Angelo Branduardi - The minstrel from beyond the Po

Angelo Branduardi is one of the certified trademarks of Italian music. With his medieval ballads and his lofty, courtly lyrics, the Lombard musician is the undisputed "minstrel" of our singer-songwriter tradition. Over his long career, he has managed to graft onto Italian song his love of the fairy-tale, drawing on folk legends, especially French ones, but also German, English, Irish and Jewish ones.

Born in 1950 in Cuggiono, a small village in the countryside near Milan, Branduardi soon moved with his family to Genoa. There, at the Niccolò Paganini Conservatory, he began studying violin, earning his diploma at a young age and making his debut as a soloist with the Conservatory orchestra. But it was in Milan, while also attending the Faculty of Philosophy, that he started playing guitar and composing, setting to music both his early poetic attempts and the poems of his favourite authors: "Confessions of a Ruffian", based on the Russian poet Esenin, one of his most famous songs, dates back to that period.

1974 marked his recording debut with the album Angelo Branduardi, arranged by Paul Buckmaster. A record that highlights the poetic quality of his lyrics and the sober, almost entirely acoustic character of his arrangements.

The following year the Lombard musician releases his second album, La luna, in collaboration with one of the leading names in Italian music, Maurizio Fabrizio. Praise for the record, however, remains confined to a small circle of admirers and critics.

His first major success comes in 1976 with the album Alla fiera dell'Est, which immediately wins the Premio della Critica Discografica. The record, once again strictly acoustic, with guitars and violins to the fore, draws on folk tales from around the world: from the Jewish nursery rhyme of "Alla Fiera dell'Est" (destined to become a classic of Italian music), to the Celtic tradition of "La serie dei numeri", to the German poetry of "Sotto il tiglio".

Just two years later, with La pulce d'acqua, Angelo Branduardi renews his success, thanks in part to the enchanted allure of the title track, another fairy tale dense with mythical references and poetry, and to the funereal spell of the splendid "Ballo in Fa diesis minore". The album features a guest appearance by Sardinian musician Luigi Lai, a virtuoso of the "launeddas", an ancient wind instrument. The work is also enriched visually by nine colour prints by Mario Convertino illustrating the lyrics.

While an English version of "La pulce d'acqua" ("Fables and Fantasies") is also released, Branduardi contributes to the compilation "Il Concert" (Ed. Cramps), a tribute to Demetrio Stratos, lead vocalist of Area, one of the key bands of Italian experimental music, who died in New York in 1979.

Branduardi is by now one of the leading names in Italian song, and not only in Italy. In 1978, in fact, he embarks on a lengthy tour that takes him all across Europe, followed in 1980 by the Carovana del Mediterraneo, with guests of the calibre of Stephen Stills, Ritchie Havens and Graham Nash.

Between the two tours, in 1979, comes Cogli la prima mela, a hugely successful album across Europe, driven by the poignant melody of the title track and praised by German and European critics alike. That same year, the Lombard singer-songwriter performs in Paris at the "Fête de l'Humanité" in front of more than 200,000 people - a genuine live event later documented by the album Concert (1980). With "Va où le vent te mène", the French-language version of "Cogli la prima mela", he also wins the Golden Europa trophy and the critics' award for best record of the year in the French language. The fame of the "Lombard minstrel" spreads across all of Europe.

In Germany, in 1981, he is named Best Artist of the Year for the album Branduardi, once again made in collaboration with Paul Buckmaster.

1983 brings Cercando l'oro, followed by another exhausting European tour of more than fifty shows. That same year Branduardi also begins working in film, composing the soundtrack for Luigi Magni's "State buoni se potete", for which he wins the "David di Donatello" and the "Nastro d'Argento". He later also works on the music for J. Schaaf's "Momo" (based on the novel by Michael Ende), and for Aurelio Chiesa's "Secondo Ponzio Pilato" and "Luci lontane". In 1984 he sets off on an Italian tour, with proceeds donated to Unicef.

But the Lombard musician continues to nurture his passion for poetry, and in 1985 he releases the album Branduardi canta Yeats, ten poems by Irish poet William Butler Yeats, translated by Luisa Zappa, the singer-songwriter's wife and co-author of his lyrics. His musical output remains highly prolific: 1988 sees the release of the album Pane e Rose, followed in 1990 by Il ladro, and then, in 1992, the compilation The best of, which marks the start of his relationship with Emi.

The success of the anthology is consolidated a year later by Si può fare, which is met with excellent reviews and strong sales. 1994 brings Domenica e lunedì, once again made in collaboration with Maurizio Fabrizio. The lyrics are written by Luisa Zappa, Paola Pallottino, Eugenio Finardi, Roberto Vecchioni and Pasquale Panella.

That same year sees the start of a tour of more than twenty theatres in Italy, followed by around sixty concerts across Europe. Out of this tour came the live album Camminando Camminando, which includes two previously unreleased studio tracks, "L'apprendista stregone" and "Piccola canzone dei contrari", with lyrics by former comedian Giorgio Faletti. It stands as a compact compendium of the Milanese artist's repertoire, an artist who often gives his very best on stage, conjuring a magical atmosphere suspended in the mists of time.

But Branduardi has his detractors too, who accuse him of having largely just reshaped traditional tunes. It's a criticism the singer-songwriter recently answered as follows: "In the past I've written a mountain of pieces where I credited them as traditional: 'Il ciliegio', 'Gli alberi sono alti', 'Ballo in fa diesis minore', but that happened because in those cases I had faithfully transcribed the original melodic cell. In many other cases, however, the original melodic cell was completely rewritten. If that were enough to level an accusation, then Bach too should be accused of signing his name to things that weren't his. What I do is a rewriting, and only if someone were to redo it identically to mine could I have something to object to."

Branduardi is a volcano in full eruption, always ready to devise new forms of fusion between poetry and music. So in December 1996 he releases Futuro antico, an original journey through sacred and secular pages of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, made in collaboration with the group Cominciamento di Gioia. The following album, "Il dito e la luna", strengthens his partnership with Giorgio Faletti and brings together around Branduardi some of the finest Italian musicians. The uillean pipes, played by Brandan Wade, in a curious blend with Renaissance flutes and the bombardes of Cristina Scrima, create an effect of great musicality.

But Branduardi is also a great theatre enthusiast, a passion that leads him to collaborate with Amedeo Amodio, director of the ballet of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, on "La storia meravigliosa dell'uomo senza ombra". In November '98, Emi releases Branduardi Studio Collection, a double compilation containing 32 tracks tracing his entire discography, from "Alla fiera dell'Est" to "La pulce d'acqua", from "Cogli la prima mela" to "Il violinista di Dooney". Among his countless activities, in 1999 he also appears on the RaiUno programme "Gratis", with the segment "Il sesso dell'angelo".

In 1999, The Infinitely Small is released, an album entirely dedicated to St Francis. "He was a great poet," Branduardi recounts, "he loved to sing, and he did so often, even by himself. To accompany his Canticle of the Creatures he had composed music that has since been lost: I've tried to give his words a voice again, so that they can be sung once more."

The album – which features contributions from artists such as Franco Battiato (on the splendid track "Il sultano di Babilonia e la prostituta"), Madredeus, Ennio Morricone, the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare, Muvrini and La Viola – is a musical translation of writings and episodes from the life of St. Francis, drawn directly from the Franciscan Sources. The task of drafting the final lyrics was entrusted to the songwriter's wife, Luisa Zappa. A project with a truly international scope, in short, one that turned Branduardi into the official spokesman for St. Francis's message during the Jubilee.

"At first I was quite hesitant," he recalled, "I wanted to avoid the devotional aspects of the work, and above all I didn't want to fall into the trap of the 'beat mass'. I took the things that felt closest to my own sensibility and let myself be guided by instinct. The musical choices have clear points of contact with what I was doing in the early part of my career." The music from the album was taken on tour around Italy, performed in some of the most striking churches in Italy and Europe.

With the Futuro antico trilogy, Branduardi offers a reinterpretation of sacred and secular medieval songs (1996), of the music of Giorgio Mainerio, Maestro di Cappella of the Patriarchate of Aquileia (1999), and of the Baroque music beloved by the Gonzaga family (2002).

Altro ed altrove (2003), on the other hand, attempts to bring back to light the simplicity of love poems from peoples distant in time and space, "finding," he says, "a deep homogeneity, since under different skies peoples burn with the same passions." It ranges from the Nepal of the first single "Laila Laila" to ancient Irish lyric poetry, from the yearning of Catullus to the rarefied sweetness of a Chinese love ballad, from the sensuality of Arabic poetry to the rigor of Japanese tradition, from the verses of Native Americans to the grandeur of Shakespeare, from Persian poetry of the year 1000 to an anonymous song of the Kabyle people of Africa, from Libyan poetry to the spirituality of a Pashtun poet and mystic of the 1600s who sings of the senseless love of the moth for the flame.

The common thread linking distant cultures and lands is passion, universal love. The album cover is a small catalogue of works by the painter Silvio Monti. All the instruments on the record were played by Angelo Branduardi and Carlo Gargioni, while the lyrics were translated and adapted by Luisa Zappa. Among the guests is one of Branduardi's two daughters, Maddalena, 20 years old, who sings on the track "Ille par esse deo... un Dio mi pare", and Cecilia Gasdia, soprano voice on the track "L'ambasciata a Shiragi".

With Futuro antico 4 (2007), Branduardi celebrates Venice and its Carnival.

In 2014 comes Il rovo e la rosa – Ballate d'amore e morte.

Five years later, Branduardi returns to a level of absolute quality with a concept album inspired by the life and works of Hildegard von Bingen, a Christian monastic woman born in 1098 who was a Benedictine nun, writer, theologian, herbalist, philosopher and musician.

In the nine-part suite of Il cammino dell'anima (2019), the Lombard minstrel revisits the musical manuscripts of this "proto-feminist," as he calls her, first translating from the original texts in an archaic form of Latin-German before travelling as far as Harvard, where he found English translations, and also attempting to render the score's notation into playable, "vertical" music.

On the multi-voice track "Il cammino dell'anima, Pt.1", Branduardi is joined by Cristiano De André and countertenor Arturo Sorrentino. The album was preceded by the single "Il cammino dell'anima, Pt.3", which was released to radio in a version different from the album version.

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