Paul Giger: ars moriendi
ECM New Series

That Paul Giger's ars moriendi appears as part of ECM's ‘New Series' is ironic, considering that its music, arrangements, and performances could as easily have been a product of 1922 as 2022—the high-quality production of the recording notwithstanding, that is. His release is hardly the only one about which that could be said, with those by Arvo Pärt as time-transcending as Giger's. Of course we recognize that the label ECM adopted isn't supposed to signify new as in newly or recently composed (although much in the series is) so much as it was chosen to distance releases in the series from the jazz catalogue with which the label initially established itself.

ars moriendi isn't Giger's first outing on the label, incidentally. The association began in 1989 with Chartres and carried on through Alpstein, a 1992 collaboration with saxophonist Jan Garbarek and percussionist Pierre Favre, and beyond. In one clear sense, the new release recalls On Towards Silence, Giger's collaboration with harpsichordist Marie-Louise Dähler, for the fact that the 2007 release intersperses movements from J. S. Bach with free improvisations, something similarly done on ars moriendi when three Bach selections appear alongside Giger originals and Dähler partners with him again.

Notes by the composer clarify the title meaning, as it refers to a genre popular in the late Middle Ages that saw woodcuts-illustrated books dedicated to examining how to ‘die well.' The idea was, he writes, “to attune the soul to the ‘art of dying,' in order to save it for eternity. Music is also an ars moriendi, an exercise in the “becoming” of a note, of “being” in sound and of “passing” into silence – or into an inner reverberation.” Becoming – Being – Passing is also the title of a triptych by the Tyrolean painter Giovanni Segantini, which provided Giger with an additional source of inspiration for the project. In keeping with that spirit, the album was recorded in Maloja, the place where Segantini spent the remaining years of his life.

With Giger on violin and violino d'amore joined by Dähler on harpsichord, Pudi Lehmann on gongs, singing bowls, and percussion, alto Franz Vizthum, and the Carmina Quartett, the music the ensemble performs exudes grace and humanity and is, more often than not, transfixing. Look no further than Giger's opening Guggisberglied for proof, nineteen minutes of music generated almost entirely from his eleven-string violino d'amore. Sounds of water drizzle aside, everything in the meditation, one rooted in one of the oldest Swiss folk songs, came from bowing, beating, drumming, scratching, and plucking the instrument. Giger expands on this mesmerizing sound collage by integrating traces of South Indian music, a gesture that makes the result all the more intoxicating. In allowing the piece to unfold slowly, he ratchets up the tension and intensifies the hypnotic effect of the instrument whenever its bowed expressions appear. As the piece advances towards its close, the fact that it was created from one instrument only—especially when it approximates a cymbalon and hand drums so convincingly—becomes all the more incredible.

While Giger clarifies that his Zäuerli mit Migrationshintergrund incorporates elements of the traditional natural yodel from the Swiss canton Appenzell and expands on them with a microtonal language, what's most striking is how vividly the keening laments of the violino d'amore evoke the haunting spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” Offsetting Giger's mystery-laden Guggisberglied and three mysticism-tinged Agony settings are lovely pieces by Bach. Two disarmingly beautiful duets with Dähler appear, Ich ruf' zu dir and “Largo”; as affecting is the ensemble rendering of “Erbarme dich” (from the St. Matthew Passion), which is also elevated by the purity of Vizthum's voice. He returns at album's end for Giger's Altus solo II, a plaintive, transience-themed meditation that in its merging of harpsichord, violin, frame drum, and voice sounds both utterly contemporary and ancient, something that could be said in general about this sterling addition to Giger's discography.

December 2022