Catalan music of the 20th century
The social, aesthetic and political upheavals of the 20th century affected different generations of Catalan musicians before and after the catastrophe of the Spanish Civil War in their own way. For music in the 20th century and new music in Catalonia and Barcelona, the German-speaking and French musical culture areas were the most important musical reference points. The Catalan music of the 20th century developed in Barcelona musically a third way between the two main references in Vienna and Paris .
development
Early century
The avant-garde spirit that characterized music throughout the 20th century was inspired at the beginning of the century by the Second Viennese School around Arnold Schönberg , Alban Berg and Anton Webern . Their aesthetic and harmonic ideals were set in the new twelve-tone system .
The composer Robert Gerhard introduced this new musical paradigm into Catalan musical culture. He was then paradigmatically stigmatized in the Spanish Civil War as a supporter of a Catalan and opponent of a true Spanish musical culture . Gerhard went into exile in the mid-1930s, first to Paris and later to Oxford . He was a student of Enric Granados and Felip Pedrell . The latter in particular introduced modernist musicians in Catalonia around 1920 to the modern international avant-garde. Gerhard was next to the composer Manuel Blancafort , Ricard Lamote de Grignon , Joan Gibert i Camins , Agustí Grau , Baltasar Samper , Eduard Toldrà and Frederic Mompou , which, in 1931 organized the group compositors Independents de Catalunya , the way to a new music down went and tried to overcome the post-romantic style.
Before the civil war
Arnold Schönberg visited Robert Gerhard twice in Barcelona in 1931 and 1932. The Viennese composer gave one of his daughters the Catalan first name Nuria. Beyond this anecdote, what was important about these visits was the fact that the Catalan musical culture came into close contact with the corresponding European musical culture, which itself followed new and independent artistic paths. This music cultural relationship of Robert Gerhard with the aforementioned Viennese music circles in 1936 when the 14th Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music (SIMC) and the founding of the International Society of Musicology celebrated in Barcelona. In this context, the singer Conxita Badia and the cellist and conductor Pau Casals should be mentioned , who actively supported the project '' New Music '' with all their artistic possibilities. This event brought Barcelona to the side of Europe's musical capital. The meetings were of Hermann Scherchen conducted. The violin piece In Memory of an Angel by Alban Berg was premiered here.
After the civil war
The Spanish Civil War ended Gerhard's dream. Like many others (including Jaume Pahissa and Joan and Ricard de Lamote de Grignon ) he had to go into exile or internal emigration . On the other hand, musicians like Eduard Toldrà suffered from the cultural emergency situation in Catalonia after the civil war. With Toldrà, Catalonia was able to resume public musical life. He had been appointed director of the Orquestra Municipal de Barcelona , from which the present Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and the Catalan National Orchestra emerged. Toldrà combined the musical sensitivity of the first half of the 20th century with music titles such as the opera El giravolt de maig ("May vortex") and the string quartet Vistes al mar (" Sea view"). Musically, these pieces also fall back on French traditional lines of new music . Manuel Blancafort provided further examples of this extraordinary musical sensitivity with his Cantata a la Verge Maria (“Cantata for the Virgin Mary”) and Frederic Mompou in his Música callada (“Silent Music”), in which they referred to Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy .
Composers such as the Gerhard student Joaquim Homs (1906–2003) and Xavier Montsalvatge had developed a little further than the generation of Toldrà, Blancafort and Mompou . Both - although qualified as composers of the "lost generation" - succeeded in creating their own musical legacy that appealed to the independence of art while at the same time standing in the tradition. Homs, who also worked as a cellist, left behind a broad oeuvre that encompassed all musical genres and that was in accordance with the requirements of the twelve-tone technique. Xavier Montsalvatge, on the other hand, explicitly used the artistic means of Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky in his compositions in order to create an expressionistic atonality without denying its “Mediterranean luminosity”. His simultaneous work as a music critic in media such as Destino and La Vanguardia gave him a privileged perspective on the Catalan musical life. Works such as the Cinco canciones negras (“Five Black Chants”) and the Concerto breve per a piano with a dedication to Alicia de Larrocha bear witness to this.
New start from 1950
In the early 1950s, a new generation of composers enriched musical life. Xavier Benguerel (* 1931), son of the writer Xavier Benguerel i Llobet , who had to leave Catalonia in exile after Franco's victory in the civil war, returned to Barcelona in 1954. Like the composers Joan Guinjoan and Josep Soler , he joined the so-called Generació de 51 . Everyone turned to Cristòfor Taltabull as a teacher and role model. The Catalan musician and composer Taltabull formed the bridge between the musical approaches from the first decades of the 20th century and those artists who sought to achieve artistic goals of new music from 1960 onwards . Like Benguerel, Guinjoan was a student of Taltabullus. Aesthetically, he followed a trend that was heavily influenced by Bartók and Stravinsky, but still incorporated clear elements of the French school.
Catalonia as a music region
As described above, Catalonia was and is a region in which musically different currents converged and merged productively. In addition to the German and French traditions, the Italian and Spanish traditions also flowed into the musical life of Catalonia. Composers like Josep M. Mestre's Quadreny risked more and more on the way to a new music and produced a specific style, similar to how such a style developed in the field of the visual arts with artists like Joan Miro and Joan Brossa .
swell
- Twentieth century (Music). Generalitat de Catalunya - Culturcat, archived from the original on April 5, 2013 ; accessed on March 29, 2020 (English).