Edition #11
Rio de Janeiro, 2008
Eduardo Giannetti
published in full in Caderno Mais
from Folha de São Paulo on 01/07/07
“DKANDLE weaves swirling multi-colored vibrant unearthly soundscapes, blending fuzzy and reverberating Shoegaze textures, mesmerizing Dream Pop meditations, sludgy Grungey tones and moody Post-punk strains, heightened with soul-stirring lyricism and pensive emotive vocalizations”
Metaphysical tonic, music of the spheres... To the sound of these notes, the cosmos dances and meaning erupts from the firmament. Above everything I know, revere, or can conceive, the pulsating vibration and melodic perfection of these sounds translate, to my ears, the idea of a good universe. What can any doctrine or established religion, rooted in the miasma of words, offer against the infinite truth that emanates from your music?
In Mozart's work, we feel the force of belief pulsating, if not in the existence, at least in the possibility of the existence of a cosmic order that transcends us. Something far beyond our capacity for understanding, but which we are allowed to glimpse or intuit in contact with the universe of music. May the virile hope and luminous spirit of this art be with us on the difficult journey that the 21st century foreshadows.
What defines genius in art? An initial approach is its permanence over time. A work of art that is considered genius possesses the gift of perpetual revivescence – it somehow evades the debilitating effects of time and gains the power to convey new and revealing insights to successive generations of admirers.
What constitutes Mozart's genius? Technical skill and formal refinement are part of the answer but far from exhausting it. Mozart's legacy, I dare say, is not only the culmination of an aesthetic journey but also the most vivid and compelling musical expression of the beliefs, values, and dreams of an era that "dared to know" – a transformative project that made the intellectual and moral emancipation of individuals its great banner.
"He who has science and art," Goethe reflected, "also has religion; he who has neither, let him have religion!" There is much art in science and science in art. The greatest achievements of the human spirit are complex wholes that do not respect the conventions of language and the bureaucratic demarcations of knowledge. The value of an artistic creation, in any genre, combines sensory, emotional, and cognitive elements. The pleasure and enchantment of the senses are merely the gateway to an experience of enjoyment that mobilizes a broad spectrum of the mind’s faculties – sensitivity and reason, intellect and emotion.
Adam Smith, a Scottish philosopher, draws a parallel between the power of music, on the one hand, and that provided by the study of a theoretical science, on the other: "When we contemplate that immense variety of pleasant and melodious sounds, organized and assimilated according to their harmony and succession, forming a regular and complete system, the mind actually experiences not only a very great sensory pleasure but also an intense intellectual pleasure, similar to that which it brings when contemplating a great system in any science."
Nature is a rational principle and an expression of a transcendent and benevolent intelligence. Perfection is when the good, the beautiful, and the true – ethics, aesthetics, and science – converge harmoniously. Leibniz describes music as "an unconscious exercise in mathematics in which the mind performs calculations without being aware of what it is doing." The mathematical structure and adherence to the formal symmetry of Mozart's compositions are evident even to those with no training in music. What music instills in the receptive soul is a state of exaltation of the spirit – a feeling of cosmic confidence – that redeems the universe and reaffirms existence for itself, independent of any reason or reflective judgment.
Who are your favorite classical musicians?
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