Hexperos
Encyclopedia
Hexperos is an Italian duo founded in 2004 by Alessandra Santovito (soprano voice, flute
) and Francesco Forgione (double bass
, cello
, bardic harp, viola da gamba, percussions and keyboard
).
Their line up consists of various talented musicians such as the violinists Domenico Mancini, Alessandro Pensa and Isabell Presenza, the harpist Francesca Romana Di Nicola, the percussionist Francesco Savoretti, and bassoonist Manuel Manzitti.
Their albums often feature ancient instruments such as medieval flute, hammer dulcimer and Appalachian dulcimer played by Alessandra and Francesco.
Thanks to her countless experiences, Alessandra can sing in various ways, so that her voice, like their music and her lyrics, ranges from the Mediterranean style to the north European one, from the ancient genre to the modern one. Much importance is given to the lyrics of the songs and often you can find significant quotes or passages transposed into music.
Francesco is in charge of recording and mixing each song too: he takes care of every step during the realization of Hexperos's albums. His love for ancient and modern music is mirrored in his compositions and arrangements.
The name Hexperos comes from Hesperides
and Hesperos, which is the name of the first star that appears at twilight. This is also the favourite star of the goddess of love, Aphrodite
. The Hesperides are nymphs who tend to a tree with golden apples and they sing with sweet voices.
label C.M.I. the same label of Alessandra’s previous project, which was named Gothica and had great success in the 90s among lovers of obscure atmospheres.
Alessandra wrote music and lyrics for both of Gothica’s albums entitled Night Thoughts and The Cliff of Suicide.
In 2007, Hexperos’s first full album comes out, entitled The Garden of the Hesperides, for the independent Portuguese label Equilibrium Music. This garden represents Hexperos’s musical world, a place where you can collect many of the influences from which the songs originate, such as their passion for contemporary music; for composers like James Newton Howard
, Hans Zimmer
, James Horner
, Philip Glass
, Michael Nyman
; for classical music, particularly for baroque
and for ethnic music, especially Celtic
, Spanish
and African, for this reason in this album there are also two personal interpretations of Ave Maria by Giulio Caccini
and Nana
, one of the Siete Canciones Españolas by Manuel de Falla
.
Their second album, entitled The Veil of the Queen Mab, is published in September 2010
. The title of this new album comes from El velo de la reina Mab by the Nicaraguan writer and poet Rubén Darío
(1867 - 1916).
A short tale from the collection Azul whose immense lyricism, inspired by melancholia and fairy tales, has brought fame to Dario’s verses, in which we find typical South American magical realism, ancient mythology and pure fantasy.
Queen Mab is a creation of Anglo-Saxon mythology, probably with roots in the Celtic legends. She is the queen of dreams, quoted by many international artists of different art fields; for example, many will remember Shakespeare mentioning her, through the mouth of Mercutio
, in Romeo and Juliet
, or referring to her myth in A Midsummer Night's Dream
.
The Garden of the Hesperides and The Veil of the Queen Mab present different characteristics. The first one is more minimalist, while the second is richer in orchestration. Both of them received great critical and public success worldwide.
, heavenly voices, ethereal wave
and neo-folk fields.
Hexperos is strictly bound to art and literature. Much importance is given to the texts of the songs and often you can find significant quotes or passages transposed into music.
Some of the quotations we can find are by Apuleius
, Shakespeare, Alda Merini
, D. H. Lawrence
and Rubén Darío
. Because of their dreamy or obscure atmospheres, some of their songs have been used in short films.
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
) and Francesco Forgione (double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
, cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, bardic harp, viola da gamba, percussions and keyboard
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
).
Their line up consists of various talented musicians such as the violinists Domenico Mancini, Alessandro Pensa and Isabell Presenza, the harpist Francesca Romana Di Nicola, the percussionist Francesco Savoretti, and bassoonist Manuel Manzitti.
Their albums often feature ancient instruments such as medieval flute, hammer dulcimer and Appalachian dulcimer played by Alessandra and Francesco.
Thanks to her countless experiences, Alessandra can sing in various ways, so that her voice, like their music and her lyrics, ranges from the Mediterranean style to the north European one, from the ancient genre to the modern one. Much importance is given to the lyrics of the songs and often you can find significant quotes or passages transposed into music.
Francesco is in charge of recording and mixing each song too: he takes care of every step during the realization of Hexperos's albums. His love for ancient and modern music is mirrored in his compositions and arrangements.
The name Hexperos comes from Hesperides
Hesperides
In Greek mythology, the Hesperides are nymphs who tend a blissful garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas mountains in North Africa at the edge of the encircling Oceanus, the world-ocean....
and Hesperos, which is the name of the first star that appears at twilight. This is also the favourite star of the goddess of love, Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
. The Hesperides are nymphs who tend to a tree with golden apples and they sing with sweet voices.
Biography
In 2004, with the song entitled The Warm Whisper of the Wind, the band is officially born. This first song is published in a compilation entitled Flowers Made of Snow by the SwedishSweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
label C.M.I. the same label of Alessandra’s previous project, which was named Gothica and had great success in the 90s among lovers of obscure atmospheres.
Alessandra wrote music and lyrics for both of Gothica’s albums entitled Night Thoughts and The Cliff of Suicide.
In 2007, Hexperos’s first full album comes out, entitled The Garden of the Hesperides, for the independent Portuguese label Equilibrium Music. This garden represents Hexperos’s musical world, a place where you can collect many of the influences from which the songs originate, such as their passion for contemporary music; for composers like James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films...
, Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...
, James Horner
James Horner
James Roy Horner is an American composer, orchestrator and conductor of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements...
, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
; for classical music, particularly for baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
and for ethnic music, especially Celtic
Celtic music
Celtic music is a term utilised by artists, record companies, music stores and music magazines to describe a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic people of Western Europe...
, Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and African, for this reason in this album there are also two personal interpretations of Ave Maria by Giulio Caccini
Giulio Caccini
Giulio Caccini , also known as Giulio Romano, was an Italian composer, teacher, singer, instrumentalist and writer of the very late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was one of the founders of the genre of opera, and one of the single most influential creators of the new Baroque style...
and Nana
Nana
- People :* Nana , including a list of people and characters with the given name* Nana , including a list of people and characters with the surname* Nana of Iberia , Queen Consort of Caucasian Iberia * Nana - People :* Nana (given name), including a list of people and characters with the given...
, one of the Siete Canciones Españolas by Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
.
Their second album, entitled The Veil of the Queen Mab, is published in September 2010
September 2010
September 2010 was the ninth month of that year. It began on a Wednesday and concluded after 30 days on a Thursday.-International holidays and observances:* 1: Constitution Day * 1: Independence Day...
. The title of this new album comes from El velo de la reina Mab by the Nicaraguan writer and poet Rubén Darío
Rubén Darío
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento , known as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century...
(1867 - 1916).
A short tale from the collection Azul whose immense lyricism, inspired by melancholia and fairy tales, has brought fame to Dario’s verses, in which we find typical South American magical realism, ancient mythology and pure fantasy.
Queen Mab is a creation of Anglo-Saxon mythology, probably with roots in the Celtic legends. She is the queen of dreams, quoted by many international artists of different art fields; for example, many will remember Shakespeare mentioning her, through the mouth of Mercutio
Mercutio
Mercutio a fictional character in William Shakespeare's 1597 tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. He is a close friend of Romeo, and Romeo's cousin Benvolio, and also a blood relative to Prince Escalus and Count Paris. As such, being neither a Montague nor a Capulet, Mercutio is one of the few in Verona...
, in Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
, or referring to her myth in A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
.
The Garden of the Hesperides and The Veil of the Queen Mab present different characteristics. The first one is more minimalist, while the second is richer in orchestration. Both of them received great critical and public success worldwide.
Genre
It isn’t easy to ascribe Hexperos to one particular genre, in fact we can perceive diverse influences in their music, more generally they can be ascribed to neo-classicalNeoclassicism (music)
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint...
, heavenly voices, ethereal wave
Ethereal Wave
Ethereal Wave, also called ethereal darkwave in Europe and ethereal goth or simply ethereal in the US, is a term that describes a subgenre of Dark Wave music...
and neo-folk fields.
Hexperos is strictly bound to art and literature. Much importance is given to the texts of the songs and often you can find significant quotes or passages transposed into music.
Some of the quotations we can find are by Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
, Shakespeare, Alda Merini
Alda Merini
Alda Merini was a renowned Italian writer and poet.She was born in Milan and died there aged 78.Alda Merini started her poetic career when she was really young and soon she gained the attention and the admiration of many famous italian writers, like Giorgio Manganelli, Salvatore Quasimodo and Pier...
, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
and Rubén Darío
Rubén Darío
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento , known as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century...
. Because of their dreamy or obscure atmospheres, some of their songs have been used in short films.
Discography
- 2007 – Hexperos - The Garden of the Hesperides (EQM)
- 2010 – Hexperos - The Veil of Queen Mab (EQM)
Previous Projects
- 2000 – Gothica – Night Thoughts (C.M.I.)
- 2003 – Gothica - The Cliff of Suicide (C.M.I.)
Compilations
- 2004 – Flowers made of Snow (C.M.I)
- 2008 – Nikolaevka (Palace of Worms)
- 2008 – In the dark room vol. 1 (Darkroom Production)
- 2010 – Cantus 1: Mediaeval Pagan Folk (Lichtbringer)
- 2011 – Berceuses des Fées et petites Sorcières (Prikosnovénie)
Collaborations
- 2005 Respiri – Corde Oblique (Ark records);
- 2009 Ősforrás - The Moon and the Night Spirit (EQM)
- 2009 The stones of Napels – Corde Oblique (Prikosnovénie)