Inferno

by Tangerine Dream
Produced by Edgar Froese, TDI Music, Berlin, Germany, 2002
Audio CD, 78 minutes. Trade, $16.78
ISBN: N/A

Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Texas Woman’s University

dgrigar@twu.edu

Tangerine Dream’s Inferno, an audio CD taped live from the musical-theatrical production performed at St. Marien zu Bernau Cathedral on October 7, 2001 and based very loosely on the Inferno written by Dante Alghieri in the 14^thCentury, blends cutting edge electronic music with the traditional form of opera. Those familiar with Dante’s story may view Tangerine Dream’s composition in keeping with tone and mood of Dante’s spiritual journey to the afterlife, though they may find the group plays much too loosely with the themes and ideas of the original.

In Dante’s Divine Comedy Dante journeys to hell, purgatory, and paradise, seeking knowledge about "the state of souls after death" (Dante, Epistolae X, viii). It is in Inferno, the first of the three parts of the story, that Dante learns about the eternal torment of sin. In that underworld labyrinth of hell where a sinner’s punishment for earthly transgressions is meted out with exactness, Dante is transformed from a man ignorant of his waywardness to one awakened and penitent.

Tangerine Dream’s Inferno focuses instead on "consciousness" and the "law of cause and effect that humankind has to obey in the form of the so-called Karma-law" (TD). That Tangerine Dream reframes Dante’s journey into an ecumenical message aimed at lifting all to wisdom runs counter to Dante’s story, for Dante equated wisdom with the Christian God, aimed to convert his audience to a Christian spirituality, and condemned those who didn’t heed his call to excruciating torment. Inferno was not a place for learning one’s lesson before moving on to a different level of consciousness but a place to be forever damned and, in the Platonic sense, remain perpetually ignorant; lessons and the potential for wisdom he reserved for the souls in Purgatory who still had a shot at heaven. In this way, punishment in hell is contrapasso not karma, as Tangerine Dream suggests, for Dante’s sinners have not an iceberg’s chance in the proverbial hell in progressing toward a better state much less learning anything while languishing in the one they found themselves in. And so, Dante’s story functions at best as a jumping off point, an opportunity for Tangerine Dream to wax metaphysical about contemporary notions about human conduct and justice.

Nonetheless, the work haunts us with its tone, ambience, and composition. That the composition works is due to the fact that it is operatic in nature and epic in scope, matching Dante’s landscape not circle for circle but darkness for darkness. Even without the visual component found in the live performance, which included lasers, pyrotechnics, and other special effects, the music satisfies the listener who enjoys experimental genres, particularly those that extend digital music into formal musical forms.

The eighteen songs of Tangerine Dream’s composition comprises Dante’s experience in hell and suggests his journey through Purgatory, from entering through hell’s portal ("Before the closing of the day") to being taken under Virgil’s wing ("The spirit of Virgil") to encountering the various denizens of inferno ("Minotaurae hunt at down", "Charon, il barchere"), to coming to an understanding about justice ("Justice of the karma law"), to meeting Beatrice in the final cantos of Purgatory hinted to the final song ("Beatrice, l’ame infinie"). Both the instrumentation and singing are lush and opulent, evoking the gravitasof Dante’s story and the emotions that landed the sinners into hell as well as the appetites still eating at them. That no one song stands out does not mean that each has failed individually as compositions but rather suggests each works seamlessly as a cohesive work.

Edgar and Jerome Froese, the father-son team who have made up the "group" for the last twelve years, are joined in the performance by percussionist Iris Kulterer and a choir of seven female singers. While the part of "Dante" and other male characters are sung by women may seem odd at first, considering the other unconventional choices the group made in creating the work, it falls into line. Sin and eternal damnation are associated with patriarchal notions of Justice, while bad choices and the bad karma that goes with them open up to both feminine and masculine principles of wrong-living.

Thus, Tangerine Dream’s journey cuts a broader swath than the narrow path of hell that Dante takes. As part of a very old tradition of retelling the story of man’s redemption from sin, Tangerine Dream’s Inferno fails, but as an artistic composition exploring its own subjects in its own way, it is highly successful.