If there’s one living being who embodies the spirit of Early Music in our time, it’s Jordi Savall. He has breathed life into the viola da gamba, an instrument that, following its heyday in the 16th to 18th centuries, had been cast into the shadows. Savall has shown us how the gamba’s soulful, expressive sound can still evoke profound emotions and simmering passions in today’s world. As a conductor, his scholarship has shed light on neglected repertoire and dusted-down familiar works, allowing them to gleam anew.

Meanwhile, Savall’s cross-cultural collaborations have given us extraordinary insights into how the world’s musical traditions are inextricably linked, transcending religious and cultural divides. ‘Music contains the entire life-history of human beings,’ says the guru-like Savall. ‘Even during our darkest days, our ears remain open and alive to the sounds of the world.’

It was Alain Corneau’s classic 1991 film, Tous les matins du monde, that proved a turning point in the modern-day fortunes of the viola da gamba. Savall’s playing on the film’s soundtrack feels like a character in its own right, voicing the hearts and minds of two great musicians, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe and Marin Marais, both active in late 17th-century France during the reign of Louis XIV. The soundtrack became an unexpectedly popular hit, staying in the charts for months and stopping just short of knocking Michael Jackson and Queen off the top spot in France’s hit parade. Not only was there a surge in interest in 17th-century music, the film also inspired a generation of young musicians to take up period instruments. ‘After the film, thousands discovered the gamba,’ recalls Savall. ‘It was like waking up a sleeping world.’

By the time of the film’s release, Savall had already been wide awake in the world of Early Music for more than a quarter of a century. His dream of becoming a musician dated back to his boyhood. He was born on 1 August 1941 in Igualada, a small town near Barcelona, Spain. His family was not wealthy, but in a society scarred by civil war and political oppression, culture and education were regarded as paramount. ‘My mother was very happy when I was born,’ says Savall. ‘Although times were hard, she was always singing and full of love. I remember I was a very happy child. It makes me realise now how important song is as an emotional messenger. My mother’s singing was a way of telling me, before I understood language, that she loved me. And I think that great music-making has this at its core: an unspoken gesture of love. It’s a very essential thing, and it lies at the heart of human happiness.’

Savall attended a local school where classes were held in a church and music was a key part of the curriculum. ‘Every morning the children’s choir would sing a mass, and I was entranced by the music – I really wanted to sing. At the age of six, I was accepted in the choir, and so I was singing every day and learning about music by actually doing music. Which is how I like to go about learning even today.’

Savall’s musical journey seemed to be going smoothly, until he was almost knocked off course when his voice broke. ‘It was really confusing. I wasn’t sure what to do. In my teenage years, I became a huge fan of Elvis Presley – can you imagine!’ he chuckles. ‘I was constantly trying to play like him – guitar, drums, harmonica…’ It was a time of experimenting and adolescent rebellion, but in a single moment everything changed. ‘One day I was in school between lessons and my teacher was rehearsing the Mozart Requiem. I found myself sitting transfixed through the whole rehearsal. I was so touched by the emotion, the beauty, the intensity of this music. The choir was accompanied only by a string quartet and of the four instruments, I fell in love with the cello. So I started having lessons.’

Being curious by nature, Savall would spend hours in La Rambla, Barcelona’s main shopping street, seeking out new repertoire for cello in the Casa Beethoven, one of Europe’s oldest and most famous music shops— it’s still there today. ‘I found scores for Bach and Handel sonatas written for viola da gamba, Les folies d’Espagne by someone unknown to me at the time, called Marin Marais, music for gamba by an English composer, Christopher Simpson... I started playing this music on my cello, but I wanted to know more about this thing called the viola da gamba.’

In 1964, Savall won a place at the music conservatoire in Barcelona to study cello, and it was here that he was given his first opportunity to play the viola da gamba. It wasn’t that easy to make the transition, he recalls. ‘The gamba has up to seven strings as opposed to four on the cello. And there are frets. It was really hard for my left hand to get used to the frets, so to start with, I played on an instrument without them, which was much easier. My first viola da gamba had decorative frets, but I finally added real ones.

Having mastered the basics of the instrument, Savall decided he needed to dig deeper into the viola da gamba repertoire. Over the next three years, his quest took him to the Bibliothèque national de Paris, the British Museum in London, and Brussels’ Bibliothèque royale. In London, he first encountered Purcell’s music for viol consort, a revelation in its sound world – ‘So fresh! So sensual! So intense!’, he exclaims. In Paris, he made copies from original scores that were stored on microfiche. ‘After six days of music-gathering, I spread everything out on a big table. There were the Pièces de viol by Couperin, five books of pieces for gamba by Marin Marais, music by Lully, Charpentier, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, Antoine Forqueray... I was really surprised by the richness of it all. These were beautiful pieces preserved in the composers’ original hand. I was discovering some very special repertoire, and so I decided to devote my energies to the viola da gamba.’

With few teachers of gamba to turn to in Spain, Savall set about becoming what he describes as an ‘autodidact’. ‘I started teaching myself easy pieces in order to understand the general style, playing from copies of the original manuscripts. Marais in particular gives you plenty of clues as to how the music should go, with lots of expressions, accents and instructions such as enfler le son and jeter l’archet à la fin – vivid descriptions of the bowing.’

Original manuscripts have become something of a touchstone for Savall. ‘Transcripts tend to take you away from what the composer wants,’ he says. ‘So even if I play Bach solo suites on the cello, I still play from a copy of the original manuscript. And even if I know the music from memory, I like to have the original score in front of me, because otherwise I play the version that’s fixed in my memory rather than responding afresh to the original notes.’

Savall’s autodidactic tendencies almost got him into hot water when he was accepted at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, to study viola da gamba. ‘I arrived for my first lesson with my professor, Dr August Wenzinger, one of the founders of the Schola, an extremely important authority in Early Music. ‘My first question to him was, “Will you allow me to play the viola da gamba not like you, Herr Professor, but in the style and spirit of Marin Marais?”' The distinguished professor, somewhat nonplussed, asked his new pupil to explain himself. ‘Marais always instructed that “La main doit accompagner le bras” – the hand must follow the arm. I told him that, in my opinion, his hand movements were far too stiff when he was playing this music.’

Dr Wenzinger looked dumbfounded. ‘He fell completely silent and stared at me for a while. And then he suddenly said, “Yes, all right I accept!” From that moment on, he never brought his own instrument into my lessons. I was free to develop my own style and technique in my playing. You have to learn through your own experience; if you rely on a teacher to tell you everything, you’ll never really have your own, independent style.’

If teachers didn’t loom large for Savall, then books have been an important source of knowledge and influence. He is incredibly widely read across a multitude of subjects. One of the most important books for him is Zen in the Art of Archery, by the German philosopher Eugen Herrigel: ‘The book tells you how Japanese archers work very hard to perfect their skills until they reach a point where everything comes naturally. You no longer have to think. Your body and your bow work together as one, in one spirit. It’s the perfect synchronisation of what you feel and what you do, which is the true meaning of being “authentic” as a solo performer.’

Aside from his successful solo career, Savall has established three influential Early Music ensembles: Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, and Le Concert des Nations - co-founded with his late wife, soprano Montserrat Figueras, his muse and constant companion until her death in 2011. Together, the couple raised the bar in their approach to virtuosity, style and intellectual rigour in period performance. They also founded a musical dynasty: their children are harpist Arianna Savall and singer Ferran Savall. Handing music down to future generations is a vital tenet for Savall: Le Concert des Nations, he says, is the only orchestra in the world that consciously sets out to include 50 per cent young professionals and 50 per cent experienced players.

These ensembles have provided a larger platform for what Savall calls his ‘experiments’, drawing together music from different cultures and bringing a new vision to established Western classical music. He believes that immersing yourself into the roots of music, its ancient history and its early traditions, will make you a better musician all round. ‘One of the problems I have with musicians of today, they don’t know about these past traditions. You can play Beethoven much better if you have studied the evolution of musical language from Lully, Rameau, Bach, Handel, Gluck, Haydn... This knowledge allows you to access so many more expressive possibilities.’

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Is there still great music of the past out there that lies forgotten in a dusty vault for a new generation of Savall-like explorers to discover? ‘I really don’t think we’ll find someone of the level of Bach or Beethoven, but there’s probably a lot of beautiful stuff out there for anyone who cares to look. I would advise any musical archaeologist today to start with the old libraries of eastern Europe and then head to the Baroque churches of South America.’

It's not out of the question that Savall himself will make the next great discovery. Though he will turn 84 later this year, his curiosity remains undimmed and his mind is still alert to the role that music should play in shaping our future as mindful global citizens and thoughtful human beings: ‘Music is everything to me,’ he says. ‘It gives me my motivation to get up in the morning and discover new things. It makes sense of my life.’

by Ash Khandekar

Jordi Savall's next UK performance will be at Southbank Centre on 11 June with his ensemble, Hespèrion XXI, presenting 'Baroque Revolution' – a journey through a century of European music, exploring the trailblazing sounds of the Baroque era.