Jordi Savall

Una Voce dal Cuore: A Voice from the Heart

An Interview with Jordi Savall

by Don Kaplan

Jordi Savall is a viola da gamba virtuoso widely credited with the rebirth of this instrument after it was superseded by the cello. His awards include the Diapson d’Or, the prestigious “Grand Prix de l’Academie du Disque Lyrique,” and the César (France’s Oscar equivalent) for his work on Tous les matins du monde, a film about the life and works of Marin Marais. He is also a conductor and musicologist, and was decorated as an “Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French Minister of Culture.

Starting in 1974 Savall founded three ensembles: Hespèrion XX (now Hespèrion XXI)--created along with his wife soprano Montserrat Figueras and acclaimed for its performances of music from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, the vocal and instrumental group La Capella Reial de Catalunya (1987), and Le Concert des Nations (1989)—an ensemble consisting of younger musicians from Spain and Latin America. All three groups are represented on Savall’s own Alia Vox label.

Savall was born in Barcelona and speaks several languages including English. Always in demand to perform, the Savalls were gracious enough to meet with me in their hotel just before heading back to Spain after a concert tour in California.

DK: Don Kaplan

JS: Jordi Savall

MF: Montserrat Figueras

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DK: How did you become interested in early music? For example, what drew you to the music of composers like Marin Marais?

JS: I was singing in a vocal ensemble in school. Of course a very important part of our repertory was early polyphonic practices. Later, when my voice changed, I was fascinated by this world of ancient music nobody was playing. But my decision to be a musician happened at a rehearsal when I was 14 or 15. The impression it gave me was so strong, I thought I would like to be a musician. I decided to start learning the cello at this moment. When I was studying cello I discovered the music of Marais and found it to be so beautiful…I later played it with the viola da gamba.

DK: People often experience something and they know immediately “That’s what I’m going to do for the rest of my life!” Was that your experience with the viola da gamba?

JS: Well, no. It took a long time. I started playing viola da gamba music on the cello around the late 50s but didn’t start studying the viola da gamba until 1965. All this time I had studied the normal repertory for cello—the Bach suites, of course…Haydn concertos, chamber music…everything. It was, in fact, Montserrat who made me open the door to the viola da gamba because at the time she was studying cello at the conservatory in Barcelona. She was also singing in a vocal ensemble founded in the 1930s, one of the oldest groups in the world for early music. The director of this group told Montserrat they needed a professional viola da gamba player and asked if she knew somebody from the conservatory. She had heard me playing Bach, told him she knew a young cello player who played very nice Bach, and gave him my name. This happened at the same time I had become interested in the viola da gamba. I had finished my studies, and now had an offer. I was also looking for a viola da gamba and got the call “you have one.” This was also a very nice start because Montserrat and I had music together. And the rest is history.

DK: The violin was originally a street instrument before it gained status as an orchestral instrument. What roles did the viola da gamba and cello originally play?

JS: In the 15th and 16th centuries the viola da gamba was really a chamber music instrument because you have to play it while sitting. It was meant to be played inside the house. You can play the violin while dancing, moving…you can play it in the street, you can play it in different situations. Viola da gamba music included more songs and improvisations, and some dance music, too—in a consort for example. So from the very beginning there was an essential difference between the viola da gamba and the violin.

The cello takes a very long time to hold his own against the violin. The first pieces for cello appear in the beginning of the 17th century but you have to wait until the second half of the 18th century for a much bigger repertory. On the other side, in the viols, the bass was a solo instrument from the very beginning. The treble viol was played in consorts but never or rarely as a soloist because of its quality. The bass can play in all tessituras, in all the ranges of a person’s voice. A bass viol in the low string sounds like an old man, in the middle like a tenor or young man, the first string sings like a woman, and in the high position like children. It was always one of the qualities of the viola da gamba to be close to the human voice.

DK: Has the viola da gamba’s role changed today?

JS: It remains a chamber instrument. You can play viola da gamba concertos, but you have to have a very reduced orchestra or the sound will be too loud. The viola da gamba today has an important place in early Renaissance music, in consort music, in the solo viol opuses, and in chamber music from the Baroque time. Today it’s an instrument who has taken a unique voice because you cannot play Bach on the cello with the same character, sanguineness…with the same passion. You can play the same notes but you can never have same color, the same melancholy, the same special timbre that makes this instrument so attached to you. The viola da gamba is una voce dal cuore, a voice from the heart.

DK: Is your own instrument an old one?

JS: I have different instruments. Last night I played a treble viol from 1500, a very nice instrument. For most concerts, when I play Renaissance bass viol, I use a Zanetto made in Venice, 1553. When I play Baroque music and on 7 strings [viola da gambas had 6 or 7 strings] I have an instrument from 1697. And then I have altos, other bass viols, and early medieval instruments.

DK: Do you get any special feeling playing instruments that date from so long ago?

JS:

The first time I had a period instrument in my hands, I couldn’t believe it. For me this was a dream. When I bought the Zanetto in Rome I played the instrument in the shop then took the instrument to the hotel. And instead of going to visit Rome I sat in my chair looking at the instrument for hours like it was a saint. It was so incredible. When you have an instrument that sounds in his richness, with such qualities, this offers a new world of ideas for playing. At the moment you have been contact with these originals you have possibilities you cannot have with a normal instrument. You know, it’s like a good wine that has aged 10 years or 15 years…you can have a very good wine today, but it’s different. Today there are many good instrument makers. But in 100 years, if the player plays well, the instrument will sound much better…in 200 years, too. The wood, the resonance reflects the playing. It will sound better every day. I’m sure tomorrow I will be home and I will take my bass viol and she will be angry with me because I haven’t played her now for 10 or 12 days. I know when I start to play she will say “no, I don’t like to play for you.” She will make it difficult, and slowly it will take some hours again to make her happy. It’s like a human.

DK: What are the advantages of having your own record label?

JS: We have made 55 recordings in 10 years. Tell me, what other label would accept this with only our own musicians? Nobody. What label would let us do recordings from music by William Lawes, by Ferrabosco, by such specific programs that are not commercial? Nobody. I think the principle reason for creating our label was to have the freedom to decide musically what we want to do…to decide what, when, and which musicians. And this is something very important. You know, when you are preparing a program, when you reach a certain moment, it is like the moment when a person is for the first time in love with another person. Anything is possible. The secret of creating a magical mood is to be prepared for this moment and capture it because sometimes three years later you can play the piece very well again but there’s no longer this fascination from the first love. When we recorded Monteverdi’s Marion Vespers it was a process of five, six years working with a scholar, with the vocal ensemble, with Montserrat. And when we arrived to do the last recording in a Santa Barbara church it was the perfect moment…the moment when you take what has evolved and have all the freedom, all the freshness, the desire to do something special. If you are able to record this—the magic of the moment—it’s special forever. And this is what we do with Alia Vox.

We sometimes do crazy things. For every project we look for the ideal acoustic. For example, for Nina Nanna we recorded medieval music in Cardona, chamber music in a Spanish castle which had the right acoustic for this, and foretepiano pieces in the chamber of a house in Vienna. In terms of economy the recording is four, five times more expensive than other recordings because you aren’t staying five days in the same place. You have to pay for traveling technicians, artists…any normal company would say this isn’t a good investment, we will never recover the money. For a normal label the money has to have a return in say two or three years, otherwise the numbers won’t work. For us it isn’t a question of recovering money but what’s necessary for the recording. We’re different. We know the first recordings we made ten years ago still sell well today. Our recordings have a long life because they conserve, in my opinion, that magical moment that is the life of the program. And in 50 years you will still feel this recording is special.

DK: With so many recordings already on Alia Vox, how do you find new material to record?

JS: We have been doing concerts and thinking music for mostly 40 years. At a certain point you realize it isn’t enough to play a concert with nice pieces. You have to think about a project. The project can be about Francisco Javier [the missionary who traveled from Europe to the Orient in the 16th century], the music from Columbus’ time….We try to bring music together with art, with history, with literature. To sell music it isn’t necessary to make physical recordings when you can take them from iTunes or whatever. But if you like to sell your recordings as physical objects you have to bring something more, like the quality of the sound. The quality of the sound for recorded CDs is better when compared with MP3 where there is more compression. For this we are still one of the few labels who will record in SACD and will always do this. This is a quality that puts you there, that involves you with the music, and this is something very important. We know that many people say “well, it doesn’t matter.” But even if you listen in SACD stereo [instead of SACD surround sound] which is somewhat drier, you have this quality.

DK: For authenticity, how do you know what period instruments sounded like and how music was performed?

JS: We have some of the original instruments. They certainly have a very similar sound today as it was in their time. The human voice hasn’t changed. We have changed the singing style maybe but the instrument is still the same. I think what we try to do is understand the information we have from the past to find the proper style from each moment, each country—because you don’t play the same way or you don’t sing the same way in Spain or in England or in France or in Italy—and this is a very long process. It’s a process where you have to read a lot of information—sometimes letters, sometimes dictionaries, and take this information and put it together with the problem you are solving. Sometimes the quality of projecting the sound can be found because the bowing standards were very clearly decided. When a singer makes ornaments we may not have standardized examples. But we have in traditional music a lot of styles of ornament, for example, in the Flamenco. There are so many things we have to think about and compile and decide, and this is fascinating. As I said, early music is never a precise science. But in the last dimension it’s always art. And that means the artist communicates with the music and with the audience using his sensitivity, his emotion. Of course the more the performer is prepared, the more he knows, the closer his performance will be to the right style. And this will be evident. But it also has to be a nice performance. Even if you have all the qualities…the historical, the technical…you need the final ability to transmit your emotions to others. This is important.

DK: You said in a recent interview that you see the composer’s notes on the pages as “guides for the emotions you want to express.” How do you know when you’ve gone too far, when you’ve put too much of yourself into the music and overshadowed what the composer really intended?

JS: This is not, I think, about who decides too much. Who can decide it’s too much? The art is always harmony. It’s a way to find the right point, the right balance. You cannot say this is too much emotion. It is something very personal. You know, for some people something can be too expressive, and for others not enough. Couperin said Je préfère ce qui m'a touché, I prefer what touched me, in comparison to what surprised me. As an artist we are always looking for what reflects the spirit of the thing, but you have to know what the spirit is. This is essential. It takes years and years before we arrive at a project like Columbus [Columbus: Lost Paradises] or Quijote [Don Quijote de la Mancha: Romances y Músicas]. There’s 10, 20 years of experience, thinking, discussion behind it. It’s a long process of distillation, you know, until at some point the water is pure. You have to take out all the things that are not necessary. Of course we are what we are. I mean it’s our point of view, it’s our experience. But the moment you reach this synthesis that’s the result of a long process, this deep experience becomes universal. It becomes something that can touch everybody. This is what I think we intend every time we produce something. MF: Interpretation for us, it’s something sacred. You must learn a very hard discipline, from the beginning, very slowly, for years and years and years. You can only understand this music when you have a lot of respect for it. But it’s very important that your personality comes through, otherwise it’s not possible to learn this music. For each person it’s unique—unique based on his way, his learning, his respect for the art traditions. And I think this is the key for us in the new world, in the modern world, that we follow this philosophy, otherwise it’s not possible to make old music.

DK: One of my favorite discs is Nina Nanna, which includes 20th and 21st century music. Any plans for further excursions into modern music?

JS: We have two projects. One is this year’s project, about the city of Jerusalem. The project presents diversity—the Christian city, the city of pilgrimage, the 20th century Jerusalem, the city where people are persecuted by genocides. Some of this is represented by very modern songs. The other project with modern music we are working on is a project about “da pacem.” Arvo Pärt has composed Da pacem and it has been recorded. But we are doing an original recording like Pärt intended with voices and instruments, using musicians from around the world.

DK: For your recording Lachrimae Caravaggio you used techniques that are basic to modern jazz. What does jazz have to do with 17th century music?

JS: I don’t think it’s so much jazz. The musicians have to improvise a lot. What we do is try to express with early techniques something very modern which the paintings of Caravaggio expressed. No music from the time of Caravaggio went as far as his paintings. Music from that time is marked in a very conventional way. Even the most sophisticated pieces by Gesualdo have a form which had to be used. But Caravaggio’s paintings are so modern because they reflected a very modern world. The only way we can express this modernity is to compose with the instruments of the time, trying to go as far as we can as musicians. It is similar to jazz because we are improvising and having a dialogue.

DK: Do you think everyone who studies early music should study improvisation?

JS: Maybe not at the beginning. You have to know what you are doing first. But it’s something you have to learn. Improvisation is a part of classical music, too, and was very important throughout the history of viola da gamba and chamber music. You cannot be a good harpsichordist if you cannot improvise a continuo. You cannot be a good viola da gamba player if you cannot improvise variations on an ostinato.

MS: You cannot repeat the same thing ten times; you have to change. There are a lot of rules to learn, a lot of techniques for an artist to develop.

DK: Is there any question you’ve always wanted to be asked during an interview but no one ever asked it?

JS: I think there are always many questions. But I will say, maybe if you ask me why we think making music is important? And I will say music today, of all the arts, is the only chance we have to recover the human being in this crazy world of war, of terrorism. Music is not only something you have the pleasure of listening to alone at home but is essentially an art for communication, for bringing people together and bringing harmony in the world. And I think this is something we have to be more conscious of. We don’t use the power of music enough.

DK: So you believe music is more important than the other arts?

JS: Music brings people together. It brings peace, and dialogue, and respect. You cannot do music with other people if you don’t have a minimum of sympathy for these people, if you don’t have respect for these people, if you don’t listen to them. It is an essential element of humanity. And because of this music has to be more important.

References:

“Jordi Savall Biography,” www.musicianguide.com/biographies

“A Conversation with Jordi Savall,” Gramophone, January 2008

“Sounds Impossible: The Musical World of Jordi Savall,” Stereophile, January 2008

Harvard Dictionary of Music and Grove Dictionary of Music

Don Kaplan is the author of many articles, music critiques and books including See With Your Ears: The Creative Music Book. He has developed curriculum guides for The New York Times, taught at several colleges and universities including the Bank Street College of Education, conducted numerous teacher-training workshops, and been an artist-in-residence in a wide variety of settings. He is currently helping people learn about music as co-manager of The Musical Offering classical music store in Berkeley, CA (www.wildboar.com).

©2008 Don Kaplan