Barlaam and Josaphat: A Musical Glossolalia in the Royal Chapel of Drottningholm
And it is precisely this journey through languages that constitutes one of the most fascinating elements of the entire work. The text emerges from fragments belonging to seven different linguistic traditions: Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Old Croatian, Old French, Old Occitan, and Italian.
Yet this is no mere philological mosaic. Each language carries its own sonic universe: the weight of consonants changes, as do the duration of vowels, accents, and prosody—and with them, the very way in which the word can become music.
Multilingualism thus becomes a true musical glossolalia, almost a Pentecost of sound.
Glossolalia, the "speaking in tongues" associated in the Acts of the Apostles with the descent of the Holy Spirit, finds here a striking musical transfiguration: languages distant from one another in both time and space follow one another without their difference producing estrangement. Each retains its own timbre, rhythm, and articulation, yet all flow together through Livljanić's voice into a single sonic narrative.
As in the miracle of Pentecost, the multiplicity of languages does not divide, but becomes a possibility of understanding: a glossolalia in which music itself becomes a common language.
The direction of Yoshi Oida, with assistance from Yasuyo Mochizuki, supports this dimension without ever overloading it. It does not construct a stage around the music, but allows gesture, voice, gaze, and the relationship between the performers to populate the space. The gestural language, also nourished by the experience of Asian theatre, thus seems to return the legend imaginatively towards those Eastern origins from which its extraordinarily long journey began.
Alongside Livljanić, Norbert Rodenkirchen, on flutes and harp, and Albrecht Maurer, on vielle and rebec, never fulfil a merely accompanying role. They play, but gradually become characters within the narrative. (...)
The boundary between musician and character grows ever thinner, and the instruments themselves acquire an autonomous dramaturgical function: the rebec can become unease; the flute can evoke an indefinable distance; the harp can suspend, for a few moments, the onward movement of the narrative.
Livljanić's musical reconstruction and textual adaptation, together with the instrumental work of Rodenkirchen and Maurer, therefore do not seek the illusion of restoring a lost score. The sources are traversed, absorbed, and recomposed: melodies, formulas, modes of performance, and different traditions flow together into a continuum in which it becomes almost impossible to distinguish reconstruction, interpretation, and new creation. (...)
Perhaps it is precisely this layering that gives the performance its particular sacredness. Barlaam and Josaphat reminds us how deeply, for centuries, music and ritual shared the same space. Here, sound does not accompany the sacred as an ornament: it helps to create it. (...) To hear Dialogos in the Slottskyrka makes it evident once again how the quality of music itself can become part of the spiritual experience.(...)
Perhaps this is the deepest meaning of the name Dialogos: to remind us that a tradition remains alive not when it is preserved unchanged, but when it continues to speak, to transform itself, and to travel.
Mirko Gragnato, Musica, August 2026
The singer with her infallible intuition for controlled affect and inner balance...
With only a few notes, Albrecht Maurer and Norbert Rodenkirchen support the voice structurally and accompany it expertly and meditatively... It is best to let oneself be drawn in by the strong appeal, by the persuasive power of sparse, but sensual, artistic means.
Concerto, Reinhard Kriechbaum, January-March 2022
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