Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and dear friends. It is a great privilege and
honour to be here, especially in this beautiful building, which was conceived and constructed by a
Catalan architect, Miralles.
It is also a pleasure to start the summit with music from a time when music was a common
language between occident and orient. In those early times, we used the same melodies, the same
modes and the same improvisation. We started to be different in the occident when we invented
counterpoint and harmonies and, from the end of the 14th century, our music changed. In the orient,
people continued to use the same modes. I have played some medieval music from France, together
with Sephardic and Ottoman music.
The music, in many of those contexts, was not seen the way it is today, when it is a pleasure to go
to a concert or a big event and it is seen to be aesthetic. Music was something that people needed to
survive. When a Sephardic family was expelled from Spain and they had to start a new life in Istanbul,
music probably helped them to conserve hope, and to start a new life. Every night, when they sung
the old songs together, they recovered—piecemeal—themselves, their hearts and the energy to
continue. The same is probably true for Scottish and Irish people when they emigrated to the United
States and, in the night, took fiddles and a good beer and, in making music, started to find again the
pleasure to continue and fight for their lives. That is the big difference between that popular music and
art music—the first is music to help people to survive.
An important question to ask today is this: why, with our culture, can we not resolve the problems of
our time? That is one of the important issues to think about, otherwise we will not find the solutions. It
is only if we are able to resolve the problems in culture and the arts that culture and art will be alive;
otherwise that will be a regression.
I remember very nice words by Shakespeare:
“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.”
It is true that the sound of melodies and the rhythms of dancers speak directly to us, given that
every human being carries music in their heart. Music does not tolerate lies. It is the true language of
the soul and the only one that allows us to communicate freely and as equals with cultures and beliefs
that are distant and different to ours.
Similar to love, music is also a unique spiritual language that is capable of bringing peace to our
hearts. In order to make that possible, we need to stop the terrible sounds of weapons and to restore
sincere dialogue between people in any conflict.
Music moves us through her beauty and her emotion—her grace conveyed through the performer.
Without emotion there is no memory, without memory there is no justice, and without justice there is
no future for civilised mankind.
As Dostoevsky said, can we still hope that
“Beauty will save the world.”?
I think that we can, but only as long as we are capable of fighting against ignorance and fanaticism by
education and by educating children through art, culture and understanding.
As Amin Maalouf said:
‘If we are to restore some hope to our disoriented humanity, we must go beyond a mere dialogue of cultures and
beliefs towards a dialogue of souls … enclosed behind impenetrable barriers; our world is not doomed to interminable
rifts; it can still be saved ... After all, hasn’t that, since the dawn of the human adventure, been the overriding purpose of
art?’”
Thank you.