Jordi Savall

Jordi Savall ranks among the leading figures of the historical performance movement, where his work as a viol player and ensemble leader has helped bring early string instruments into wider public view. His recordings, issued in editions filled with extensive illustrations and commentary, delve deeply into cultural settings and extend well past European borders, tracing connections between local traditions and those of the Middle East and Africa across the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods.

Born on August 1, 1941, in Igualada within Spain’s Catalonia region, Savall ensures that many of his releases feature booklet notes rendered in Catalan. He first sang in a school choir, then studied at the Barcelona Conservatory of Music and completed his diploma there in 1965. Drawn to the expanding early-music revival across Europe, he pursued advanced training on the viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken in Belgium and with the gamba pioneer August Wenzinger at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. He later took over Wenzinger’s professorship at the same institution and, upon returning to Barcelona, joined the early historical-performance ensemble Ars Musicae de Barcelona. In 1968 he wed soprano Montserrat Figueras, launching both a personal and an artistic collaboration that continued until her death and has been carried forward by their children, Arianna and Ferran Savall.

Together with Figueras, Savall established the instrumental group Hespèrion XX in 1974; the name evoked the historic territory stretching from Italy to the western edge of the Iberian peninsula and pointed to the far-reaching influence of Spanish musical styles during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. The ensemble quickly gained audiences throughout Europe and North America for its distinctive timbres, drawn from viols and other period instruments such as the psaltery seldom heard in contemporaneous groups. At the start of the twenty-first century the name was updated to Hespèrion XXI. In 1987 Savall created La Capella Reial de Catalunya to concentrate on early vocal-instrumental repertory, and in 1989 he formed Le Concert des Nations, an adaptable instrumental body whose scope reached into the Romantic era. His visibility surged outside specialist circles in 1991 after his viola da gamba performances figured prominently on the soundtrack of the widely seen film Tous les matins du monde.

From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s Savall recorded for EMI, Naïve, Astrée, and additional labels. He launched his own Alia Vox imprint in 1996 with an album devoted to Juan Cabanilles. Backed by Catalonia’s regional government and private patrons, the label removed earlier financial pressures and encouraged broader creative ventures. Releases on Alia Vox have regularly outsold those of other early-music ensembles. Their booklets appear in as many as six languages—Savall himself commands seven fluently—and feature hardcover bindings together with high-quality reproductions of historical images. These publications mirror his curatorial approach, which situates pieces within expansive cultural frameworks. Since 2000 that framework has increasingly embraced links between Europe and its former colonies; Savall has issued recordings incorporating non-Western traditions, frequently in partnership with musicians from those cultures. One such project, the 2017 album Les Routes de l’Esclavage, integrated African elements among its selections.

Advanced age has scarcely diminished Savall’s output, which continues to average roughly six collective releases per year from his three ensembles. He has now surpassed two hundred albums, among them the 2020 Concert des Nations readings of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21, and Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic his schedule remained steady, yielding five albums annually in both 2021 and 2022. The 2023 Alia Vox titles included Oriente Lux: Dialogue des âmes, spotlighting immigrant performers from Spain to Bangladesh in largely traditional folk repertory. His extensive honors encompass the 2008 designation, shared with Figueras, as Artists for Peace. In 2013 the French government named him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. The following year he declined Spain’s National Music Prize, citing the government’s “grave incompetence” in its support for Spanish music and musical artists.