JORDI SAVALL & HESPÈRION XXI – Folías y Romanescas (2022)

Jordi Savall i Bernadet (born 1941) is a Spanish conductor, composer and viol player. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for popularizing the viol family of instruments (notably the viola da gamba) in contemporary performance and recording. As a historian of early music, Savall’s repertoire features everything from medieval, Renaissance and Baroque through to the Classical and Romantic periods. He has incorporated non-western musical traditions in his work; including African vernacular music for a documentary on slavery.

Hespèrion XXI is an international early music ensemble. The group was formed in Basel, Switzerland in 1974 as Hespèrion XX by Catalan musical director Jordi Savall, his wife Montserrat Figueras, Lorenzo Alpert, and Hopkinson Smith. The group changed its name to Hespèrion XXI at the beginning of the 21st century. The ensemble is noted for its scholarship in early music, especially the music of 16th and 17th century of Spain. Their performance practice is noted for the liberal use of improvisation around the basic melodic and rhythmic structures of the early pieces, resulting in great emotional intimacy and immediacy.  Wikipedia

La Folía (Spanish), or Follies (English), also known as Folies d’Espagne (French), La Follia (Italian), and Folia (Portuguese), is one of the oldest remembered European musical themes, or primary material, generally melodic, of a composition, on record. The theme exists in two versions, referred to as early and late folias, the earlier being faster.

Due to its musical form, style and etymology of the name, it has been suggested that the melody arose as a dance in the mid or late fifteenth century throughout the Iberian Peninsula, either in Portugal or in the area of the old Kingdom of León, or maybe in the Kingdom of Valencia.

Several sources report that Jean-Baptiste Lully was the first composer to formalize the standard chord progression and melodic line. Other sources note that the chord progression eventually associated with the “later Folia” appeared in musical sources almost a century before the first documented use of the “Folia” name.

Romanesca is a melodic-harmonic formula popular from the mid–16th to early–17th centuries that was used as an aria formula for singing poetry and as a subject for instrumental variation. The pattern, which is found in an endless collection of compositions labeled romanesca, perhaps named after the Roma (Gypsy) people, is a descending descant formula within a chordal progression that has a bass which moves by 4ths. The formula was not to be viewed as a fixed tune, but as a framework over which elaborate ornamentation can occur. It was most popular with Italian and Spanish composers of the Renaissance and early Baroque period. It was also used by vihuelistas including Luis de Narváez, Alonso Mudarra, Enríquez de Valderrábano, and Diego Pisador.

Scholars are uncertain of the precise origins of the romanesca. Documentation of the term is seen for the first time in Alonso Mudarra’s Tres libros de música en cifra para vihuela (Romanesca, o Guárdame las vacas) in 1546 and in Carminum pro testudines liber IV by Pierre Phalèse.

Folías & Romanescas:

00:00:00 – Ortiz: La Spagna 00:01:58 – Anonymous: Folías antiguas 00:04:13 – Anonymous: Folías antiguas “Rodrigo Martinez” 00:08:28 – Sanz: Jácaras & Canarios 00:15:24 – Ortiz: Folía IV 00:16:50 – Ortiz: Passamezzo antico I 00:18:11 – Ortiz: Passamezzo moderno III 00:19:23 – Ortiz: Romanesca VII 00:20:40 – Ortiz: Passamezzo moderno II 00:22:13 – Guerrero: Morisca 00:23:44 – Anonymous: Greensleeves to a Ground 00:28:57 – Zéspedes: Traditionnel de Tixtla & improvisations – Guaracha 00:34:22 – Martín y Coll: Diferencias sobre las Folies d’Espagne 00:44:31 – Murcia: Fandango 00:50:10 – Arauxo: Glosas sobre “Todo el mundo en general” 00:53:32 – Anonymous: Canarios 01:00:17 – Valente: Gallarda Napolitana 01:04:57 – Tonada de El Chimo: Codex “Trujillo del Perú” 01:07:50 – Cachua serranita, nombrada El Huicho nuebo: Codex “Trujillo del Perú”

Jordi Savall | Viola da Gamba Xavier Díaz-Latorre | Baroque guitar Andrew Lawrence-King | Harp Xavier Puertas | viola Pedro Estevan | Percussions

Hespèrion XXI Conducted by Jordi Savall __

Oedipus Coloneus, 2022