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Story behind the song
I first drew this melody back in 2005 when I was participating in a project with Radio Nacional de Espana (National Radio Broadcast of Spain) Although the first version was composed for flute and harp, I rapidly got hypnotised by the sound of Spanish guitar, which was the final sound chosen. In this track, which clearly resembles a dance, I wanted to work on the expressive power of the 5/8 rhythm and also give a notorious presence to silences. You will note that at the end of each paragraph, the music stops and the dancer keeps still, like an sculpture, in which light and silence say it all. The overall atmosphere is inspired in seascapes of the Aegean in Greece, and the music style grabs much of the essence of Manos Hatzidakis. Jorge Grundmand helped me in the final mixing and production phase, providing a much richer deep of field and instruments separation.
A brief extract of the Celtic legend in which the track is inspired:
Cliodhna was a beautiful maiden of the Tuatha De Danann who fell in love with a mortal man Caoimhin of the Curling Locks. Caoimhin had been thrown out of the Fianna for immorality, but Cliodhna did not bother about that and they ran off together. Unfortunately Cliodhna was swept home to her own country by a magical wave off the coast of Cork. She became known as the Fairy Queen of Munster.
In the 15th century she was called on by Cormac Mac Carthy the builder of Blarney Castle, for help in a lawsuit. Cliodhna told him to kiss the first stone he saw in the morning. Cormac did so and argued his case with such dazzling rhetoric that he won the suit. Concerned that the powers of the stone would turn Ireland into a nation of glib liars, Cormac hid it away in a wall of his castle where it is regularly kissed to this day mainly by American visitors to Ireland.
Cliodhna had three brightly coloured birds which fed on the apples of the otherworld tree and sang so sweetly that they could soothe the sick to sleep.
