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GETTING THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD IN TUNE
Times Online
May 14, 2010
UK
The elegant and eclectic musician Jordi Savall is on a mission of
peaceGeoff Brown
The cat, Nemo, black as the night, gives me a haughty stare from
its position on top of the sofa. But everything else speaks words
of welcome: the rows of books documenting Man's every thought and
achievement in the arts, religion and the sciences; the stringed
instruments of immense age hanging high on the walls; the fragrance
of burning incense sticks, spreading balm through the rambling and
commodious office lair of Jordi Savall, early-music supremo and the
world's foremost viola da gamba player.
We meet at his home in Bellaterra, a sleepy nook outside Barcelona.
For Savall, it's a rare day at home: the man is forever globe-hopping
with his instrumental group Hespèrion XXI, his choir La Capella
Reial de Catalunya, his wife the singer Montserrat Figueras, or any
other musicians engaged in trademark cross- cultural blockbusters
such as Jerusalem, which he's bringing to the Norfolk & Norwich
Festival tomorrow. Spectacles perched halfway down his nose, the
voice pianissimo, the beard shapely, he emanates the gentle charm of
a humane and scholarly Catalan seigneur.
A force in the field since the 1970s, Savall has always been
industrious and alert to the play of different world cultures. He first
achieved international fame as an exponent of the French Baroque art of
Marin Marais, featured in the popular art-house film Tous les Matins
du Monde (1991); Savall's viol was the soundtrack's star. But since
2005 his fame has shifted, and his industry has become monumental.
That was the year when the first of his celebrated CD books dazed
the world. The Jerusalem book documents the city's turbulent passage
through Jewish, Christian, Arab and Ottoman rule, through peace, war,
human folly and spiritual wisdom, with the aid of two discs, an art
museum of illustrations, texts in eight languages and 436 pages. He
shows me another book, due shortly, exploring the time of the Borgias;
it's even bigger.
In 2008 such culturally diverse projects earned Savall and Figueras
the title of Unesco "Artists for Peace". I ask him if the Iraq war
had anything to do with his heightened cross-cultural activities. "As
Catalans," he whispers, "we have from our history, our genetics,
a special sensitivity to the music of different cultures. But in
the evolution I think the important moment was not Iraq, it was
the invasion of Afghanistan. That was when we really felt the
responsibility to show through music the possibility of dialogue
across different faiths and cultures."
In Jerusalem, conceived by Savall and Manuel Forcano, history's
tapestry is unfurled with specially invited israeli and Palestinian
musicians and others from Armenia, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, even
Afghanistan. There are fanfares, battle music, Jewish chants, Muslim
prayers to Allah. Historical texts, too - "terrible texts," Savall
calls them, such as Pope Urban II summoning the first crusade against
Muslim Turks or, in another project, Pope Innocent III in the 13th
century sharpening swords against the Cathars.
I mention Daniel Barenboim, another ambassador of conflict resolution
through music. "He approaches the problem through classical music, but
the spirit is the same, bringing musicians from all cultures together.
Playing this programme in Jerusalem itself was a very important moment
because we had a very positive audience reaction. But it's hard to
imagine a project like this being played in Gaza."
Are his multinational players happy together? "Now, yes. At the
beginning it was complicated sometimes. When I asked Armenian musicians
to record a Turkish march with Turkish musicians, they said, 'We cannot
possibly play this, it would be like accepting the Armenian genocide'
[in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War]. You have to be
very careful of the sensitivities. Also, we still have problems with
getting visas or problems over security."
Whatever the performers enlisted, Savall's blockbuster projects still
contain regular ingredients: the impassioned soprano of Figueras,
Savall's throbbing viol or lyre, the colourful pipings of the ney and
shofar, the twang of the oud - sounds sometimes plaintive, sometimes
clamorous, and with much improvisation. "With this type of musician,
you never know when they're going to finish!"
It's hard to imagine this scholarly gent getting shook up about Elvis
Presley, but it happened in the 1950s. He formed a group with his
teenage friends, playing guitars, percussion, harmonicas. In the
1970s, after studying at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, he joined
the harpsichordist William Christie and others in the Five Centuries
Ensemble, a group that mixed Monteverdi with the latest pieces from
Berio or Morton Feldman. Serial or atonal music doesn't scare him,
he says. "I love Berg, I love Schoenberg, but in some ways the
modern revolution in music is early music - we have created a real
renaissance, and it's our responsibility to make it live again."
Borgias apart, future projects include a three-part epic on the topic
that never disappears, Peace and War. Savall promises 1,800 years of
musical reverberations from the end of the Pax Romana to the Madrid
train bombings of 2004.
I suggest that to mount such multicultural, interfaith projects he
needs to be an optimist. "An optimist who's also a realist. My idea
is that if you resolve a problem on the small scale, you can find
the solution on the bigger scale. But the problem is you have to
be able to convince people to work at things, to say no to war or
the atomic bomb. There's also the distraction of bread and circuses,
as in ancient times. Today it's cinema, technology, television: they
make us feel good, but they divert us from the things that threaten
our entire civilisation.
"You see," he says, laughing, "I am not so optimistic." But I look
at his sparkling eyes, and I don't believe him.
Jerusalem receives its British premiere at the Theatre Royal, Norwich
(01603 766400), tomorrow.
Times Online
May 14, 2010
UK
The elegant and eclectic musician Jordi Savall is on a mission of
peaceGeoff Brown
The cat, Nemo, black as the night, gives me a haughty stare from
its position on top of the sofa. But everything else speaks words
of welcome: the rows of books documenting Man's every thought and
achievement in the arts, religion and the sciences; the stringed
instruments of immense age hanging high on the walls; the fragrance
of burning incense sticks, spreading balm through the rambling and
commodious office lair of Jordi Savall, early-music supremo and the
world's foremost viola da gamba player.
We meet at his home in Bellaterra, a sleepy nook outside Barcelona.
For Savall, it's a rare day at home: the man is forever globe-hopping
with his instrumental group Hespèrion XXI, his choir La Capella
Reial de Catalunya, his wife the singer Montserrat Figueras, or any
other musicians engaged in trademark cross- cultural blockbusters
such as Jerusalem, which he's bringing to the Norfolk & Norwich
Festival tomorrow. Spectacles perched halfway down his nose, the
voice pianissimo, the beard shapely, he emanates the gentle charm of
a humane and scholarly Catalan seigneur.
A force in the field since the 1970s, Savall has always been
industrious and alert to the play of different world cultures. He first
achieved international fame as an exponent of the French Baroque art of
Marin Marais, featured in the popular art-house film Tous les Matins
du Monde (1991); Savall's viol was the soundtrack's star. But since
2005 his fame has shifted, and his industry has become monumental.
That was the year when the first of his celebrated CD books dazed
the world. The Jerusalem book documents the city's turbulent passage
through Jewish, Christian, Arab and Ottoman rule, through peace, war,
human folly and spiritual wisdom, with the aid of two discs, an art
museum of illustrations, texts in eight languages and 436 pages. He
shows me another book, due shortly, exploring the time of the Borgias;
it's even bigger.
In 2008 such culturally diverse projects earned Savall and Figueras
the title of Unesco "Artists for Peace". I ask him if the Iraq war
had anything to do with his heightened cross-cultural activities. "As
Catalans," he whispers, "we have from our history, our genetics,
a special sensitivity to the music of different cultures. But in
the evolution I think the important moment was not Iraq, it was
the invasion of Afghanistan. That was when we really felt the
responsibility to show through music the possibility of dialogue
across different faiths and cultures."
In Jerusalem, conceived by Savall and Manuel Forcano, history's
tapestry is unfurled with specially invited israeli and Palestinian
musicians and others from Armenia, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, even
Afghanistan. There are fanfares, battle music, Jewish chants, Muslim
prayers to Allah. Historical texts, too - "terrible texts," Savall
calls them, such as Pope Urban II summoning the first crusade against
Muslim Turks or, in another project, Pope Innocent III in the 13th
century sharpening swords against the Cathars.
I mention Daniel Barenboim, another ambassador of conflict resolution
through music. "He approaches the problem through classical music, but
the spirit is the same, bringing musicians from all cultures together.
Playing this programme in Jerusalem itself was a very important moment
because we had a very positive audience reaction. But it's hard to
imagine a project like this being played in Gaza."
Are his multinational players happy together? "Now, yes. At the
beginning it was complicated sometimes. When I asked Armenian musicians
to record a Turkish march with Turkish musicians, they said, 'We cannot
possibly play this, it would be like accepting the Armenian genocide'
[in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War]. You have to be
very careful of the sensitivities. Also, we still have problems with
getting visas or problems over security."
Whatever the performers enlisted, Savall's blockbuster projects still
contain regular ingredients: the impassioned soprano of Figueras,
Savall's throbbing viol or lyre, the colourful pipings of the ney and
shofar, the twang of the oud - sounds sometimes plaintive, sometimes
clamorous, and with much improvisation. "With this type of musician,
you never know when they're going to finish!"
It's hard to imagine this scholarly gent getting shook up about Elvis
Presley, but it happened in the 1950s. He formed a group with his
teenage friends, playing guitars, percussion, harmonicas. In the
1970s, after studying at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, he joined
the harpsichordist William Christie and others in the Five Centuries
Ensemble, a group that mixed Monteverdi with the latest pieces from
Berio or Morton Feldman. Serial or atonal music doesn't scare him,
he says. "I love Berg, I love Schoenberg, but in some ways the
modern revolution in music is early music - we have created a real
renaissance, and it's our responsibility to make it live again."
Borgias apart, future projects include a three-part epic on the topic
that never disappears, Peace and War. Savall promises 1,800 years of
musical reverberations from the end of the Pax Romana to the Madrid
train bombings of 2004.
I suggest that to mount such multicultural, interfaith projects he
needs to be an optimist. "An optimist who's also a realist. My idea
is that if you resolve a problem on the small scale, you can find
the solution on the bigger scale. But the problem is you have to
be able to convince people to work at things, to say no to war or
the atomic bomb. There's also the distraction of bread and circuses,
as in ancient times. Today it's cinema, technology, television: they
make us feel good, but they divert us from the things that threaten
our entire civilisation.
"You see," he says, laughing, "I am not so optimistic." But I look
at his sparkling eyes, and I don't believe him.
Jerusalem receives its British premiere at the Theatre Royal, Norwich
(01603 766400), tomorrow.