Old music can acquire an unfortunate layer of glass around it. The scholarship is impeccable, the instruments are correct, and the result can feel preserved rather than alive. Jordi Savall has spent decades showing how unnecessary that distance can be.

With Hespèrion XXI at Carnegie Hall, Savall approached historical repertory as music rather than evidence. His viola da gamba could be delicate without becoming precious, and the period instruments around him produced a lighter, more varied texture than the orchestral weight modern listeners often associate with concert-hall seriousness.

Savall’s scholarship is part of the reason these performances exist, but scholarship was not the subject of the evening. Rhythm mattered. So did the physical character of the instruments and the way phrases moved between players. Music written centuries ago did not arrive asking for indulgence because of its age.

That is particularly valuable at Carnegie Hall, a room capable of turning reputation into ceremony. Savall did not need much ceremony. His authority came from attention to the ensemble and from the sense that this repertory still contained choices rather than settled answers.

“Early music” is an administrative label more than a useful description of what it sounds like. Savall’s performances are a reminder of how much life gets flattened by the term: dance, court culture, religious feeling, migration and the constant movement of musical ideas across borders. The past did not sound remote at Carnegie Hall. It sounded busy.