LITANIES Nicholas Lens & Nick Cave

• 1Litany of Divine Absence05:30
• 2Litany of The First Encounter04:49
• 3Litany of Blooming05:43
• 4Litany of The Sleeping Dream06:26
• 5Litany of The Yearning05:04
• 6Litany of Fragmentation06:19
• 7Litany of The Forsaken03:46
• 8Litany of Gathering Up04:11
• 9Litany of Transformation05:23
• 10Litany of Godly Love04:45
• 11Litany of The Unnamed05:21
• 12Litany of Divine Presence05:25
• Total Runtime01:02:42

Info for LITANIES

Perhaps best-known for his distinctive vocal style, Australian polymath Nick Cave here steps into the spotlight as librettist rather than performer, for a second operatic project with Belgian composer Nicholas Lens. Having collaborated on Shell Shock in 2014, they joined forces again during the global lockdown to create a new work, L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S.. At Lens’s request, Cave penned 12 litanies – “petitions to a divine maker” – simple, moving texts which the composer then wove into what he calls a “modest chamber opera of sleeping dreams”. Riding his bike around an unusually empty Brussels, Lens had been reminded of the magical stillness of the Rinzai Zen temples he had seen in rural Japan. Memories of these structures and of the inner peace he experienced while visiting them were the initial inspiration for the minimalistic, at times trance-like music of L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S., which features Denzil Delaere, N.L. Noorenbergh, Claron McFadden and Lens’s artist daughter Clara-Lane on vocals. Though the eleven instrumentalists recorded their parts individually in Lens’s home, to respect social distancing guidelines, there is a clear unity of purpose about the finished opera, a work of gentle beauty.

Nick Cave takes up the story: “Nicholas called me during lockdown and asked if I would write ‘12 litanies’. I happily agreed. The first thing I did after I put down the phone was search ‘What is a litany?’ I learned that a litany was ‘a series of religious petitions’, and realised I had been writing litanies all my life.”

He wrote 12 lyrical pieces that tracked the birth, blooming, fracturing and eventual rebirth of a human being and which were “petitions to a divine maker demanding some sort of cosmic acknowledgement”. To Lens, the term suggests “a pure form of poetry… a lyrical form of minimalism which might lead to a trance-like state”, and he acknowledges that both men have entirely different ideas about what L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S means.

Lens cautions people not to think of the finished work, which will be released in digital, CD and vinyl formats on 4 December 2020 by Deutsche Grammophon, as being like a traditional, staged opera with well-defined characters and a clear narrative arc: “I would hate to irritate the opera purists! Maybe think of it more as a modest chamber opera of sleeping dreams, a trance trip that doesn’t want to stop for an hour, a weird ride that takes the listener through strange turns…”

The recording was very much a DIY affair and the “modest” chamber ensemble involved was mainly composed of people who simply happened to be around Lens during lockdown. Among the 11 piece instrumental group who recorded L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S was his artist daughter Clara-Lane, who had found herself trapped in Brussels due to the travel ban. Under normal circumstances she has no interest in recording music, but here she found herself playing keyboards, helping out with production and even singing on some of the tracks.

Because of the social distancing rules, each of the musicians had to come in and record his or her part separately, but the beautiful and moving finished work reveals a unified group working with a singular purpose. Studios were completely closed down so Lens arranged the sessions in his own home, and he feels that some of the atmosphere of the “dead and spooky city with its weird ambience” has permeated this special recording.

Lens laughs: “In the end, all of this was recorded in one room, so it literally is chamber music!”

Nicholas Lens & Nick Cave

Nicholas Lens
The multi-disciplinary artist Nicholas Lens is a contemporary Belgian author/composer and (recently as well) director. He was born in Ypres, the small but legendary first world war town near the French boarder in Belgium. He started studying violin with his godfather when he was five. Once when he was playing in a very enthusiastic way during the lessons, his bow touched, by accident, the director of the local academy on one of his vital organs. So the little Nicholas' violin career ended when he was ten. His first television appearance was as a trumpet player when he was eleven. He was asked to play “The Last Post” at an official ceremony at a British and American war cemetery. Nicholas was wearing short pants and it was freezing cold. The television crew members offered him some brandy. The version of “The Last Post” he played during the ceremony on his trumpet was never heard before. Later on, while he was studying at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, he started composing professionally for theatrical projects, film and television. While he was a member of the National Orchestra of Belgium, the conductor Mendi Rodan offered him a contract as a double bass player in the Israel Sinfonietta in Beersheeva, Israel. He had to make an important choice between the career of a professional musician and the uncertain life conditions of an autodidact composer. He made his choice. Meanwhile he was caught by the virus of globetrotting. Inspired by this new passion, adventurous traveling, he started to create a musical -and recently as well a visual- oeuvre of the maze of images gathered in his mind. His work is published by Schott Music Mainz/New York.

Nicholas Lens is single dad and lives in Brussels with his daughter Clara-Lane. The works of Nicholas Lens are supported by The Yuko Ikewada Foundation, Tokyo /Venice.

Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor, best known for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Cave's music is generally characterised by his baritone voice, emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love and violence.[2]

Born and raised in rural Victoria, Cave studied art in Melbourne before fronting The Birthday Party, one of the city's leading post-punk bands, in the late 1970s. They relocated to London in 1980, but, disillusioned by life there, evolved towards a darker, more challenging sound that helped inspire gothic rock, and acquired a reputation as "the most violent live band in the world".[3] Cave became recognised for his confrontational performances, his shock of black hair and pale, emaciated look. The band broke up soon after moving to Berlin in 1982, and Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds the year after, later described as one of rock's "most redoubtable, enduring" bands.[4] Much of their early material is set in a mythic American Deep South, drawing on spirituals and Delta blues, while Cave's preoccupation with Old Testament notions of good versus evil culminated in what has been called his signature song, "The Mercy Seat" (1988), and in his debut novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989). Also in 1988, he starred in Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, an Australian prison film which he co-wrote and scored.

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