Jordi Savall (Igualada, 1941) has just returned from giving a concert in Avignon and Jaume Plensa (Barcelona, ??1955) is about to fly to England to open a new exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. At this crossroads, the two most international Catalan artists sit down to talk at the request of La Vanguardia at the CCCB’s Mirador, with views of a Barcelona they prefer not to talk about. They hardly knew each other –a brief greeting when the musician congratulated the sculptor for the Pau Casals award, which he had received the previous year– but in addition to mutual admiration, they share the same self-taught origins and, above all, a way of understanding the function of art.
Jaume Plensa: We hardly know each other, but deep down we know each other a lot, even if it seems somewhat contradictory, because I think we have very similar attitudes. I always tell that as a child, when there was a chicken with my brother, I hid in my father’s piano, a son of the Civil War who wanted to be a pianist and couldn’t. Sometimes he played without knowing that I was inside, and I felt the vibration of the notes expanding throughout my body. Afterwards I have meditated a lot, and I think it was there that I understood the vibration of matter and that is why I became a sculptor.
Jordi Savall: As a teenager, before dedicating myself to music, I was very skilled at drawing. And when I finished my studies at the Escola Pia de Igualada, at the age of 14, they told me ‘hey, you paint so well, make a large copy of this Inmaculada de Velázquez. They left me a canvas, brushes, paints… I had never picked up a brush and I spent three days vomiting from suffering. I have never been able to paint again. When you’re confronted with something you’re not ready for, even if you have a certain talent, it tears you apart.
J.P.: Well, maybe thanks to that we have a great musician and not a mediocre painter.
JS: Sure, yes, yes.
J.P.: I haven’t even studied Fine Arts, I dropped out in the first year, and when they give you an academic award it’s something surprising [you’ve just been named a member of the San Fernando Academy]. In creative worlds like ours, I think there is obviously a need for study and improvement, but not necessarily from a school.
J.S.: I have not even studied high school. I have trained myself. And when I went to study in Basel, I showed up with a suitcase full of microfilms, facsimiles, sheet music and period books, and I said to the teacher: ‘Look, I don’t want to study with you, what I want is for you to help me develop a way of playing this instrument as it was done at the time’. And the man said, ‘okay’.
J.P.: I have always thought that the most important thing in life is invisible. And you work precisely with invisibility, which is music, which is my great envy, honestly. I try through the opacity of matter to embrace the soul, which would be the invisible. Sculpture has always had that great battle with scale, which would be the great theme of the architect, and with invisibility, which is the great theme of the musician. I am still looking for my place among you.
J.S.: The big problem with music is that it only exists when you sing or perform it. It’s just a moment. There is all the emotion, all the beauty, because music is reborn but always needs interpretations that are renewed in each human being and at each stage. The big difference between us is that music speaks to us with sounds while you do it through silence.
J.P.: I don’t know if it’s me, but I’m especially worried about the world right now. The only thing missing was this war in Europe, which is a war between brothers. However, from the cultural world they continue to discuss banal issues in a somewhat inbred way. We lack the capacity of Doctors of the World to go and solve the problem where it is needed. Do you also notice it in your field?
J.S.: Yes, I think that one of the fundamental problems is managing to combine your artistic life, your creativity, with actions that are useful to society. I have always been aware that music serves human beings as medicine to overcome the worst experiences. A Sephardic Jewish song or an Armenian melody have enormous potential, because they have served the people to survive. And you realize that the first function of music is to save souls, to help us overcome the worst misfortunes. We have to be able to react when things happen. After performing in places like the Calais camp, I created a group of refugee musicians who are now surviving in a dignified way thanks to music. As musicians, people listen to them and see them. If they are not totally ignored, they are no longer ignored. Music has allowed them to rediscover dignity.
J.P.: I remember that when they gave me the Pau Casals award, which they also gave to you, I read that he had played in factories and other unusual places, and that he did not play the Internacional but Bach. And I really liked knowing that, because sometimes I’ve had critics say that I’m obsessed with introducing beauty and that I’m not disruptive. And it seems ridiculous to me. Because the great function of art is that you offer beauty to that person, not that you tell him that he has a problem. You already know that. I do not understand those arrogant speeches by critics.
J.S.: I think Casals had a clear idea that the working class had to be offered the same things that the wealthy classes could have. Why not Bach or Mozart? 99% of the music they play on the radio is current, there is hardly any room for classical music. And that is a mistake. Because it is leaving aside a very important part of society, as if it had no remedy, as if it could not be stimulated with Mozart, Bach or Beethoven.
J.P.: It’s a big misunderstanding. In the plastic arts there is talk of impressionism, of cubism… as if there were many stories, but there is only one. I remember that Kounellis was once asked what his idea of ??the story was, and his answer was very nice: ‘I imagine myself walking and suddenly I see my father sitting on the road, I pick him up and keep walking.’ It is true that you are in a story that is the same as mine and the one that will come after. There’s no more. We are simply passing the baton, learning from the past and mistakes and trying to imagine a future. Einstein, who I liked a lot, said ‘don’t worry about the future, it comes so soon’. And that’s extraordinary, don’t worry about it.
J.S.: In The Province of Man, Elias Canetti says that music is the true history of humanity because it speaks to our hearts. It’s true, because when you listen to a song from a certain era you feel the same emotions that you felt at that time and with the same intensity.
J.P.: I see that you like Canetti and he has helped me a lot to grow and train, he is one of my references. He said one thing that I like a lot and that is that perfection doesn’t let anyone in. I base a lot of my work on error, it is a form of growth.
J.S.: What you say about perfection is very interesting because I always look for perfection, but I realize that in the end it is sterile. As La Fontaine said, beauty surprises us but grace touches us. And grace is less perfect than beauty. In any interpretation, in any work of art, the imperfection that may exist is what makes it more human and more accessible.
J.P.: But it is a human aspiration: to have a ten and then maybe they give you an eight.
J.S.: Yes, but even if it’s a 10, it’s not going to be 100 percent perfect. And this imperfection is what makes one voice stand out from another. It is our humanity that prevents us from being one hundred percent perfect, but all that intensity is produced in the search.
J.P.: As a performer, parts of someone else’s work, but when you play, everyone knows it’s you. And you are unique. And that is something that fascinates me, because in my field we start from scratch and everything is more closed in on itself. When I have done some collaboration in an opera I have always felt like a slave to the composer. He is God, and I am an acolyte who helps him. Another day will come another who will read it differently, but Berlioz will remain Berlioz. I don’t really know how you do it.
J.S.: There is a very nice anecdote about Stravinsky, who is preparing a ballet in Paris and a pianist who is playing one of his compositions tries to do his best. And in the end Stravinsky, desperate, tells him ‘monsieur, n’interprète pas la musique, joue-le’. It’s that point where you identify so much with the score that you don’t need to interpret it, you make it live through your sensitivity.
J.P.: What I like most about sculpture is that it has an extraordinary capacity for non-movement that provokes the movement of others. That is, it seems that nothing is happening, but everything is happening in the hearts of others. Yesterday [for Tuesday, the 28th] I was offered a possible project on an island in San Francisco and I’m doing another huge one in Hawaii that I’ve been working on for a year and a half. Sometimes I lack, and this is also a little envy that I have of you, the immediate applause or the immediate whistles. You are always in a strange tension, because you make a piece that is part of a vast work that is yours and each work is like a small fragment, that you put here, there and beyond, it is very rare that everyone has been able to see everything but I have seen it, because it is mine.
J.S.: The big difference is that your work will stay physically and will always impact the people who see it. When I die, only the recordings and the memory of the people who have been at the concerts will remain. It is done. That is why we musicians always live the concert moment with great intensity, because we know that it is essential, that music only remains in memory. Returning to La Fontaine, it is grace that touches your soul and makes you feel something very deep. They are feelings that save you.
J.P.: Many times, I don’t know why, they ask me what the function of art is. I have said many times that art is useless, that is why it is so important, because perhaps it is the only thing that is useless. And that is why it takes so much strength with the human being that it always seems that everything has to have a return. The music accompanies you but the sculpture you have to go look for it. You can travel with music but not with sculpture. The sculpture creates places where you can go but it does not move with you. And that is also interesting. Many times when I do a work I don’t know what I’m looking for, then I reflect on it and others talk about it. I suppose that with music, this emotion that you talk about while you are interpreting or playing it, is like a momentary euphoria that calms down later.
J.S.: Only when there is a conjunction between all the components that are there, emotion and magic arise. I discovered by chance that this requires a series of circumstances. I recorded in France in a church that had an airfield next to it. We had to start work at eight in the evening and we worked until seven in the morning. And interestingly, at four in the morning, when you were exhausted, you could get a way of interpreting that had a special beauty and emotion. And that’s what the French call a supplement of something, that supplement that you can’t get under normal circumstances. You overcome your own weakness, you overcome the drawbacks, and the music comes out in all its beauty.
J.P.: And when it’s over, what you’ve done no longer exists. For me yes, and if it goes wrong it’s a problem. What do you do with the piece? I have painter friends who, if the painting is not too good, can put it behind the door but with a sculpture, where do you hide it? A sculpture has a formal and physical presence almost like a human being, who is there, like a vibration that absorbs energy. And if it’s not good… Or imagine that a collector buys it and you tell him, look, buy it, but it didn’t turn out well, the next one will be good.
J.S.: Yes, but maybe in a hundred years they will find that work great.
J.P.: No, because I think like that, I know that the good one will be next but I can’t tell you.
J.S.: There are writers who have wanted to burn their work and their figurehead has not burned it and then those works… I think that sometimes we lack objectivity.
J.P.: Obviously, this is a poetic reaction on my part, you always think that the last work will be the one that will save your entire career. And you do not realize that you have already left very interesting things. But looking back is very boring, it’s more fun to look at what you don’t know or try to imagine it.
J.S.: Experience always gives you different perspectives.
J.P.: Now I take myself less seriously than before. Before, I had very deep crises. And now I realize that when I’m very low I’ll climb very high. There is like a distancing from myself, not from the work, but from myself. The problem was me, not the work.
JS: We are all afraid. When I direct an important work I always have insecurity. You are working with human beings who can make mistakes, have a problem, there is always a risk that things will not work as well as you expect. That is a constant in life and without it perhaps what we do would not make sense. That playing it every time gives you a stimulus. It forces you to always prepare as well as possible to later face these difficulties. But I wanted to go back to what you said before that art doesn’t make sense.
J.P.: No, it’s useless. That is the strength of him.
J.S.: It is its strength but at the same time art, if you look at it on a day-to-day basis, helps us a lot to situate ourselves as human beings.
J.P.: Yes, yes, but when I say it’s useless I mean it’s not useful, you can’t rent it like a store. You can’t sell tickets, a concert can give money but a work of art…
J.S.: Music can save lives. The usefulness depends on how the artwork affects your life.
J.P.: Yes, but well, as in sculpture you live in a territory of matter, many times there has been this conflict and more in the public space, which interests me a lot, that the political world or the business world always think which is an economic loss because there is no return.
J.S.: I have not felt the usefulness of music more than in the concerts we have done in hospitals, in prisons. I remember in a hospital for children with cancer, you get there and see the children crying, nervous, upset. We started to play and suddenly the crying stopped, they began to listen, to dance… It was beautiful. This link between a way of making art, in this case music, and seeing that it has an immediate effect on people’s health and well-being is fundamental. And we don’t seem to be very aware, because much more could be done and we don’t do it often. We just bring music to the great temples of art but we don’t go near people often enough.
J.P.: Any form of creation is also a reflection of life in some way. We are living in a historical time, a bit complex in which the political leaderships have been losing charisma and there is a time when everything is a bit gray, and I think that the creators are saving the time, that although it is not very noticeable they are there and They are advancing, trying to recover the essence of things…
Savall and Plensa say goodbye, reflecting on whether they feel representative of a particular culture.
J.P.: I was born here in Barcelona and my mother spoke Catalan to me when she breastfed me. I guess something remains of that, I can’t help it, but it’s not a quality either, it’s an origin, a starting point. Later, life has taken me to many territories and many places and I believe that grace is to delve deeply into your own memory and surely you touch the memory of others. If you want to be international you are wrong, things have to be universal. And this is my origin, it is my Mediterranean, my little place, but it is, and therefore I am exporting it all over the world in my own way. I’m from here, I can’t be any other way. And I am a fan of diversity and of this world in cultures and traditions. And I think you do too and you’ve defended it tooth and nail.
JS: Totally. As a human being, I feel like a son of my land, I also feel connected to the Hispanic culture, because it touches me closely, like the Jewish culture, the Arab culture and the European culture. But as a musician I feel more European than Catalan, in the sense that the language of music that we have created in Europe is a language that is my own, like natural language. I feel at home making Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or the musicians of my country… The universality of music also stems from your origins and certainly in the way of making music, of singing, of playing, there is a fundamental importance of the experiences. Music is universal but the ways of singing and playing in each culture are different. And it is from the classical knowledge of music that you also recognize the importance of popular cultures, which can be of a level and quality as high as that of a super-complex work. As a human being it is important to know well the language of the people around you.
J.P.: I had never thought about that great difference in the interpreter.
J.S.: We have a vision of the world based on the culture we have inherited, but we make the effort to get closer to other cultures…
J.P.: Yes, yes, but the way to get closer to you is by interpreting a score, for example, but I don’t make a sculpture of a Japanese, I make it mine, and then they invite me to make it Tokyo, and then it’s another themes, you create a dialogue between your origins and those of the other.
J.S.: I am going to open the Salzburg Festival performing Händel’s Messiah, a work that is very far from my culture but that was very appropriate because I have spent many years studying this music, this composer and these works, and working with some performers. which I have created myself…
J.P.: Have you ever thought if Händel would agree?
JS: I think so. If you make the effort to interpret that as it should be interpreted, you have elements to know that you are at least getting very close to what the composer wanted.
JP: I’m kidding. Doesn’t it happen to you that you run into problems with the heirs to be able to illustrate a book of poems or anything else? That’s why it amuses me.
J.S.: I always say that there is no old music, there are old scores, music is always reborn the moment someone sings or performs it. Therefore, the composer leaves a defined plane and the interpreter has to give life to that. We are obliged with music to transmit… If I want the result of my life to make sense, I have to be able to transmit that result to the new generations.
J.P.: It is also a necessary return to society, you have to return this capacity…
