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In the straightforward writing of The Albatross, one recognizes
a search for absolute internalization. The string orchestra converses with
the electronic sounds, and interacts with them, bending with them to the
point at which the orchestra is swept into a chasm of sonority, in which
the feeling of white, austral cold is rendered by the use of sounds whose
wave shapes have been built on a computer by tracing the profile of an
ice crystal. In this cold and ghostly seascape, the appearance of the albatross,
seen as a divine messenger, serves but to enhance yet further the dismay
and solitude of mankind.
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| "I remember the first Albatross I ever saw. It
was during a prolonged gale in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas.
From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage.[...] Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern tally round its neck, with the ship's time and place; and then letting it escape. But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking, and adoring cherubim!" from Moby Dick by H. Melville"
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| Three Deers review :
Sorry, Signor Franci I'm sure I cannot do this piece of music justice, because I don't know
anything about this kind of contemporary music. Further, I cannot hear
it unprejudiced for two reasons: first, in my mind "albatross" is
wired forever with John Cleese in an apron,
and second, whenever I hear this piece it reminds me uncannily of Alan
Parson's 'A Dream within a Dream' (the one where Orson Welles recites
Edgar Allan Poe), which I, frankly, like much more.
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