Revelations in Ancient Tombs

Revelations in Ancient Tombs: what happens when you apply “chroma”, Gesualdo-style, on a romanesca?

The motif for 'Revelations in Ancient Tombs' in musical notation.

Figure 1: Motif for Revelations in Ancient Tombs

To be fair, I should be talking more broadly of the Neapolitan school of composers, not Carlo Gesualdo alone. But we’re talking a niche within a niche within a… you get the point. However, this is a romanesca, with “chroma” applied to it: Elam Rotem describes chroma in his Early Music Sources YouTube video, and the topic is Carlo Gesualdo (Rotem, 2021). Also to clarify, this improvisation is less early music stylistic, and applies more modern musical language; it is not a Gesualdo-style pastiche at all. However, improvisationally, the piece is very straightforward: it explores quasi-arpeggiating the underlying framework notes. For the future, I would love to come back regarding more experiments with the renaissance concepts of chroma and musica ficta, applied in unconventional places. I will have more to add here later.

For playback (& if you like this album, consider buying it in BandCamp to support my art):

Here’s the recording session video of the piece:

References

Rotem, E. (2021, October 30). Who’s afraid of Carlo Gesualdo? Retrieved from Early Music Sources website: https://www.earlymusicsources.com/youtube/gesualdo