3 Dreams
About
An hour's enchantment, based on the three dreams in Dante's Divine Comedy. New music composed for the unusual combination of baroque and modern violins weaves around recitations and lecture on Dante and its resonances beyond.
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The music was composed by Stephane Crayton, and Dante's text is performed by Italy's visionary poet, Lorenzo Bastida. The premiere featured Stephane on violin, alongside baroque violinist, Rachel Stroud.
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Since 2022, there have been over a dozen performances across Europe, appearing in palaces, churches, universities, research institutes, and theatres, engaging notably broad audiences.
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3 Dreams continues to be performed widely in both Italian and English versions. It has been recorded, and a number of articles have been written by critics celebrating the project. French and German versions are both in development.
Meet the performers
Stephane Crayton
Modern Violin and Composition
Rachel Stroud
Baroque Violin
Lorenzo Bastida
Lecture and Recitation
Words
A three-part structure:
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Dante's earlier life, drawing on the lesser known Vita Nova
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The three dreams of 'Purgatorio'
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Dreaming as structure and theme of La divina commedia, extending to 'Paradiso'​​​
Music
Three movements, joined together by threads of canons for duo of baroque and modern violins.
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Consider the violins as different instruments: one is strung with gut, the other with steel; they have different angled necks so they are held differently; the baroque bow is shorter, and the modern bow is reinforced with silver, giving power to the tip; the violins are even tuned differently, with the baroque violin essentially a semitone lower at A415 Hz. As a result, the same notation on the page produces a dramatically different result.
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The canons celebrate this difference. They are constructed at the unison, which means that both violinists play exactly the same part just at different times. The result is extraordinary.
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The movements are more like narratives which stage conversations between the two different ways of playing. The first movement is technical and plays on dissonance and tactus; the second, 'Tempo di dormire', begins from a kind of breathing: it is the heart, or rather the lungs, of 3 Dreams; the third works towards a synthesis as the seemingly irresolvable differences of notation and sound miraculously come together.
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See if you can work out how the canons work by listening along with the score below:
Listen here:
