Josep Maria Ventura i Casas

Josep Maria Ventura i Casas alias Pep Ventura

Josep Maria Ventura i Casas (born February 2, 1817 in Alcalá la Real , Andalusia , † in Figueres 1875 ), best known under his stage name Pep Ventura , was a Catalan musician and composer. As a composer, he developed today's Sardana together with the dancer and choreographer Miquel Pardàs and formed the Cobla , the eleven-piece Catalan Sardana orchestra with its twelve instruments.

Life

Josep Maria Ventura was born by chance in 1817 in Alcalá la Real, Andalusia, where his father, a member of the military, was posted. When the family was two years old, they returned to Roses in Catalonia. When Pep Ventura was six years old, his mother passed away. From now on he lived with his grandpa. Almost in poverty, he grew up on the streets more than in school. Here he learned to play reed flutes he made himself. At the age of 15 he learned the tailoring trade. He worked for a tailor who was the head of the local Cobla. Here he learned to play various instruments and also acquired knowledge of music theory. It is now believed that he played with the Figueres Cobla from the age of 18. Around 1848 he became the head of this ensemble himself. He was now in the innovation center of the "old" Sardana.

plant

The monument of the city of Figueres for "Pep Ventura"

Pep Ventura tried to further develop the culture of the “old” Cobla with four instruments (Xeremia, Cornamusa, flabiol , tamborí ) and five to seven players by integrating new types of brass instruments into the ensemble. The fact that he had already composed Sardanas himself made it much easier for him to convert the Cobla into a new scheme. He ordered a kind of "Tenora" from the instrument maker Andreu Turon i Vaquer in Perpignan, which truly anticipated the future. He arranged the "new" Cobla in a front row with the "old" woodwind instruments and a back row with the "new" brass instruments. At the beginning of both rows he positioned the bass as a string instrument. Other Coblen imitated his novel scheme, which is retained for the Sardana to this day. Music lovers were delighted with the performances of this new formation, in which soloistic traits came to the fore. Many were enthusiastic about the new possibilities of performing folk-song melodies.

Pep Ventura was a very intuitive musician; he did not particularly appreciate the fashion melodies of Italian opera from this period. But as a pioneer of folk music, he wrote Sardanas on old folk songs like El cant dels ocells . He also wrote completely new pieces such as Per tu ploro ("I cry for you"). The latter was premiered in Barcelona in 1872 with an amplified cobla by twenty-one musicians. Pep Ventura wrote works in different forms:

• 312 Sardana llargas (long sardanas)
• Lots of sardanas curtes
• Lots of choir compositions

In total he composed more than 550 pieces, in which he dealt with around 2000 musical themes. The handwritten originals are in the Orfeó Català archive .

Pep Ventura died in Figueres in 1875. But his melodies made him immortal for the Catalans.

literature

• Ventura i Casas, Josep Maria . In: Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana . 2nd Edition. Barcelona 1989, ISBN 84-7739-099-1 , Volume 23, TRAJ-VENT, p. 519.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the relationship between Pep Ventura and Miquel Pardàs see the article on Miquel Pardàs .