The Is­land of Sardin­ia is very rich in tra­di­tion­al song, mu­sic and dance of all kinds, and sup­ports two dis­tinct forms of poly­vocal singing. The first is the sec­u­lar sung dance-mu­sic Cantu á Tenores tra­di­tion, the second is the Coro or Cun­cordu tra­di­tion of sac­red ritu­al mu­sic, which in the quite re­cent past they were an in­teg­ral part of nu­mer­ous so­cio/re­li­gious rituals.

The Cun­cordo does not use throat singing and is called capriz­are “singing as a goat”. This style is one of the most ar­cha­ic lin­guist­ic phe­nom­ena of an area that was isol­ated dur­ing a long time from more dy­nam­ic cul­tur­al cen­ters. The tra­di­tion­al singing of Sardin­ia is trans­mit­ted or­ally from one sing­er gen­er­a­tion to an­oth­er.

The sing­ers have a sac­ral role with­in the com­munity: the songs are a mir­ror of the sing­ers’ spir­it and the sing­ers rep­res­ent the soul of the com­munity. In 2005, this art­form has been pro­claimed as “Mas­ter­piece of the Or­al and In­tan­gible Cul­tur­al Her­it­age of the Hu­man­ity” by the UN­ESCO.

The “Cun­cordu de Or­o­sei” en­semble are mas­ters of this rare way of singing. In the broad field of sac­red mu­sic in Sardin­ia, this en­semble un­doubtedly oc­cu­pies a prom­in­ent po­s­i­tion pro­tect­ing their rich pat­ri­mony. Yet, none of them reads mu­sic or has a mu­sic­al back­ground. The back-drop for the story in­to the mu­sic are the lives of the group mem­bers in the vil­lage of Or­o­sei and the Baronia re­gion. This visu­ally stun­ning area on the cent­ral east coast of Sardin­ia is home to the “Cun­cordu de Or­o­sei” en­semble.

World-renowned Vi­ola da Gamba play­er, con­duct­or and com­poser Vit­torio Ghielmi (who ap­pears with or­ches­tras such as Il Giardino Ar­monico, the Freiburg Baroque Or­ches­tra or the Lon­don Phil­har­mon­ic Or­ches­tra) has been on a lifelong quest to find and cre­ate au­then­t­ic in­ter­pret­a­tions of an­cient-clas­sic­al mu­sic. Fight­ing the status quo as a young man he is now revered as a mas­ter of the field. The “Cun­cordus” will join Vit­torio Ghielmi and his en­semble “Il Suon­ar Par­lante” to ex­plore new ter­rain with an­cient sounds. A his­tor­ic en­counter of truly ex­traordin­ary artists takes place in this in­spir­ing en­vir­on­ment.

The film doc­u­ments a spe­cial and unique way of mak­ing mu­sic that con­trib­utes to the vi­tal­ity of rur­al life and thus provides a closer pic­ture at Sardin­ia off the beaten tour­ist tracks. The sound track as well fol­lows un­trod­den paths: the fruits of this col­lab­or­a­tion re­ward the audi­ence with mu­sic nev­er ever played be­fore.