Fantasies, Battles, and Dances
The Golden Age of the Viol Consort
1550–1750
Counterpoint is a set of rules and principles of musical composition long recognized as the only possible way of writing music. Until the 17th century, learning to compose was the same thing as learning counterpoint, and until the 19th century, musicians and composers were one and the same. Learning music was therefore—in addition to the indispensable acquisition of instrumental technique—learning to compose. Counterpoint is the art of making superimposed melodic lines sing, apparently independently of one another, so that when they are heard simultaneously, the linear beauty and plastic meaning of each line can be clearly perceived within a coherent whole, while at the same time gaining an extra dimension through combination with the others.

All of the composers on this program mastered the science of counterpoint and even inspired one of the most famous composers in the field, Johann Sebastian Bach, with the fugue, a musical form that is particularly characteristic of counterpoint and can be considered as synonymous with it. The fugue is a compositional technique based, like the canon, on the imitation of voices; it is therefore a counterpoint technique. The fugue is a very special canon: the entry of the voices is staggered, as in the canon, but it respects a precise interval for the entry of the second voice. In the 17th century, counterpoint seemed to be on its way out, definitively replaced by harmony. But Bach spent his life championing it, arguing that counterpoint was the only true future of music. Having explored all the musical forms of his time, at the end of his life he returned to counterpoint in its strictest form. His last work, named after his death The Art of Fugue, comprises 14 pieces entitled Contrapunctus 1 to 14. This passion for counterpoint earned him as much criticism from his contemporaries as it did admiration from subsequent generations of musicians: counterpoint did not die with Bach.

Surrounded by the musicians of Hespèrion XXI, Jordi Savall, the greatest ambassador of the viola da gamba, invites us on a tour of European music for viol consort with a highly diversified program in which the musicians highlight the myriad colors of these instruments. It is with his original ensemble that Savall returns for this concert, in this case bringing together a remarkable international sextet. The two golden centuries of the viol are represented in an eclectic journey that takes us from the 16th century to Bach, via Elizabethan England, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany. Europe was undergoing a musical evolution in which currents flowed from one country to another, while at the same time each nation preserved its own character and thus expressed its particular genius. It was a time when musical lines became more complex and counterpoint became more pronounced. It was also a time when learned and virtuoso instrumental polyphony became fashionable in courts and salons, as well as in churches and temples. Around two of the Contrapunctus from Bach’s Art of the Fugue, the musicians present a non-exhaustive history of the viol consort, its golden age, and its masters. Of particular relevance in this context is English music, which made the consort an emblematic mode of musical expression. The consort features not one but many violas da gamba, from the high-pitched pardessus to the bass viol and the violone. The consort covers all the tessitura of their warm and elegant colors, and in combination they are therefore the ideal instrument for making each line of a polyphony readable without altering the unity of the whole. Through their labyrinthine meanderings, these pieces appeal equally to the intellect and to the senses.