Where history does not reach: ancient music to evoke emotions from centuries ago

“Music does not narrate events from the past, except when it comes to historical texts; what it does do is transmit the same emotion to us, because it is the language of the soul that is recreated every time an interpreter brings it to life with his own sensitivity”. words of wisdom a wise man of ancient music. Jordi Savall further argues that “the sensitivity we have today is not very different from that of our ancestors 400, 500 or more years ago.” The Catalan viola gambia player (Igualada, Barcelona, ​​1941) puts himself in the shoes of that interpreter this Friday in the cathedral of Zamora together with a “soul mate”: the percussionist Pedro Estevan, with whom he shares the recital ‘Dialogue of souls’, with Tickets sold out weeks ago.

The choice of the program is not trivial, especially in the current war scenario of a Ukraine invaded nine months ago by Putin’s Russian troops. “What this program shows is that the political and spiritual confrontation between cultures does not occur in music, which always dialogues,” argues the interpreter. In other words, a concert can go from Jewish to Christian music, without us realizing that we are navigating between very different worlds. And all because “the language of music is the same and this is its great quality”. Savall, one of the great “archaeologists” of ancient scores, points out that the customs, the way of dressing or the way of thinking of those distant people from Zamora have been changing, evolving, over the centuries. However, “in the fundamental qualities of the human being, such as emotion, love or spirituality, there is nothing new,” he theorizes.

“Straight to the heart”

All these considerations are essential to address this kind of essay put into practice by the Músicas Cercadas festival. Because, according to Savall, “music can make us feel what our ancestors felt; It allows us to travel to the era to which the scores we are playing belong and that is the most incredible thing”. A great find because, apart from recording past events, can history awaken those same feelings? Probably not. Not, at least not with the same force. Among other things, because “music does not need translation, it goes straight to the heart”, emphasizes Jordi Savall, who exemplifies: “A Trecento dance produces exactly the same emotion in us today as it did in its time because it preserves all its essence”.

A tool that allows us to travel to the past, one of the great obsessions of the human being. An incalculable value that the cycle —promoted by the Zamora City Council within the acts of the 950th anniversary of the Cerco— has not wanted to miss out. Hence, the artistic director, Alberto Martín, entrusted the most difficult challenge to a living legend of international early music. Benjamin Bagby (Evanston, Illinois, 1950) and his celebrated group Sequentia they were commissioned to take viewers to a distant scene of fear and anguish, recreating apocalyptic songs from a millennium ago, performed in German monasteries in ancient Bohemia.

But, did the program “Hus in himile” (Home in the sky) really manage to transfer the panic of the Siege to the 21st century? Bagby considers the answer carefully. First, because those songs about the apocalypse that was coming at the end of the first millennium were addressed to monks and lay brothers, an audience already experienced in the language of the Bible. “Within their spiritual reality, of course the monks would feel fear when listening to this music, enough to motivate them to stop a life of sin and prepare for death,” explains the American. So yes, the music had that power to instill terror, but “only in conjunction with the text; without it, at best, it could have a vague echo,” says Bagby. A key difference with our present, in which “the musical program is capable of provoking fear without the need for any text, something that Hollywood film directors have known how to exploit in their films”, he exemplifies.

The blood, in any case, never reached the river. The biblical omens of a general panorama of chaos and destruction did not materialize in the dreaded year 1000. Nor did the troops of Sancho II manage to tear down the walls defended by Urraca. It’s a pity that among the audience that attended the Sequentia concert last October there was no expert in apocalyptic language. Or was there? “I cannot judge the audience’s reaction to the message of our music, although the Bishop of Zamora, who was sitting in the front row and knew these Latin texts, did not seem particularly disturbed”, replies the group’s director. “In fact, he received us very cordially, as if we had performed lovely Mozart arias,” adds Bagby. And it is that the Church of today is no longer invested —continues the singer— in the idea of ​​the apocalypse and the end of the world. “Fear today is the one caused by the media and politicians; the Church can no longer afford to lose more members ”, he sentenced.

A show to “dazzle”

In one way or another, religious music was enormously important to believers in ancient times. At leastthis is the conviction of the group Tiburtina Ensemble, another of the participants in the Zamora cycle, which rescued for the public various religious services from the 13th and 14th centuries dedicated to various martyrs: “Music was a part of the whole show, aimed at normal people, mostly illiterate”. The director, Barbora Kabátková, affirms that these songs “along with the beauty of the churches and their interior paintings, were a way of dazzling the parishioners and rooting them in the Christian faith more deeply”.

This being the case, can a 21st century audience understand these ancient songs dedicated to Santa Caterina or Santa Margarita? “I’m sure it is; in fact, there are many pieces that still sound like popular music”, responds Kabátková. The singer reveals her own personal experience: “If you listen to any of these old songs for a long time, you’ll have them in your head like any of the pop groups that play on the radio every day.” Likewise, the person in charge of the Tiburtina Ensemble agrees with Bagby that the texts of the so-called Last Judgment or the Revelation of Saint John, which were frequently accompanied by music, “allow us to imagine the feelings of medieval man”, where music helped him to live “according to the Ten Commandments”.

If you listen to any of these old songs for a long time, you’ll have them in your head like any of the pop groups that play on the radio every day.

Barbora Kabatkova
— Head of Tiburtina Ensemble

Bagby himself adds that, if the texts can help tell the past and preserve it, “when they are accompanied by music they become much more powerful.” A past where fear and fear played an essential, but not exclusive, role. Barbora Kabátková points out that in the Middle Ages “you can find other types of more positive feelings, such as love, the heart or beauty”.

Dialogue, the only way

Helping us to get to know the human being of the past and their way of thinking is, therefore, one of the contributions of this “Músicas Cercadas” festival. Although the usefulness of music goes even further, in the opinion of Jordi Savall. And he has proven it through great recording projects, such as ‘Jerusalem, the city of the two peaces’ or ‘Spirit of the Balkans’. “The objective of these works was to demonstrate that dialogue is the only way of understanding. I have invited Palestinians and Israelis, Armenians and Turks, Serbs and Bosnians to play, and after half an hour improvising on a score we all knew, music had brought us together in a world of peace, beauty and dialogue”. recounts.

Music as a vehicle for communication between different people that, however, does not find a place in the current educational systems. “There is no commitment to music in education because today’s world only seeks efficiency and progress; Just as important as this is preserving the essential things for life, such as establishing a relationship of respect between people, things that are essential for the world to function”, reflects Savall. The Ukrainian war shows that there is not enough music, not enough dialogue, these days. “All the conflicts we are experiencing right now are the result of fanaticism that is linked to ignorance, a lack of education and perspective”, sums up the Catalan musicologist, who adds that “a person who only knows his world and nothing else is, by force, a fanatic ”.

And in the face of this panorama of war and lack of solidarity, the antidote is, once again, in the past. This is what the Tiburtina Ensemble believes. “The most important thing we have learned in our musical career is that studying history is the best way to understand the present”, says Barbora Kabátková. “The word most used in our time is victim: there are too many: victims of intolerance, hunger, wars, machismo or struggles between different cultures”, underlines Jordi Savall. Faced with this lack of direction, Savall and his friend Pedro Estevan put the finishing touch to the Músicas Cercadas cycle, where they will send a clear message: music to find a vision of things without fanaticism. The proposal is not trivial. 950 years have passed since that epic Cerco de Zamora and human beings seem to have not yet found the long-awaited (and utopian) definitive peace.