This story connects Hollywood to Castro de Rei, a small village in Lugo. Harry Gregson-Williamsthe composer of the soundtrack of Gladiator IIthe long-awaited film by Ridley Scott which premiered this Friday, wanted to integrate into its soundtrack old instruments which evoke ancient Rome, such as the Celtic carnax, the Roman cornu and the Greek aulos. Through social media, he discovered that in a remote village in Galicia there lived a person who owned and played all three instruments.
His name is Abraham Cupeiro (Sarria, 1980) and it is a unique type, as if from another time. In his house-workshop in Castro de Rei, he resurrects ancestral instruments that he builds himself from archaeological remains from the ruins of Pompeii or a Roman coin. He also composes music for these instruments and also performs them with the world’s best orchestras.
Only This year he gave more than 120 concertsin places as diverse as Tasmania, Canada, Germany or the United Kingdom, in addition to Spain, where he is currently presenting his third album, Myth. He is also successful on social networks, with 87,000 followers on his Instagram account and YouTube videos which have more than three million views, thanks to the communicative and educational vocation that he has put into his show. Echoing the pastwith which he explains the origin and functioning of a multitude of ancestral instruments.
His collection reaches 200 instrumentsof which he plays around a hundred and has built around fifty with his own hands. The “flagship product” of the collection is the carnax (or karnyx), an imposing trumpet two meters high and animal head that the Celts used in war to inflame the troops and intimidate the enemy. He built it solely on the basis of a Roman denarius.
“When French archaeologists saw what I was doing on my YouTube channel, they invited me to see the only original carnix which is preserved intact throughout the world, and the difference with mine was only 23 millimeters“, says Cupeiro.
How is such a degree of similarity possible if it is based on the design of an ancient coin more than two millennia old? “The most important law is common sense,” he replies matter-of-factly. “Even though people at that time were a little smaller, humans have always built instruments for themselves, so common sense is required to deduce the proportions of each part of the instrument. An archaeologist cannot understand how the pyramids of Egypt were built, but a worker knows how to move the stones. This is the vision with which I make my instruments.
Recording for Ridley Scott
Cupeiro received an invitation by email from Gregson-Williams to travel to Los Angeles to record the soundtrack for Gladiator IIbut at that time he was focused on finishing the arrangements of the compositions for his new album, which he was due to start recording in 20 days at London’s iconic Abbey Road Studios with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. SO politely declined the offer. What he didn’t imagine was that his participation in the film was essential and that, given his refusal, the composer would decide to take an emergency plane and stay in his village to record it there. If Mohammed doesn’t go to the mountains…
Cupeiro with Harry Gregson-Williams recording the music for the soundtrack of “Gladiator II”
Once they were working, Cupeiro would improvise sounds and melodies with different instruments based on what the scenes in the film he was watching on a screen suggested to him. “What we did was a library of sounds that they, back in Los Angeles, integrated into the soundtrack», explains the musician.
“Look, although the film has very expensive special effects, ultimately objects as modest as these instruments also help the film achieve greater dimension. “It’s the union of technology with the archaic,” says the musician, who says he is proud of the result and describes the experience as “very pleasant.”
Una de las cosas que más sorprendió a Cupeiro fue leer, en el planning de las escenas, anotaciones como “a Ridley Scott le gusta el sonido del cárnix”, “a Ridley Scott le gusta el sonido del cornu”, etc. Al parecer el director había estado viendo su trabajo en redes sociales, se había familiarizado con la sonoridad de cada instrumento y le había transmitido al compositor sus preferencias.
Ridley Scott no es el único gran cineasta para el que ha trabajado Cupeiro. Recientemente ha participado en dos grandes proyectos de Netflix: La vida en nuestro planeta (2023), serie documental de naturaleza producida por Steven Spielberg y narrada por Morgan Freeman; y la película bíblica Mary (que llegará a la plataforma el 6 de diciembre), en la que Anthony Hopkins interpreta al rey Herodes y donde Cupeiro ha tocado 25 instrumentos distintos.
Abraham Cupeiro sosteniendo su cornu romano. Foto: Pepe Saavedra
Su aparición en bandas sonoras de cine son un divertimento puntual en su vida cotidiana, que consiste en investigar, componer, fabricar instrumentos, grabar y salir a tocar. “Tanto Spielberg como Ridley Scott son directores que me han hecho disfrutar mucho de niño, de adolescente y de adulto. De pequeño uno no sueña con estas cosas, pero en medio de la vorágine de conciertos, poder saltarse un poco esa rutina y vivir estas experiencias es algo muy placentero”, afirma Cupeiro.
Un viaje al universo de los mitos
El lutier, compositor e intérprete conversa por teléfono por El Cultural mientras hace las maletas, porque está en plena gira de su disco Mythos. Si el anterior, Pangea, era un viaje geográfico por las músicas tradicionales del mundo, este es “un viaje a la imaginación”. “Los seres humanos necesitan tener los pies en la tierra, pero su mirada se dirige hacia las estrellas. Cuando entras en la imaginación de los pueblos, descubres lo más auténtico del ser humano. Es lo único que nos diferencia de los animales”.
Each composition is inspired by a different myth explained in the booklet. Since how the satyr Marsyas found the aulós in the forest, an instrument invented by Athena, until the myth of Simurgh, the Persian phoenix who adopted a prince abandoned as a baby on a sacred mountain because he was an albino.
Trained as a trumpeter at the Superior Conservatory of Madrid and specialized in early music at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Cupeiro was from an early age “musical promiscuity“. “I grew up listening to a lot of traditional music, but at the same time I played in a band, so cultural and popular always went hand in hand. I will be forever grateful to my hometown band Sarria, as well as the traditional band Meigas y Trasgos, because it allowed me to develop a multifaceted vision of music,” he says. “To this we must add that when I drove in my father’s car, I listened to everything, from Edith Piaf to symphony orchestras, including Miles Davis.”
Abraham Cupeiro working in his instrument workshop. Photo: Pepe Saavedra
His skills in making things with his own hands also developed when he was a child. “I grew up in what today’s parents would call a house of terror. When I went to visit my paternal grandparents, When I was seven years old, they gave my brother and me saws and hammers to play with. and we started building cabins or even some rudimentary musical instruments. I gave that up, but when I grew up, in the last year of my studies, I had to make a baroque trumpet myself because I didn’t have money to buy one, and I realized that I could making keys that opened doors to the past. Even if I am a little authoritarian, I am very perseverant and I do not give up easily and little by little I acquired the techniques that allow me to build instruments,” he explains.
Despite the success it has enjoyed in recent years, Cupeiro is so rooted in his land It’s hard to imagine him living anywhere other than Galicia. “I live in a place where, culturally, there is still a lot to exploit, and there is an ancient tradition that has been with me since I was little. Plus, gastronomically speaking, there are few places in the world where you eat so well, even if it’s not a very glamorous reason,” he says with a laugh.
Regarding the humility he displays when speaking, he says: “Life is too short to become stupid or conceited. Listen, these days I had a brutal back pain that prevented me from even walking. I’m better now, and just enjoying being able to walk while talking to you is something I’m grateful for.
