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De Castille à Samarkand On May 23, 1403, Clavijo and his companions set sail from the port of Cadiz, headed for the city of Samarkand, the capital of Asia. Henry III had given a mission to his ambassador, the noble, courteous, and eloquent Clavijo - the king of Castille was sending official letters in which he expressed his wish to develop friendly relations with the emperor Tamerlane, letters accompanied no doubt by numerous gifts. The expedition returned to Castille 34 months later, on March 24, 1406. Clavijo began writing a journal of his trip on the very day of their departure, and he continued to record his experiences until the last day of the mission. With a steadfast attention to detail, he described the places he visited and explored, events that occurred, and people he met. This travel notebook, apart from its great literary value - thanks to Clavijo's talent for storytelling and his exceptional mastery of the medieval Castilian language - leaves us traces of a journey at once symbolic and inspiring. It allows us to discover a desire for harmony and rapprochement on the part of the leaders of two powers - or rather two continents, Asia and Europe. Above all, though, it shows the openness and vision of a man such as Clavijo, who traveled across many countries, by many means, throughout many years. This travel diary has been a point of departure for our project From Castille to Samarkand. We wanted to follow Clavijo's itinerary, in order to immerse ourselves in this musical richness and examine, from the inside and in context, the musical traditions of the period, from the Timurids of Transoxiana all the way to the west of the Mediterranean, Spain. The project has captured the imagination of each one of us as we found ourselves faced with the splendor of the places, the odors, the landscapes, and the peoples of the Silk Route. In this project, Ensemble Constantinople provides an original view of the music of the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Persia, and Uzbekistan. The group has relied on musicological research based on musical manuscripts that have survived from this historical period, combined with a fresh approach to the musical traditions of these cultures. Among all historical periods, the fifteenth century is often considered the golden age of the music of Persia and of central Asia. The courts of Kings Tamerlane, Baighara, and Shahrokh welcomed and educated the most remarkable musicians, composers, and theoreticians of the period in these regions. At the same time, Mediterranean Europe abounded in monodic music, and the peak of this art was reflected in works such as the collection of Cantigas de Santa Maria, and Italian and French estampies. We have taken this celebrated route, therefore, and transformed it into a sort of musical peregrination. Using musical and historical sources from the regions visited by Clavijo, dating from the period of his travels, we have attempted to revisit his journey in our own way, through music. Louange à la mer is a piece based on several cantigasconnected to each other by new melodic elements. Barrabamand Vermiculusare original compositions inspired by sources from the Middle Ages, while Parfum des steppes groups together several songs and melodies collected in Greece and Turkey. The pishrows Kurdi and Beyati are compositions that come to us from the two most important manuscript sources of Ottoman and Persian music of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. These are the collection by Dimitrius Cantemir and the book Suz o Saz by Albert Bobowski (Ali Ufki, after his conversion to Islam). The pishrow Kurdi is a composition by Sultan Korkut. Beyati is an anonymous work, although Cantemir indicated that the composer was Iranian and that, considering its form and style, it could be attributed generally to the first Iranian musicians who lived in Constantinople at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Even though these works were composed some decades after Clavijo's trip, we think they nevertheless represent quite well the musical environment of Constantinople as he experienced it. Osoul and Hodi, both in the mode tchâhâr-gâh, form part of today's repertoire (Radif) of Persian music. These anonymous pieces are considered among the most ancient of this musical tradition. L'ivresse de Koumisis a synthesis between a song from the Cantigas de Santa Maria (number 52) and the Persian mode, the tchâhâr-gâh. Gachyari Garalarand Ranolan Masunare Uzbek songs still very much alive and sung by Uzbek musicians. We complete our voyage with a piece that unites three cantigas, and in which we have integrated allusions to moments lived and to emotions felt by Clavijo, and also to the music he might have heard throughout his journey. © Kiya Tabassian Translated by Sally Campbell
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©2010 Constantinople info@constantinople.ca 428, Rachel Est Montréal (Québec) H2J 2G7 Canada |
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