FEATURE | Acclaimed musician plays in Macau: Music that lives (and uplifts) in the hands of Jordi Savall

UNESCO’s “Artist for Peace” Jordi Savall brings a multi-cultural experience that crosses East and West, past and present. His curated programs feature “centuries-old songs and dances glow with sadness and jump for joy,” according to New Yorker critic Alex Ross.

Physical Geography The Mediterranean Sea: This is indeed a rare opportunity for music lovers living in and familiar with the Pacific Rim to hear a wide range of music from the Mediterranean dating back to a millennium ago. The title of this concert, Mare Nostrum (“Our sea”), stems from Roman times, when founders of the Empire referred to that expanse of water bordering the southern tip of Europe and northern shores of Africa, extending eastward to modern-day Turkey and Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Although Gibraltar is the western gateway opening to the Atlantic Ocean, we should not forget the ancient islands within the Mediterranean with fascinating histories, among them Cyprus and Rhodes.
Normally we associate water and ancient civilizations with naval battles (for which there had been plenty among European nations onward from Napoleon as well as tracing backward to the Christian alliance’s ongoing conflicts with the Ottoman Empire). But belligerence aside, the Mediterranean Sea has proven to be a gainful trading route for many centuries, through which the Near East and Western Europe shared many a living tradition, let alone the abundance of food and great weather that the region enjoys even today.
Jordi Savall’s Odyssey Savall is perhaps most popularly known as the viola da gamba player who arranged and recorded the music for the 1991 French film Tous les matins du monde (“All the mornings in the world”), recounting the story of 17th-century viol master Marin Marais (played in the film by the actor Gerard Depardieu). But Savall had little to do with France in his early life.
He was born an hour outside Barcelona (the northern part of Spain that is defiantly Catalan, with its own distinct language and cultural traditions). As a young boy, Savall sang in choirs, later on taking up the cello. By the 1970s, he established himself as a viola da gamba virtuoso all over the Europe, organizing early music ensembles and taking every opportunity for solo displays. That sense of musical discovery, to say nothing of his travels throughout Europe, was rather a throwback to the troubadour tradition. As a musical ambassador, Savall unearthed musical repertoire long neglected, breathing new life in performances and recordings, the latter of which he has made more than 160 to date.
Scholar, Curator, Teacher, Producer, General Impresario: As mentioned earlier, Savall’s popular success in Tous les matins du monde made him a star (he won a French “Oscar,” the César Award) and catapulted him as a champion for early music. Fame came with its challenges, and rather than rest on his laurels, Savall extended his horizons, developing new projects and new ideas in the past two decades that truly merit him as a leading “music humanitarian.”
His recording, Jerusalem City of Two Peaces: Heavenly Peace and Earthly Peace (accompanied by a 400-page glossy hardback book), won him the MIDEM Classical Award in 2010.
For him, spreading peace and engaging with audience and musicians alike are paramount. “As musicians, we have the capacity to understand people from different cultures,” he has said. “Every time you play music from other cultures, it means you have a certain sympathy [and respect]. This is essential for any kind of dialogue, and in our projects, we involve music from different cultures because we have so much to learn from them. With music, we can help people understand our history.”
World Music: Illuminating New Paths and Familiar Sounds Instruments featured in this concert originate from around the Mediterranean. Some of them travelled from one region to another, attesting to the fact that music is universal, crossing lands and seas, as well as spanning many centuries, despite wars and battles and religious differences.
Apart from the vielle (medieval fiddle) that is Savall’s own expertise, there is the rebec, another ancestor of the violin family that can be traced to the Arabian peninsula and Morocco. In fact, the rebec was such a popular instrument that it was ubiquitous in teahouses throughout the Ottoman Empire.
You might even find instruments that look vaguely familiar on a Chinese stage. The kaval, an end-blown flute originating from mountain shepherds throughout the Balkans, has different tunings depending on whether they are from Turkey or Greece. It is definitely a distant cousin of the Chinese xiao.
The oldest pictorial recording of the oud dated from 5,000 years ago. This Arabian equivalent of the European lute (which is related to the guitar) also spread eastward in the form of the pipa. The kanun is associated in playing technique with the zheng, while the santur spread around Europe as a hammered dulcimer best known for gypsy music, but also looks uncannily familiar to Chinese eyes as a variation of the yangqin. Together these instruments weave a sonic fabric that is at once familiar and new to ears familiar with Asian musical traditions.
The Purity and Immediacy of the Voice The three singers featured in this program hail from different countries sharing Mediterranean waters: Israel, Turkey and Greece. Religious and spiritual songs in the evening connect with each other, to the universe, and to all deities. This penchant for the voice for Savall must have begun with the love for his late wife Montserrat Figueras (1942–2011), who had shared the “Artist for Peace” title with him. Figueras’s striking vocal prowess, her indefatigable spirit, and her expressive persona had been vividly captured in the many recordings she made with Savall.
Of all musical instruments, the human voice is the most intimate, with the ability to convey love and admiration hardwired into all civilizations. While instruments travelled from one region to another and repertoire evolved, the voice has remained more distinct, tied to specific lands, languages and dialects. Regardless, melodies that are soulful and joyful can resound in any setting.
This concert promises to be one that introduces but also inspires. We must remember that Christian, Sephardic, Turkish and Arabic communities had existed side by side, sometimes on more friendly terms than in others. And breaking barriers, even in the smallest gesture of a musical performance, is one way of moving to a more peaceful understanding of the world we live in. By Joanna C. Lee

Joanna C. Lee is a Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong

Concert on Nov 29

The Macau Cultural Centre presents the iconic musical collector Jordi Savall and the Hespèrion XXI in their debut concert at the Grand Auditorium on November 29 (Saturday). Brought as one of CCM’s 15th anniversary programmes, this Mediterranean musical journey will bring the audience into an exquisitely curated repertoire, travelling along ancient and meaningful compositions performed with now rare instruments.