Instead of focusing on a single work or repertory, Jordi Savall, together with his wife Montserrat Figueras and their children Arianna and Ferran Savall, here offers what he terms "a highly personal selection of the music that has moved us by its tenderness and beauty, as well as its ability to promote dialogue and harmony." Thus we have melodies and mostly improvisatory instrumental pieces from a variety of traditions, opening with an absolutely delectable love song by the thirteenth century Galician-Portuguese troubador Martin Codax, and proceeding through music from Afghanistan, Morocco, Sephardic Judaism, France, Mexico, and the inspiration of the various Savalls themselves, among various other sources. The title "De temps et de l'instant" (Of Time and of the Moment) is supposed to indicate that the selection of music is both historical and current, but in fact most of the music is medieval, and the original pieces fit in with the older music stylistically. Whether the music will promote dialogue and harmony is also questionable, despite the numerous translations (French, English, Spanish, Catalan, German, Italian, Japanese, and Korean) contained in the insanely sumptuous liner notes; the music here has been bent to fit Savall's very distinctive sound.
So the concept is a bit hazy. But, as Savall says, the choice of pieces is a personal one, and he doesn't belabor his other points. Musically, it works, except for some unconvincing attempts by the younger Savalls to create a sort of medieval version of scat singing on Fantasiant, track 15. The vocal pieces are laments, lullabies, prayers; the instrumentals are improvisations in molds that have lasted for hundreds of years. Everything hangs together with unusual cohesion as a sequence, and the music is, as usual with Savall, arrestingly beautiful. England's Guardian newspaper called this a "medieval crossover" disc, and that's a good description of its place in Savall's oeuvre. If he has been a more instructive musician at times, he has rarely exceeded this disc when it comes to sheer surface beauty. The instrumental palette is restricted to Savall's viols, plus gothic harp, double harp, theorbo, and percussion from the heavily bearded Pedro Estevan.