Música en Los Jardines del Real Alcázar

I enter the gates of the gardens of the Alcázar, resigned to the bothers of open-air concerts--mosquitoes, heat, traffic noise. My list is long and personal.

Inside, I feel a manton of peace settle around me. Tranquilo, as C says at the house. The gardens work their magic.

Música Prima takes the stage, and the city melts away. There is only this--clear sky, cooling winds swaying the sky-sweeping palm trees, and music from the Middle Ages.



It is the International Year of Reconciliation. Period instruments weave a fabric of music--Christian, Sephardic Jew and Islamic--distinct but nuanced by years of intwined existence. Strings and percussion carry the notes with familiar shapes and sounds; wind intrigues with mechanical rarities, organetto, a portable pipe organ, and zanfoña, a hurdy-gurdy.

Literal meaning takes shape as familiar words emerge here and there in explanation and lyric. It is the music itself, though, that transcends spoken word, a way of knowing through the centuries.

The church bell, when it finally tolls, loses it metallic harshness and drifts into the soft night air, an anonymous fourth to the group´s trio.