Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI – a new musical language

Jordi Savall, one of the most influential musicians of our time and recent recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, comes to Interfinity with a programme created especially for the festival. Together with his celebrated ensemble Hespèrion XXI, he approaches this year’s theme of language through music that has travelled across centuries and generations – preserved not only in written sources, but through memory, listening and performance.

This tradition is particularly alive in folk music, where melodies, rhythms and ways of playing have often been transmitted without ever being written down. Like spoken language, they are learned by listening and imitation, passed from one person to another, changing along the way while retaining traces of their origins.

Savall’s concert explores this close relationship between music, memory and oral tradition. How can language and culture survive across generations? Here, music becomes a form of collective memory – a living tradition that endures not by remaining unchanged, but by being continually passed on, transformed and rediscovered.