by Charles T. Downey
The giants of the early music movement of the
1970s have reached their golden years, a fact brought home in the last
couple years by the passing of Gustav Leonhardt and Christopher Hogwood. One of them, viola da gambist and conductor Jordi
Savall, 73, shows no signs of slowing down. His discography, already
burgeoning with over 100 recordings by his various ensembles and other
combinations, continues to grow apace each year. Savall is not only a
musical luminary, though. Many of his concert programs attempt to foster
peace and mutual understanding in conflicts between national and
religious enemies. His example of humanist pacifism, which goes beyond
mere words into actions, is an inspiration to many around the world.
That includes in his native Catalonia, where he continues to be a calm but steady voice for the movement toward independence from Spain. This month he joined with Josep Carreras (the Catalonian opera singer who used to style his first name as José) and four other public figures to issue a public call to allow an independence referendum in Catalonia to proceed on November 9, which the Spanish government declared illegal at the end of September. In gratitude for all he has done for his homeland, the Generalitat of Catalonia recognized Savall with its highest honor, la Medalla de Oro, earlier this week.
The
recorded legacy of Jordi Savall dates back to the 1970s, in albums he
made with La Petite Band and the Ricercare-Ensemble für Alte Musik of
Zurich. In the same decade, he started his own small early music
ensemble, Hespèrion XX (the number now increased by a century change to
XXI), to be complemented in the late 1980s by a choral ensemble called
La Capella Reial de Catalunya and a Baroque orchestra called Le Concert
des Nations. With these groups, Savall has made reference recordings of
major works of music history, including Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine and opera L’Orfeo; J. S. Bach’s orchestral suites, Brandenburg
concertos, Art of Fugue, Musical
Offering, and B-Minor Mass; Handel’s Water Music and Music for the Royal
Fireworks; Purcell’s Fairy Queen; and
Mozart’s Requiem Mass.
As
good as some of those recordings were, the many smaller recordings,
bringing together wisps and strands of forgotten repertories, are
perhaps more memorable and deserving of praise. My research for this
appreciation of Savall’s work began with gathering together all of the
recordings I had purchased, received, and written about over the years.
It formed an impressive pile, but I was hardly surprised, upon further
examination, that I had barely scratched the surface. From medieval
chant and troubadour songs to Renaissance polyphony and villancicos,
from courtly European dance music to folk song from France and Turkey
and the Balkans, from Vivaldi’s operas Teuzzone and Farnace to Haydn’s Seven Last Words (recorded in the church of Santa Cueva
in Cádiz, where the score was premiered) and even Beethoven, Savall has
recorded it.
Fortunately, for the listener who
wants to get a more complete idea of what Savall has accomplished on
record, Savall made the savvy decision to start his own record label, Alia Vox, which keeps all of the titles, past and more recent, in
circulation. Savall and his musicians were not the first to take the
matter of distributing their recordings into their own hands, an honor
that falls to the Tallis Scholars, who established their Gimell label in
1980. Even so, they were early implementers in the self-publishing
boom, inaugurating Alia Vox before Philip Glass’s Orange Mountain Music,
the London Symphony Orchestra's self-titled label, and John Eliot
Gardiner’s Soli Deo Gloria. Alia Vox was a family affair, undertaken
with his creative muse and wife, Montserrat Figueras, who died in 2011. The goal was to spread the music,
rather than make a profit, but from its founding in 1998 until 2005,
according to the company's Web site, it sold more than two million
discs.
Rather than focusing on the work of
single composers, which would make it easier for me to file his
recordings in my collection, Savall has long favored historical
mélanges. A Savall disc uses music to illustrate history, bringing
together works that can be associated with a single influential ruler
(Isabella I of Spain, Emperor Charles V, Alfonso the Magnanimous, Louis
XV), a city or region (Istanbul, Jerusalem, the Balkans, the
Mediterranean), or musical form (ostinato bass, villancico).
For
his most significant research projects, Savall has turned to a new type
of record packaging, the CD-Book, where extensive background
information is marshaled into a hardbound book format, with the CDs
tucked into pockets under the covers. (These books are usually in
fiendishly tiny print, because all of the texts are translated into
several languages, with Catalonian, pointedly but diplomatically,
alongside Castilian, what most of the world would call Spanish.) Some of
my favorites include the CD-Book dedicated to Erasmus and his book In Praise of Folly; a chronological tracing of music
associated with members of the Borgia family; music for and about the
life of Joan of Arc; and an exploration of the “forgotten kingdom” of
the Cathars, wiped out by the Albigensian Crusade.
Perhaps no Savall project quite incarnates his cross-disciplinary leanings as much as the CD-Book Don Quijote de la Mancha: Romances y Músicas. Recorded
in 2005, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Don
Quixote, this set attempted to provide a musical soundtrack
for the book, interspersed with readings from the novel. Every time that
Cervantes mentions music being performed, which is quite often, Savall
found the actual piece referenced by Cervantes or, when that was not
possible, something from the period that was appropriate for what is
described in the novel. The result enriches readers of the novel and
listeners of the music alike.
Savall has even larger aims for his work, as he told Bertrand Dermoncourt in an interview for L'Express in 2011. He spoke about a
recording project that brought together Israeli and Palestinian
musicians (my translation): "Conflicts remain and we felt them during
our projects reuniting musicians from different backgrounds, from
countries that politics divided. Tension was palpable in the first
rehearsals. Then we were surprised by Israelis and Palestinians having
fun singing the same songs together during breaks. Nothing and no one
made them do it. It was the power of music: it can bring peace because
it forces you to converse and respect one another."
Charles T. Downey runs a thriving blog (est. 2003), freelances for the Washington Post, and teaches music and art history at St. Anselm's Abbey School. He holds the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in musicology from the Catholic University of America. Downey's “Meet the Moderator” page is HERE.
Charles T. Downey runs a thriving blog (est. 2003), freelances for the Washington Post, and teaches music and art history at St. Anselm's Abbey School. He holds the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in musicology from the Catholic University of America. Downey's “Meet the Moderator” page is HERE.
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