Toccata cromatica per l’Elevatione (from Fiori musicali)

This recording begins a musical journey during the Lenten Season, a period associated with contemplation, suffering, mortality, and hope. Across cultures and eras, music has provided a space to process grief, loss, and disbelief. Such experiences unite us regardless of circumstance, and this series is offered in that contemplative spirit.

These powerful themes – grief, loss, compassion, and the search for meaning in the face of suffering – can all be found in the expressive musical gesture of the “eternal sigh.” The Seufzer-Motiv, universally recognized as the symbol of weeping and grief, has traveled through more than five centuries of organ literature. From the Phrygian semitone of Renaissance modality to the expressive language of E minor in later tonal works, composers have long used the descending half-step to convey lament, longing, and existential reflection.

Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Toccata cromatica per l’Elevatione provides a fitting point of departure. Written for the Elevation of the Mass, the music suspends time through chromatic descent, expressive dissonance, and slow moving harmonies.Its inward and contemplative rhetoric portrays suffering, prayer, and stillness. Poetically, Frescobaldi creates a space where sound itself seems to breathe.

Though my interpretations in this planned series remain historically and academically informed, they will be extensively shaped by a deeper philosophical and emotional approach. For example, in this performance, I intentionally adopt an even slower tempo than one commonly hears, allowing the chromatic lines and recurring semitone “sighs” to unfold with greater breadth and timelessness. The pacing and musical space thus invite contemplation rather than motion. And this stillness frames the larger arc of the planned program yet to come.

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