The Hammock Papers: Soul.

04 November 2012

Soul.

Jordi Savall leads Hesperion XXI in a memorial concert for his late wife, soprano Monserrat Figueras ...

I have had the great privilege of sharing 45 years of intense, fruitful life with Montserrat. She was friend, companion, lover, mother, muse, teacher and an exceptional source of wisdom throughout our life together. Over and above the great artist that she was, everything that she did in her life was permeated with that light that was made of infinite love, extreme sensitivity and generosity, and the tireless search for dialogue and pathways to peace and harmony through emotion, spirituality and grace. That grace, as La Fontaine says, which is more beautiful than beauty itself. It is that light which gives us the strength to go on without her presence and which will help us to fill the great void she leaves behind with the projects that she would have wished to carry out. She liked to remind us that “above all, whoever sings a lullaby is moved by the desire to give of their very best, in itself an act of love through which the child experiences the essence of life” (Ninna Nanna, 2002). Thank you, dear Montserrat, for having taught us that “it is not enough to listen to music with our ears, we must also listen with our soul.”

Thank you so much, dear friends, for all your extraordinary and moving messages of support, admiration and love, which have been such a comfort to us at this time of great sadness and infinite sorrow. Her spirit will be present in all the music we make; together with all those who in this World have delighted in her song, we will continue to keep her memory alive always by striving for the ideals of peace and harmony that she cherished.

- Jordi Savall

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL