László Hortobágyi László Hortobágyi: Fata-organa

BMCCD039 2000

This master of the fusion of various musical cultures has embarked upon an unprecedented venture. In his virtual Muslim organ mass the traditional European concept of culture encounters the spirituality of Muslim ritual, where the organ-sounds are pieced together from original sound samples taken from a dozen famous European organs. László Hortobágyi's discography includes over twenty albums, of which several ten thousands have been sold worldwide.


About the album

Composed and mixed at the Gäyan Uttejak Studio by el-Hortobägyi (1977-1997)

Portrait photo: Lenke Szilágyi
Design: ArtHiTech

Produced by László Gőz

The recording was sponsored by the National Cultural Fund of Hungary.


3500 HUF 11 EUR

Currently out of stock.


László Hortobágyi: Fata-organa

01 Jama Masjīd 0:32
02 Na'at Intrada 3:39
03 Arabesq I.: “Sūratū Mēm” 1:20
04 Tropus: “Szleg bemolizada...” 2:53
05 Arabesq II.: “Acid Choral” 1:20
06 Kāfī-toccata 5:03
07 Nagmā-metabolism 3:13
08 Mishra-sequela 3:58
09 Orcus-paraclete 8:42
10 Choral-sūra: “Le sentiment du déja vu...” 1:21
11 Bassacaglia 6:48
12 Melos-chroma 6:41
13 Fata-organa 8:43
14 Choral-sūra: “Nihil est in intellectu...” 1:37
15 Todī-paraphonia 8:41
16 Arabesq III.: “Necro-Sūra” 3:40
Total time 68:01

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True honour to the Grand Moguls of the 19th and 20th centuries' supramundane Organ Music:

Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899)
Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Max Reger (1873-1916)
Charles Maria Widor (1844-1937)
Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
Marcel Dupre (1886-1970)
Maurice Durufle (1902-1974)

It seems that music in our world is the sweet poison of humanity and at the same time the most sensitive test-paper of the feelings of the western society that is in the process of orientalization (i.e. setting up its system of castes).

Rituals and beliefs - as the ectoplasms of the human brain and imagination creating symbols - substitute the rationally perceivable world: the traditions of dead generations have a nightmarish impact on the fantasy of the living. This functions as the daily historical practice of the cocooned Self, the individual that has been crushed by the social block of the biggest human-societal evil.

The demographic and the cultural socio-overpressure of the (not always) free market offers an infinite selection of the materialized mutations of the consciousness of the biological and cultural monsters of alienation. The Earth is slowly covered by the mucus of the “alien-generation”.

(On the other hand) In the material of this record the organ - the most alienated instrument of the European architectural musical high culture: the hidden meaning of a ritual architectural element and a transcendent musical instrument - meets the spirituality of the Muslim tradition, which - from a European viewpoint - is regarded as coming from a completely different world. The imaginary world of the Fata Organa attempts to depict this otherwise trivial possibility: the common root of cultures, which spans over time and space, is nothing but the age old essence of human misery, which - as the thread of Ariadne - connects the seemingly strange-but-familiar world of mankind with the techniques of the art of how to break out of it.

Each of the disposition elements in the music of Fata-organa is original and traditional but digitally reconstructed. Here the new timbre or tone-colour is made up of tens of thousands of “model-cells” - the original tone split into atoms. None of the figuring dispositions are in the reality: they consist of long takes of organ-stops (registers) and digitally rearranged of their original acoustic, live recordings. (Except track 12) The technological basis of this procedure is a PCM morphologie using up the old FFT spectrum analysis as an algorhythm-controller (like ”convolution”) and a virtual overtone synthesis software, hardware developed by el-Hortobägyi.

No additional equalization, compression or artifical pottering was employed while composing, mixing the master disc, thus assuring a virtually perfect match to the original organ recordings.

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