The day Savall challenged Trump

Without meaning to, Jordi Savall challenged Donald Trump yesterday from Santes Creus by embarking on a musical journey with Marco Polo to China, following the Silk Road. This, despite being a musical program, could be interpreted from the American president's perspective as an attempt to establish cultural and commercial relations with the Asian power, precisely what he has just banned from Spain, citing "national security" concerns.

But not even Trump can keep his distance when it comes to music. Even less so on the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo's death, which Jordi Savall is also celebrating at this fifth edition of his festival in the regions of Alt Camp and Conca de Barberà. A program based on the Venetian merchant who would go down in history as the figure who introduced the Silk Road to Europeans. Three years after returning from his travels, he was captured during a battle against Genoa in 1298 and dictated his memoirs to his cellmate, the novelist Rustichello of Pisa, who would later embellish what was actually commercial information into The Book of Marvels .

A dozen musicians illustrated the memoirs of the Venetian merchant, read by Manel Forcano.

“It was a dictated book: hence the book was meant to be spoken aloud; it has many oral characteristics. And what he said was so interesting that people in prison lined up to listen. They even lined up outside the window on the street,” recalled Barcelona-born poet and orientalist Manel Forcano yesterday before taking the stage to speak at this concert about Marco Polo’s travels.

That historic route is the same one China has been trying to revive for a decade, hence its ongoing acquisition of ports in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Pakistan. But the Silk Roads already existed in Roman times: Julius Caesar stunned Rome by appearing in a purple silk cape, as Chinese luxury goods were already reaching the Empire. “In the late Roman Empire, there was a huge outflow of foreign currency to buy silk, and those coins are found along the route. It was said that silk was one of the causes of the empire's economic deflation: it was such a coveted luxury that it drained the coffers,” notes Forcano over a coffee on a hot afternoon in Santes Creus (Aiguamúrcia), in the presence of Frederic Amat, the festival's poster designer.

Yesterday's, however, was the second part of that journey, that is, Marco Polo's return by sea, after spending 17 years in China under the command of the Great Mongol Khan. A China he had reached by land, a route Savall already addressed in another recital last summer.

The voices of Lluís Vilamajó and fellow tenor Víctor Sordo, along with a dozen musicians from Hespèrion XXI and the Orpheus 21 founded by Savall with refugee artists who formed a veritable Eurasian musical UN, with four thrilling female voices, contributed to the suspense that arose from Forcano's reading. The fabulous baroque Plaza de Sant Bernat was packed when the music heard in China at that time began. The violin wept à la chinoise while Forcano read texts that provided historical context. "Marco Polo's book is essentially a guide for merchants. The most boring part, the one on China, with its lists of cities and resources, was the most copied in the Middle Ages: it was useful for trade. That's why the oldest preserved Catalan manuscript of Marco Polo only includes that part: travelers wanted the practical guide, not the stories of Armenia, Persia, or Ceylon," says Forcano.

The festival's recommendations

Folia. Savall shows how this Portuguese dance crossed the ocean at the same time that the jácara or guaracha influenced Europe. Day 13 - Pl. de Sant Bernat. Royal Monastery of Santes Creus. 10 pm Missa pro Defunctis. The Santes Creus Church Choir and the Royal Chapel of Catalonia perform the work Cristóbal Morales created in the Sistine Chapel. Day 14 - Church of the Royal Monastery. 10 pm Foray into dance. Federica Porello's dance with Daniel Claret on the cello. Day 15 - Convent de les Arts. Alcover. 12 pm Quartet Casals. Haydn and Beethoven. Day 15 - Dormitory of the Royal Monastery of Santes Creus. 7:30 pm 'Vespro della beata Vergine Maria'. Savall, La Capella Reial, and Le Concert des Nations offer Monteverdi's opera on the feast day of Saint Mary. Day 15 - Sant Bernat. Santes Creus. 10 pm Ancient Persia - Contemporary Iran. Iranian singer Mehdi Emami explores poetic rhythms and patterns in a quartet. Day 16 - Sant Francesc de Valls. 12 pm Bach. Savall offers the contrapuntal Musical Offering with Le Concert des Nations. Day 16 - Church of Santes Creus, 10 pm. And Pierre and Marc Hantai combine Bach and Scarlatti. Day 17 - Church of Valls. 7:30 pm Cantorum pro Pacem. Savall closes with his program of War and Peace. Day 17 - Plaza de Sant Bernat. Santes Creus. 10 pm

Instead, Savall selects several excerpts from the book that speak of the ports where Marco Polo called, passing through Eastern cultures and their musical riches. From the South China Sea, to ports in Burma and Ceylon, where his own texts are cited that describe the wonders of rubies. The beauty of the music continues all the way to Turkey, where Marco Polo is attacked and the Christians rob him of everything at the end of his journey.

In the afternoon, philosopher Maria Bartels gave a lecture celebrating diversity as the foundation of the world and the path to fulfillment, the theme of this year's festival. Savall's wife argued how "the space for dialogue established between two people is being lost, that third element of wisdom that completes the trinity and unites to create diversity." The alternative discourses to Trump's America were held yesterday in Santes Creus, led by a rejuvenated Savall—at 84—already almost recovered from his hip injury.