Tempvs Fvgit
Photo by Pascal Renucci.
Receiving almost a hundred new albums every month — and often giving a band just thirty seconds to catch my attention with their very first notes — my ear inevitably becomes a little jaded. That’s why discoveries like the Corsican band Tempvs Fvgit and their far-from-debut album Da caminu feel so striking. A truly beautiful voice, and the ability to sing in tune at all, have sadly become rare in today’s music. So when the unreal beauty of their male vocal harmonies made me want to replay the album several times and then get to know the musicians better, I knew I had found something special. Please welcome Patrick Vignoli, the artistic director of Tempvs Fvgit from the beautiful island of Corsica.
Daryana: Can you tell us the story of how your band was formed and how you chose the name?
Patrick Vignoli: The group was formed twenty-five years ago. It all began when Eric Natali, my lifelong friend, reached out to me, saying they were missing a voice for a project of sacred chants. I immediately said yes, captivated by the idea: we were to resurrect a forgotten Mass from the Nebbiu region, learn it, and record it, preserving it forever on a disc.
This Mass was unique and mysterious. It had once been banned by the Church, for it still carried Byzantine and Mozarabic echoes — traces of influences from distant lands and other times. Immersing ourselves in this world, we were deeply struck by the power of musical memory and by the way time flows through and shapes these works.
It was from this experience that the name Tempvs Fvgit was born. We chose it for several reasons. First, because working on this lost Mass confronted us directly with the passage of time: these chants had traveled across centuries to reach us, a fragile yet enduring breath from the past. Second, the notion of passing time resonates deeply with us — it reflects our human condition, our ways of living, adapting, resisting, or yielding to the inevitability that touches us every day, every hour, every second. Finally, choosing a Latin name felt natural: Latin, the language of the sacred, and the root of the Corsican language, perfectly embodies our artistic and cultural identity.
DA: What traditions or regions most influence your music, and how do you blend them with your own style?
PV: Corsican traditions, of course, lie at the very heart of our inspiration. They form our foundation, our anchor, the voice of our island that we carry with us wherever we go. Yet our ears and our curiosity reach far beyond: we also draw nourishment from the cultures of the Mediterranean basin, and even from the polyphonies of the Caucasus. These influences subtly emerge in our songs, through certain harmonies, distinctive modes, rhythms, or unique atmospheres.
We like to think of our work as a dialogue between traditions: those of Corsica meeting those of distant lands, creating unexpected resonances and bridges between peoples. For us, it is a way of connecting the intimate to the universal, the local to the foreign, and of showing that polyphonic music, in its emotional and spiritual dimension, is a language capable of transcending borders, of telling shared stories, and of opening a collective memory of human voices.
DA: Your music walks the line between preserving Corsican polyphonic tradition and reimagining it. How does your creative process work when arranging traditional material versus writing original songs?
PV: Our creative process is, above all, instinctive: it unfolds naturally, without striving for effects or aiming to reproduce the past exactly. It is the voices, their intonations, their colors, and the way we carry the songs that sustain a living connection with tradition.
For us, tradition is not merely about knowing how to light a fire, but about keeping it alive, nourishing it, and letting it shine through time. It is in constant motion, always contemporary to its era, capable of evolving while preserving its essence. Our songs are therefore not exact replicas of the past, but living breaths, renewed with each performance, in dialogue with the present.
From the very beginning, our approach has not been an aesthetic project alone: it is the land, the territory, nature, the environment, and above all the profound bond that humans maintain with their land that shape the final aesthetic. This becomes a spontaneous, pure, and sincere echo of tradition — a rooted expression that remains open to the world, faithful to memory, and attentive to the present moment.
DA: What do you hope audiences feel or experience when they hear your music live, especially in churches?
PV: Above all, we wish for our audience to feel what we feel. Every time we sing, our desire is to create an immediate, sensitive, almost physical connection with those who listen. Our songs arise from our intimate history, from our joys and our wounds, yet this intimacy touches something universal: each listener can find a part of their own journey within it. We start from the infinitely small, from the personal experience, to reach toward something larger, toward what transcends and connects us, toward the universal language that is music.
In our concerts, it is not merely a question of performing musical pieces, but of sharing a moment of truth and humanity. Every voice, every breath, every silence becomes an invitation to enter into an emotional communion. We aim to offer the audience an experience that goes beyond listening — a space where they can recognize themselves, be moved, find calm, reflect, or simply feel.
In this sense, our songs and concerts are moments of deep communication, meeting places where emotions flow freely, where the intimate merges with the collective, and where the ephemeral transforms into shared memory.
DA: Do you have upcoming concerts, festivals, or projects that you are especially excited about?
PV: All the projects on the horizon excite us, because from the very beginning, what we have loved most is meeting people, discovering other cultures, and sharing our world with as many as possible. It is also an opportunity to introduce our country, Corsica, and to convey the beauty of our language.
Among the upcoming projects, one in particular fascinates us: the possibility of singing on Easter Island. It feels both extraordinary and almost surreal, and the idea alone fills us with immense excitement. We also dream of one day presenting our polyphonic work in the United States. It is a country I hold dear; I have been fortunate to travel through 35 states, always with the same wonder and fascination.
DA: You recorded Da caminu live in the church of San Ghjisé. How did the acoustics and environment of that sacred space shape the album’s emotional impact?
PV: Our songs are not religious in the strict sense, yet they always exist at the threshold of the sacred, the profane, and the mystical. Churches are for us privileged spaces where these emotions and spiritual dimensions can fully resonate, where our sonic universe can unfold in all its depth.
For this recording, we made a deliberate artistic choice: to give the album the sound and energy of a live concert. We wanted listeners, at the end of the album, to feel as if they had truly been present, sharing that unique moment with us. In this regard, the church of San Ghjisè in Bastia was the perfect setting: its acoustics, its light, and its atmosphere all contributed to creating a total sense of immersion.
But beyond the acoustics and the setting, this church is much more than a mere workspace — it is our home. It is where we gather to rehearse, to exchange ideas, to share, and sometimes even to pray. Every stone, every vault seems to carry our history, our emotions, and our songs, and it is this intimacy that nourishes the depth of our music.
DA: Who do you think is your audience? And how to make acoustic, slow, intimate polyphony to align with modern high speed life?
PV: We hope not to have a single audience, but many audiences. Our songs are for all those who choose to offer an hour of their precious time to share a moment with us. We conceive our concerts as true spaces for breathing, both physical and spiritual: a pause outside of time, far from the tumult, noise, and fury of the outside world.
When the audience crosses the threshold of the church, they leave that agitation behind and enter a space where they can listen, reflect, and let themselves be carried away. Our concerts resemble traditional evening gatherings, like those once held in Corsican homes around the fire: family, friends, and passing travelers would gather to hear the stories of the elders mingling with those of the young.
It is in this spirit that we share our songs: we tell our story, the story of Tempvs Fvgit, our joys, our sorrows, our encounters — through sound, voice, harmony, words, and the body.
DA: Which moments from Da caminu resonate most deeply with you personally, and why?
PV: “Ora IX” is a very special song for us, as it pays tribute to our friend Benoît, who passed away a few years ago, in the midst of recording an album. The piece expresses, in its very sound, the violence, grief, and anger we felt upon learning of his death. This rupture left a void within us so vivid that it has become a kind of daily presence, almost tangible, which still moves through us today. Recording the album without him was an incredibly difficult experience.
“L’Omu,” on the other hand, holds an equally special place in my heart: it is my very first composition. I wrote the text and composed the five voices. But above all, it is important because it reflects on the dual nature of Christ. I chose to focus on his human side — his doubts, his solitude — elements that profoundly move me and to which I feel deeply connected.
DA: What do titles of the songs mean? Why are there “Vindicatio 3,” “Vindicatio 2″ and Vindicatio 1”? “Ora III” and “Ora IV”?
PV: Vindicatio is an ancient legal term referring to the act of seeking reparation through vengeance. In Corsica, vengeance is both endemic and traditional, often spanning multiple generations. These chants were composed at the request of a contemporary dance company working on Colomba by Prosper Mérimée, a work that precisely evokes this violence. Through these pieces, the intention was to express — and demonstrate — that vengeance is an archaic notion, and that not all traditions necessarily deserve to be preserved or perpetuated.
The ORA chants, in contrast, evoke the life of a human being, symbolically condensed into a single day: the twelve hours of the day, plus a thirteenth, that of the beyond, the unknown. “Ora III” expresses the encounters and bonds we forge along our life’s journey, while “Ora VII” reflects the passage of time flowing through our veins, like sand slipping through an hourglass.
