[Gocamino] Silencing of a Great Voice

[E. O. Pederson]

For those or us who love the music of medieval and renaissance Europe, and especially that of Spain during the great age of pilgrimage to Santiago, November 2011 was a particularly sad month, for it witnessed the passing of a magnificent talent, the Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras. With crystalline tone and great emotional intensity, Figuras brought to life the songs, and particularly the religious music, the lullabies and the laments, that were familiar to pilgrims on the route to Santiago in its great apex of the 15th and 16th centuries. In concert with her husband the inimitable master of early music Jordi Savall, her son and daughter and their several choral and instrumental groups including Hesperion XX (later renamed Hesperion XXI) and Capella Reial de Catalunya, Figueras performed and recorded some of the most haunting music of Spain's "Golden Age" (as I write I am listening to a gripping recording of Tomas Luis de Victoria's "Cantica Beatae Virginis" by those groups with Figueras as featured soloist). A multifaceted talent, she was also at home performing music by contemporary masters like the Estonian Aarvo Paart. It will always be a regret that while I have had the great privilege of hearing her husband and her daughter Arianna Saval perform in concerts, I never had an opportunity to hear Montserrat Figueras live. 

Many of the world's major newspapers including the New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/arts/music/montserrat-figueras-catalan-soprano-dies-at-69.) the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/dec/07/montserrat-figueras-obituary?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487) , and El Pais (http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Muere/63/anos/soprano/Montserrat/Figueras/voz/sibila/elpepucul/20111123elpepucul_6/Tes) printed obituaries after her death. 

Her funeral was held in one of the most beautiful and beloved sites in Barcelona, the 
 monastery of Pedralbes. 

While we no longer are able to hear her in concert, Figueras has left us with an extensive recorded archive in which she sang some of the most beautiful music ever written in Europe and around the Mediterranean Basin, and for that we must be thankful indeed..