El Greco and snails (also music, everything is comparable) - Álvaro Zaldívar Gracia © Licanus 2014

Doménikos Theotokópoulos’s musical journey by Capella de Ministrers

Even though the idea seems to have been proposed by Dalí, the talkative genius, to other people, it is Oscar Tusquets, the Barcelona architect and designer, who best retells it at the beginning of his famous collection of essays, published in Barcelona by Anagrama in 1998, which bears that very title: Todo es comparable (“Everything is comparable”).

Inserted to prove “how entertaining it was to eat cargols a la llauna in the Durán [restaurant] at Figueres with Salvador Dalí”, Tusquets starts the remembered dialogue with a witty question/answer by the painter, “Did you realize that snails are like El Greco? Indeed, like Domenicos Theotocopulos who, born in Crete, learns how to paint properly that sort of icons they do over there; but, as soon as he moves to Venice, his admiration for Tiziano and the influence of Tintoretto make him the most Venetian of all Venetians, the most sensual, colourful and expressive painter of the Republic; but then he arrives in Toledo, and suffering a traumatic conversion, turns austere, sober, Old Castilian, the knight with his hand on his breast, with an overflowing mysticism, the most sincere character of the eternal Spain.”

The founding of new cities was not a medieval custom. Famous kings in antiquity had already created them, naming them eponymously: Alexandria, after the Macedonian King Alexander the Great; Constantinople, after Emperor Constantine; Recopolis after the Visigoth King Recaredo. Eventually, imaginary cities were also created. In the early sixteenth century, Thomas More created the island of Utopia, and Campanella did the same with the City of the Sun, as well as Bacon with Bensalem a century later. However, the idea had already been developed in a much more original way by a woman at the beginning of the fifteenth century. When Christine de Pizan (1364-1420) finalized the third and last part of her book Le Livre de la Cité des Dames in 1405, she had created and invented a city, in the etymological sense of the word, which signifies the creation or the discovery of something. The author had been able to see and visualise this imaginary city, which is the first step for something to become real, as taught by Saint Anselm not long before, although in a different context. This city, conceived, created and designed by a woman born in Venice and raised in Paris from a very young age, was surprisingly not named after the author. She called it, simply but significantly, the City of Ladies, a powerful landmark within a decisive movement which helps to explain the history of Europe and our history up to the present day: the Querelle des Femmes (Complaint of Women), a revolutionary process which breaks away from the traditional accounts of patriarchal history. This movement focused on aspects and views ignored by the gentlemen who monopolized the various Truths which have been assumed and replicated by our culture. By systematically questioning the division of society in gender roles and its unfair hierarchy, it may be considered the first sign of feminism in the Western world. Augustine wrote The City of God to defend Christianity from pagan danger. Christine wrote The City of Ladies to defend women ( “to you, ladies, maidens, women of all conditions... those who have died, those who are still alive and those who will come in the future,” lib. 2 ch. LXIX ) from patriarchy.

Capella de Ministrers will open the 3rd INTERNATIONAL COURSE ON MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE MUSIC with a special concert program in commemoration of this event: Timete Deum, the Apocalypse of St. Vincent Ferrer (Youtube). Full information: Cultural Comes.

In order to put an end to the Great Western Schism - which had led to the paradoxical situation of three simultaneous popes in dispute for the primacy - and to address several doctrinal issues of the Catholic Church, an ecumenical council took place in Constance from 1414. In the preparations for this historic event, two Spanish figures had a decisive role: Benedict XIII, pope of the Avignonese line (known as "el Papa Luna" in Spanish), and the Valencian saint Vincent Ferrer. Their decisions were to be crucial for their own fate and for the future of Europe. Thus, on 18 July 1414 the antipope Benedict XIII, fleeing from Avignon, the Valencian saint and King Ferdinand I (father of Alfonso V the Magnanimous) met in Morella. Their parley lasted for fifty days but was unfruitful. Shortly thereafter, King Ferdinand and St. Vincent Ferrer, in a sermon in Perpignan, decided to withdraw their former support to the Aragonese antipope, who was then isolated in Peñiscola until his death. Taking the 600th anniversary of this event as starting point, the 3rd edition of the International Course and Festival on Medieval and Renaissance Music of Morella will pay homage to these figures, decisive for Late Medieval Europe. To mark this anniversary, Carles Magraner, leading the ensemble Capella de Ministrers, will open the Festival with a special concert program in commemoration of this event: Timete Deum, the Apocalypse of St. Vincent Ferrer.

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