Jordi Savall Gives 'Around the World' the Album of the Year -- and Much More

The album that best represents a year the closes a decade full of events that one might, if one were so inclined, describe as biblical?

It's hard to argue with one that starts with an evocation of the horns bringing down the walls of Jericho:

Jordi Savall, 'Jericho':


And that ends with a music (perhaps fantasy) representation of world peace, the instruments and voices of the battling cultures of the Middle East together in a lively, vibrant sonic tapestry:

Jordi Savall, 'Final':


Even without that topical framework, a case can be made that the most impressive release of the past year was the one framed by these selections: 'Jerusalem,' two CDs tracing a musical journey of three millennia and multiple cultures of the city that stands as the capital of much of the history of civilization. The music was made by a consortium of cross-cultural musicians under the ambitious direction of Spain's Jordi Savall, one of the leading figures in early music of various cultures for more than three decades as a musical director of several ensembles, historian and virtuoso of the ancient viol (a predecessor to the cello).

For this project, Savall has marshaled the talents of the early music group Hespèrion XXI and vocal ensemble La Capella Reial de Catalunya (both of which he has led for several decades), the Palestinian Sufi group Al-Darwish of Galilee, musicians from Israel, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Iraq, Syria, Morocco and Afghanistan, and the remarkable his wife and long-time musical partner Montserrat Figueras. Released by his Alia Vox label, it comes packaged in an elaborate 432-page book, with essays and artwork detailing bespeaking the extensive research behind the music -- presented in eight languages: French, Castilian Spanish, English, Catalan, German, Italian, Arabic and Hebrew.

"I think in this context of so many negatives, so little hope, everybody has a responsibility and I think music has a very strong power," Savall says in a lively phone chat from his home outside Barcelona. "We have a big responsibility to demonstrate that with all these different cultures we can do this together -- we are different but we are not enemies."

It's all part of a Savall-supervised Raíces & Memoria (Roots & Memory) series looking at the music of cultural crossroads-both in geography and time -- that's previously included among others 2006's 'Paraisos Perdidos.' inspired by the momentous changes to Hesperia and the New World coinciding with Columbus' explorations, and 2007's 'The Route to the Orient,' tracing the journey from Europe to India, China and Japan by 16th century missionary Francisco Javier, both also in two-CD and book presentations.

And now the series includes candidates for next year's top releases in 'Istanbul' (exploring the intersections of Ottoman, Sephardic and Armenian traditions in that city) and 'The Forgotten Kingdom: The Albigensian Crusade' (looking at a dramatic chapter in medieval Europe). Meanwhile, Savall is preparing for a project teaming with Mexican musicians to explore 17th-century Spanish-Mexican music along with traditions from Oaxaca, Colombia and Venezuela.

As if that's not enough, he's also recently explored Irish and Scottish music with harpist Andrew Lawrence-King on "The Celtic Viol" (with a second volume planned) and produces a long-running women's ensemble Lux Feminae. And wait, there's more: Savall will be serving as guest conductor of the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in a US tour in March. And we're not done yet: Savall and Figueras have two children: harpist-singer Arianna and theorbo (bass lute) player and singer Ferran, both of whom perform with their parents and on their own projects. (Details about all the albums and artists can be found at the Alia Vox Web site linked above.)

All this fits well with -- and is reason for -- Savall and Figueras having been appointed UNESCO Ambassadors of Peace in 2008.

"It's a cultural mission," he says. "Music is a special mission. We have to return to the spiritual mission and sympathy and empathy. Somebody said that it makes sense after Auschwitz to make music. We have to consider the power of the culture, the art, the music, not only aesthetically, not only for the beauty and pleasure, but it has to be something related to the spirituality and the human dimension."

Apart from that noble intent, 'Jerusalem' is a remarkable portrait of a remarkable city, with psalms, Christian chants, songs of the Crusades, Arabic instrumentals and prayers, Ottoman classical and military tunes all in tribute to the various cultures that have held the city, sometimes in peace and sometimes in conflict.

'Istanbul' and 'The Forgotten Kingdom' are very much of a piece with this. The former, a single-CD set being released in the US in January, brings together Hespèrion XXI with an ensemble of Turkish musicians led by Kudsi Erguner, master of the ney (flute) and one of the leading figures in the preservation and revitalization of Turkish music. The set revolves around 'The Book of the Science of Music,' an examination of the richness of Istanbul's musical mixings written by Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir, who came to the city as a hostage in 1693 but soon settled into local life as a diplomat and scholar of arts and literature under the auspices of Sultan Ahmed III.

The album rotates among the three cultures, portraying a lively capital in which the strong, imperialistic Ottoman identity coexisted with the welcoming embrace showed to other cultures, such as that of the Sephardic Jews who had been taken in after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The respective musics simultaneous borrowed from each other and maintained their own distinct characteristics as can be heard both in the Sephardic piece 'Los Paxaricos':
:
Jordi Savall, 'Los Paxaricos'


and the Turkish makam "Suri Sema'i" collected by Cantemir:

Jordi Savall, 'Suri Sema'i'


Savall's goals in this were as much artistic as cultural/political and called for his own diplomacy.

"I wanted to contact all these musicians and say I'd like to play the music from a different perspective," he says. "Today it's played a certain way because it's tradition but also a lot of things that developed in the 19th century and 20th century, much more conservative. In my experience from Baroque time, music from the 17th century was very light, while 50 years later it became very slow, part of the ceremony of the court and made it so things were not able to advance any more. I think something similar happened in the Ottoman music and we have tried to account for this. And I think it was a very exciting experience."

'The Forgotten Kingdom' is a full three-CD and book package, due for spring release in the US, covering a perhaps lesser-known example of cultural harmonies and conflicts in French Occitan (aka Languedoc). The project spans a period of 500 years, chronicling the rise of the Christian sect known as the Cathars in the 10th century through the Albigensian Crusade of the 13th century that saw the massacre of thousands who helped shelter a handful of "heretics" through the Inquisition and diaspora of the late 15th century. The music draws largely on the colorful ballads of the great troubadours who were at the core of the region's culture of those eras in which it was a crossroads to the East, a land of exchange of goods and ideas from the Middle East and Asia, with sounds reflecting the impact of the Christians, Andalusian Arabs and Jews who all lived there. It was a difficult and intensive project, with much of the music surviving as no more than melody fragments.

"It's a project we have done to explore the world of this early, very interesting Christian belief," he says. "They fell from the official Church and suffered very strong persecution. They didn't except many important things from Rome and did not pay money to Rome.

"The thing that impressed me is this was the time of the troubadours. It was an immense source of testimony through the great poets and musicians. They are explaining what happened in this time, explaining the history, what happened in the moment with music of incredible quality. It's like if you have the latest news every day on television from great poets and musicians."

But the message, Savall says, is as relevant today as it was then.

"For us it was very important to remember that 800 years ago were the same mistakes we repeat every generation," he says. "With the excuse of 230 heretics, 25,000 citizens of Béziers, near Toulouse, were massacred. Because they refused to give the crusaders 230 heretics. This is one of the most terrible massacres in history. This was made in the name of Jesus, in the name of peace, in the name of religion. But the heretics was only the excuse. The real objective was to conquer. Occitan was the connection to the Orient."

He then lists various wars of the last and current century -- the Spanish Civil War, the German invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland before World War II, and then Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. He cites the conditions of the Palestinian people.

"History has remained," he says. "That is what is important to remember. When you go to the Cathar region in France, people are still remembering. It is important to make the music, you have the emotions of the songs and understand in a much more sensitive way, and it's important to make a testimony to that forgotten moment of history."

That pretty much sums up what keeps Savall so driven at age 68.

"I don't sleep too much," he confesses. "My nights are very short sometimes. I have to finish projects. But it's a pleasure. I'll tell you a secret: Every time with nice music and nice musicians and nice audience is so a pleasure. You get so much energy, so much positive energy, that you recover from the fatigue, recover very quickly. People don't believe it sometimes. After concerts people say, 'You must be exhausted.' I say, 'No, I'm really good. I was exhausted before the concert, but after the concert you recover.'"

He pauses for a second, sighs, and apologetically concludes the conversation, "Now I have to rehearse with my wife for a recital."