Compositors Independents de Catalunya
The Compositors Independents de Catalunya ("Independent Composers of Catalonia"), abbreviated as CIC , also known as the Grup dels vuit ("The Group of Eight"), was an association of Catalan composers in the early 1930s. This group included Robert Gerhard , Agustí Grau , Joan Gibert , Eduard Toldrà , Manuel Blancafort , Baltasar Samper , Ricard Lamote de Grignon and Frederic Mompou . The group existed because of the very different aesthetic views of its members and due to theSpanish civil war , apart from a previous history, only between 1931 and 1936. During this time, the members also made positive statements in publications in terms of the group's goals. The group was able to organize and celebrate a monographic concert with works by all its members in Barcelona on June 25, 1931. Another public concert of the group is not known.
Program and story
In the early 1920s, the composers Blancafort, Toldrà, Mompou, Samper and Gerhard met. Those named agreed that a new general Catalan musical language had to be developed. Gerhard himself established the avant-garde artist group Amics de l'Art nou (ADLAN) in 1931. He then brought together eight composers in the group “Compositors Independents de Catalunya” for a similar cause in the field of music. These composers represented various modern, co-existing musical cultures in Barcelona. The group set itself the goal of conveying these new musical cultures to society as modern Catalan music.
The group never published its own joint manifesto. Jean Cocteau's writing Le coq et l'arlequin , which had been read by all those involved in the composer group, served as a replacement manifesto. In this writing, Cocteau contrasted the "artificiality", the "indiscriminate" and the "cowardice" of the artistic mainstream in the Harlequin and in the Hahn the "authenticity", "domestic authenticity" of a new art. The group saw the first-named, less specific, smooth position represented by academic German music, for example, but also by Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky . Cocteau himself, of course, did not describe the artistic progress towards authentic Catalan music, namely the authentic position of the rooster. Blancafort then outlined such progress:
“Our music has to be Catalan, but it has to avoid traces of Catalan folk culture such as peasant festivals and porrone , because there are more than shepherds and farmers in Catalonia today. This new music must be more than a sardana or a Catalan folk song. She has to speak of Catalonia in a European language. ”Blancafort also complains that neither Isaac Albéniz nor Enric Granados created authentic Catalan music. The compositional work of Frederic Mompou is 'only' a piano work and leaves plenty of room for composing in other genres. Without naming any other names, Blancafort goes on to complain that Catalan composers have until now relied on flaming texts that never really reached audiences.
The group's first and only concert took place on June 25, 1931 in the Sala Mozart in Barcelona. Works by all the composers involved were performed. Some of the composers appeared in the lecture themselves. It also included lectures by the soprano Concepció Badia , who was herself active in the New Catalan Music Movement. The concert opened with a piano trio by Gerhard. This work was already paradoxically rated by music critics as cosmopolitan and Catalan at the same time. Piano works by Lamote, Blancafort, Samper, Mompou, Grau and Toldrà followed. Vocal works based on texts by Catalan poets were also performed. The concert ended with Gerhard's 7 Haiku .
The British musicologist and composer Monty Atkins gave the composer's group the assessment that, with the exception of Gerhard, all the other participants at least implicitly offered a French (and not specifically Catalan) musical language and musical aesthetic. Gerhard was the only one of the eight composers to fully live up to the composer's group's motto: “Speaking of Catalan things in a European language”.
swell
- Enciclopèdia Catalana: Grup de Compositors de Barcelona (Compositors Independents de Catalunya). In: Gran Enciclopèdia de la Música . Retrieved December 15, 2019 (Catalan).
- Monty Adkins: The Roberto Gerhard Companion. 2016, accessed on December 20, 2019 (English, there the chapter “Amics de l'Art Nou and Compositors Independents de Catalunya”.).
Web links
- Naxos: Jordi Maso: Catalan Piano Album. 2006, accessed on December 15, 2019 (English, there also some comments on the Compositors Independents de Catalunya .).