Loreena Mckennitt - The Mask and Mirror

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Free Music Notes for The Mask and Mirror

Free Music Review: Looking at ourselves, at each other, and at the faces of G-d
Hit: 5 Stars

`The Mystic's Dream' makes a very impressive opening to the disc, mixing Moroccan and Indian rhythms and the Gregorian chant of a male choir - from the beginning, weaving the two cultural threads together. It is a song about being lost and finding one's way back through love - as McKennitt who was led back to her friends in the desert by their lamps. I think I might actually prefer the version that McKennitt sings on her live album, because there she actually SINGS it and here she just chants it, but this is still more than worth hearing and probably my favorite track on the disc.

`The Bonny Swans' illustrates the Irish legend of the young woman who is drowned by her older sister, then becomes a swan (the symbol of death). Her human bones and hair are further transformed into a harp, and finally in that form she confronts her murderer. One point confused me - at the beginning of the song she is a farmer's daughter with two sisters, and at the end a king's daughter with two brothers and a sister. Is this about reincarnation? The universality throughout time of such a story? At any rate, if there is any genuine inconsistency, it is the fault of the source material, not McKennitt.

`The Dark Night of The Soul' was intended by the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross to be his love poem to to G-d, but as McKennitt says, it can represent human love as well as divine. The gorgeous refrain `Oh night, thou was my guide...', etc, is probably the most deeply moving moment on the album.

The title `The Mask and the Mirror' is explained in `Marrakesh Night Market'. By choosing either a mask or a mirror from `the man in the shadowing hood', you can look at yourself, another person, or `the face of your god'. Like `The Mystic's Dream' this is another piece splendidly evocative of distant, exotic lands - you really feel you're in Morocco.

`Full Circle' once again weaves the Celtic and Sufi threads together, comparing McKennitt's own spiritual yearnings as she watches a splendid Arabian desert sunrise to those of the men chanting in the mosques of Morocco and monks in Quebec, and the refrain is a stunning, yearning high vocalise.

I agree with McKennitt that 'Santiago' is `very Semitic in tone' (at least her version - I have not heard the original which she based it on). It sounds very much like a niggun - a wordless melody used by Jews in prayer to achieve states of ecstasy, and one that would be used by Sephardic (i.e Spanish, Moroccan, etc) Jews. The lilting, joyful melody makes one want to get up and dance.

`The Two Trees' is based on a Yeats poem exhorting one to look within oneself for the `holy tree'of goodness, and not the `bitter glass' (another mirror!) of cruelty and cynicism. Here McKennitt is joined by a small string orchestra and the famous classical cellist Ofra Harnoy (talk about luxury casting!). The actual song is preceded by a marvelous pipe introduction, `Ce he mise le ulaingt', splendidly played by its composer, Patrick Hutchinson.

The CD closes with a chant-like rendition of `Prospero's Speech' (that is, the finale of `The Tempest'- I believe somewhat cut), once again alluding to the performer/illusionist taking off his or her mask and leaving us to determine what is real, what is illusion, what is self, and what is divine.

`The Mask and the Mirror' is essential for anyone interested in any of the musical styles or literary references that McKennitt uses, or someone looking for a deeper and more moving experience than your average pop album. If you tend to sneer at and dismiss `new age' music, you might just change your mind. So far, apart from a few tracks I have heard on her live album, this is my first and only experience with Loreena McKennitt. It will not be my last.

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