Manuel Blancafort i de Rosselló

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Independent Composer of Catalonia (CIC). From left to right: Robert Gerhard , Agustí Grau , Joan Gibert Camins , Eduard Toldrà , Manuel Blancafort, Baltasar Samper and Ricard Lamote de Grignon . Frederic Mompou is missing in the picture . (1931)

Manuel Blancafort i de Rosselló (born August 12, 1897 in La Garriga , † January 8, 1987 in Barcelona ) was a Catalan composer. Manuel Blancafort is counted among the Independent Composers of Catalonia (CIC).

life and work

family and friends

As a child in a wealthy family, Manuel Blancafort was able to develop relationships with great personalities from politics and culture at an early age. His father taught him the musical notation system and introduced him to the piano. On the basis of friendship and acquaintance with various personalities in the spa town of La Garriga, Blancafort developed his self-taught personality, especially in the direction of music. The necessity of working in his parents' mill as a child gave him contacts to great Catalan musicians such as Ricard Lamote de Grignon , Felip Pedrell , Antoni Massana and Jaume Pahissa .

Early artistic phase

The acquaintance with Frederic Mompou in the spa town of La Garriga in 1914 made the young man rethink his compositional positions. A deep friendship grew out of this encounter, which led Blancafort to perform his first works such as Record (1915, memory) and Jocs i danses al camp (1915–1918, games and dances in the field) in public. Through his friendship with Mompou, Blancafort's early piano works achieved a musical language reminiscent of Claude Debussy and Erik Satie . This early developed piano language of Blancafort was internationally recognized and appreciated with the premiere of his works composed between 1920 and 1924, interpreted by Ricard Viñes in Paris in 1926. His acquaintance with Joan Lamote de Grignon also opened up the field of orchestral music to him.

Blancafort increasingly emancipated himself artistically and was no longer perceived as the second representative of French musical aesthetics in Catalonia alongside Mompou. The premiere of the orchestral work Der Raub der Sabinerinnen (1931) by Pau Casals in 1932 revealed for the first time the depth of Blancafort's artistic personality, which in this work made connections to the classical tradition, more precisely to the main theme of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, op 67 , to the Fate Symphony .

Artistic maturity

After the Spanish Civil War , Blancafort turned primarily to the symphonic genre. In 1944 he premiered his First Piano Concerto in C minor, the Concert omaggio al genial Franz Liszt (concert dedicated to the brilliant Franz Liszt). Although the critics accused him of too much post-romantic influence, this work was a great success. This first concert was followed by other important orchestral works such as the Prelude, Aria and Gigue (first performed in 1948), the Concert ibèric (first performed in 1950) and the Symphony in E major (first performed in 1951). In these works Blancafort went well beyond the French musical aesthetics and gained an independent place among composers of the classical music tradition such as Maurice Ravel , Manuel de Falla , Igor Stravinsky , Arthur Honegger , Edward Grieg , Claude Debussy , Frederic Mompou , Benjamin Britten , Paul Hindemith and others, according to musicologist Xosé Aviñoa .

Blancafort also worked as a composer for chamber and choral music. Noteworthy here is his cantata Verge Maria (1965, The Virgin Mary), written for mixed choir and orchestra , with which he won the first prize of the Orféo Català . Here he comes very close to the religious works of Francis Poulenc . In chamber music, his string quartet in C major, in which he processed some children's songs, stands out clearly. Blancafort wrote music on some texts by Catalan writers and poets such as Joan Maria Guasch , Josep Maria López-Picó , Apel·les Mestres , Josep Carner , Marià Manent and Tomàs Garcés .

swell

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Manuel Blancafort i de Rosselló: In: Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Manuel Blancafort i de Rosselló. In: Gran Enciclopèdia de la Música.
personal data
SURNAME Blancafort i de Rosselló, Manuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Catalan composer
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH La Garriga
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1987
Place of death Barcelona