The Benedictine abbey of Santa Maria de Montserrat, perched high in the Catalonian mountains 30 miles west of Barcelona, has been a site of pilgrimage since medieval times. It’s best known for La Moreneta, a 12th-century romanesque statue of the madonna, but among its other treasures is the Llibre Vermell, a codex from the very end of the 14th century that is a collection of devotional texts, prayers and papal bulls as well as a “songbook” containing 10 anonymous hymns, folksongs and dances.
Jordi Savall’s performance, taken from a concert with his choir and ensemble in the very resonant acoustic of Barcelona’s Santa Maria del Pi in 2013, shapes the music from the Llibre into a 70-minute sequence. The 10 numbers are punctuated by bells and interspersed with instrumental improvisations, so that as so often with Savall, it’s all undeniably atmospheric, but hard to separate what might be authentic from what is purely speculative.
