Dante was obsessed with numbers and patterns. In keeping with this, I let each of the 33 cantos of Purgatory inhabit 33 seconds of musical time, yielding a total track length of 18m09s.

Here is the basic overview of

track time [relevant canto(s)] THEME.

00:00-04:24 [01-08] ANTE-PURGATORY

04:24-04:57 [09] THE GATES

04:57-15:57 [10-29] PURGATORY, during which the Seven Terraces are marked by the equivalent number of mandolin chords at
05:30 [11] (First Terrace) PRIDE
06:36 [13] (Second Terrace) ENVY
07:42 [15] (Third Terrace) WRATH
09:21 [18] (Fourth Terrace) SLOTH
09:54 [19] (Fifth Terrace) AVARICE
11:33 [22] (Sixth Terrace) GLUTTONY
13:12 [25] (Seventh Terrace) LUST

14:18-14:51 [27] RITUAL PURIFICATION BY FIRE

14:51-15:57 [28-29] EARTHLY PARADISE, during which Dante - having suffered the loss of Virgil - comes face to face with

15:57-16:30 [30] BEATRICE, and

17:36-18:09 [33] THE STARS

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Since the setting of Purgatory is an earthquake prone mountain covered with walls of rock, massive boulders, stone steps, white marble carvings, the prideful being punished by bearing the weight of heavy rocks, stone effigies, and pavements, I wanted to incorporate stone into my composition.

ANTE-PURGATORY began as a recording of my acoustic guitar, prepared with stones from the beaches of Norfolk, strings struck with wooden chopsticks. (Occasionally, you can hear the stones clicking together and falling off the guitar). After a slow increase in the tempo of this teetering rhythm, this section finishes with 33 continuous beats.

THE GATES features the same prepared guitar being hammered like a dulcimer.

PURGATORY is a 33 second loop being continually overdubbed with live electric guitar, recorded in one take. Purgatory is waiting, so this section tries to capture a sense of time passing slowly and quietly. Entrances to the terraces were later marked with mandolin chords strummed using a stone plectrum.

RITUAL PURIFICATION BY FIRE is a three layered pitch-shifted recording of stones being ground against the top two strings of my acoustic guitar.

EARTHLY PARADISE is keyboard played to replicate the sound of a music box. (The phrase "Paradise is an unwinding music box" kept coming to me that day). The first time we hear the theme it was played live, and anticipates Dante-as-child being chastised by Beatrice-as-mother.

BEATRICE is 33 seconds of silence. Her demolition of Dante is a staggering moment of world literature. Here, we read a medieval male poet attacking himself through the voice of a female. Initially, Beatrice turns to the angels to lambaste Dante, and when she finally addresses him... it is extremely painful for us to hear. I tried several musical themes for this moment, but they all failed miserably. I then recalled the scene in Taxi Driver when Travis (Robert De Niro) makes a humiliating phone call to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) - Martin Scorcese has the camera turn away, as if to spare us seeing another human being suffer the pain of rejection. And thus silence - in this case, the musical equivalent of pulling the camera away - finally offered itself as the most fitting means for communicating Dante's sense of loss, guilt, shame and inadequacy.

(Perhaps this silence can also be heard as an expression of the absence of Virgil, who left Dante at the end of Canto 27).

The silence is broken by the return of the Earthly Paradise theme, but this time it is quantized, the newly punctuated rhythms signifying the beginning of the strict realignment of Dante's soul.

THE STARS is a sample from the closing track of Inferno, "Canto XXXIV We emerged, to see - once more - the stars", avaliable at

howthenightcame.bandcamp.com/album/inferno

Video available at youtu.be/DhkOGP4nVyA