Month: March 2025

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Episode 307 – Blackmore’s Night – Under a Violet Moon (Part 2)

Link to video episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3TFZKqHRJ4

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  • Using the Way Back Machine I got a snapshot of Blackmore’s Night’s website from mid 2000, shortly after their third album was released and just after the website launched.
Extremely 1999 animated GIF from the archived Blackmore’s Night website.

Album Tracks:

All tracks written by Blackmore, Night unless noted. Instrumentals written by Blackmore.

  1. Beyond the Sunset (Instrumental)
  2. March the Heroes Home
  3. Spanish Nights (I Remember it Well)
  4. Catherine Howard’s Fate
  5. Fool’s Gold
  6. Durch den Wald zum Bach Haus (Instrumental)
    • Producer – Jeff Glixman
    • Merlijn: Durch Den Wald Zum Bach Haus is based on one of Bachs Fuga’s. It tells the story of Ritchie visiting Bachs house in Eisenach and being chased by a dog! As told many times on stage as introduction to this song (also by RB himself!)
  7. Now and Then
  8. Self Portrait (Blackmore, Dio)

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Bustin’ Out The Spreadsheet

Reviews

Under A Violet Moon – Album Review
BLACKMORE’S NIGHT UNDER A VIOLET MOON Cold Harbour Recording Co PCCY 01377 : UK : June 1999Few people seemed prepared to venture out on this one, but one of our members who listens to recordings of a lot of early tudor music decided to try and elaborate on the music for us.”Following the usual appalled silence when friends find out that I have quite a collection of early Renaissance music, I quickly deploy my standard defence, i.e. I use it when I teach my ‘A’ Level class about Henry VIII. This usually satisfies them, and hides darker secret – I actually like the stuff. So it was with an interested ear that I sat down to listen to the new Blackmore’s Night offering. I thought it was a very brave decision by Blackmore to try and put across a style of music that in it’s original form is far different to modern sounds. Renaissance music tends to follow very different pathways tonally and is also quite formal. A lot of the music was originally written to facilitate structured courtly dances, incorporating rhythms and tempo changes which seem very awkward to modern ears. I guess that Blackmore had to choose between two routes, either recreate the sound as well as he could – as his been done by ensembles like Red Byrd, a group of modern musicians who aim to present original early music as it was written – or he could modernise the sound of the music. This approach has been well worn by groups like Clannad, Fairport Convention and even Jethro Tull. Unfortunately Blackmore also chose to go this way, laying himself open to the inherent dangers of both cliche and Blackadder style parody (the title song from the second Blackadder series is actually a clever parody of the lute songs of Thomas Campion, who lived from 1567 – 1620).In the end much of “Violet Moon” tips its hat toward the Galliards of the Tudor court, albeit far more up tempo, and also to Irish folk music. Some of the songs, particularly “Catherine Howard’s Fate”, “Fools Gold” and the title track itself would be so much better without any vocals. Not because of any weaknesses in Candice’s voice (which I actually like), but because most early music in that style didn’t have vocals. For myself these tracks were really going somewhere before the vocals came in. The one really convincing Renaissance song “Beyond The Sunset” is actually a Tudor keyboard piece converted to the guitar. The album is overall very frustrating to listen to for me because of the modernisation of the sound. The title track ends up sounding like Clannad during their “Robin Of Sherwood” phase, while “Castles And Dreams” is pure Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. Other songs conjure up entirely inappropriate images. “Gone With The Wind” starts off like “The Final Countdown” by Europe, and “Wind In The Willows” sounds like an entry for the Eurovision song contest. When Blackmore looks elsewhere for inspiration, he sadly ends up in “Riverdances” rather large foot-print. “Morning Star” and “Spanish Nights” suffer most from this, even with the Beethoven steal in the latter. My favourite tracks are those which suffer least from this attempt at modernisation. “Possum Goes To Prague”, “Beyond The Sunset” and “Durch…”, as well as the very pretty “Now And Then”.I really wish Blackmore had been brave enough to take the music back to something more like its original state, right down to using Tudor vocal inflections, and made the majority of the songs instrumental, taking something like the Red Byrd approach but writing his own material. As it currently stands I’m afraid the album is largely a weak pastiche of early music and other bands working in this area, most noticably Clannad. The lyrics themselves are absolutely banal when sung in modern English, but might have been acceptable using the vocal approach of the Tudor times. For all the faults though, the road Blackmore has chosen is a brave one given that most rock fans are pretty unforgiving of other musical genres.” Roy Watson Davies

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