influences, more melodies, more of everything. We’re working really hard on this project, and look forward to completing it as soon as possible!

Share the news and get in touch with us!

Gadjet