Miquel Pardàs i Roure

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Miquel Pardàs i Roure (born May 19, 1817 in Verges , Catalonia , † in Barcelona April 28, 1872 ) was a Catalan music theorist and choreographer. He was a first-class sardana dancer and had a decisive influence on the choreography of this Catalan folk dance. Above all, he collected the existing rules for this dance and shaped them into a new whole. In 1850 he published the first sardana school: Mètodo per apendre de ballar sardanes llargues ('method of learning to dance the sardana llarga ').

A life for the sardana

Pardàs came from Verges. As a teenager he came to Torroella de Montgrí . He ran a grocery and haberdashery shop there. He also sold his goods at fairs and weekly markets and in this way took part in numerous village festivals, where he danced Sardana and also taught the Sardana dance. He was not a trained musician; He was an absolute natural musical and dance talent and played the guitar very well. He was completely obsessed with dancing sardana. It was easy for him to leave work and go to a party or two - often accompanied by one of his daughters - to dance.

Since 1850 there have been Cobla concerts with Sardana performances in Barcelona for the first time outside the province of Girona. In such a context, Miquel Pardàs was mentioned in the press on July 17, 1859 as an outstanding sardana dancer from the Empordà on the occasion of a sardana dance event in the Teatre de la Zarzuela in Barcelona. In the summer of 1860 Queen Isabella II made a trip through the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Aragon. In this context, a big festival was organized on September 30th and October 1st, 1860 at Montserrat with numerous choirs and folk dance groups from different regions of Catalonia. Among other things, the Cobla, i.e. the Sardana Orchestra, from Pep Ventura and dancers from Miquel Pardàs were invited. Miquel Pardàs appeared at this festival with one of his daughters and two dancers in traditional Catalan peasant clothes. He received a gold medal from Queen Isabella II for his cultural commitment to the sardana. The press and chronicles speak of 14,000 to 15,000 visitors to this festival. Especially the Cobla Pep Venturas and the dances led by Miquel Pardàs were highly praised in the press.

When Miquel Pardàs became a widower, he moved to Barcelona. From then on, he led a very irregular and unsteady life. He died in 1872 at the age of 54 in the Hospital de Santa Creu in Barcelona, ​​in the building that now houses the National Library of Catalonia . There is no picture of him.

The relationship between Miquel Pardàs and Pep Ventura

The relationship between Miquel Pardàs and Pep Ventura is inextricably linked to the question of the invention of the sardana llarga . Until around 1840, only the Sardana curta was danced at village and town festivals in the Empordà . Sometime in the early 1840s, the Sardana llarga was created through more complex combinations of dance movements . Some authors see Miquel Pardàs, others in Pep Ventura the inspirer or inventor of the Sardana llarga . Against an invention of the Sardana llarga by Miquel Pardàs, many cited the fact that this was not a (trained) musician, but “only” an outstanding dancer. In any case, it is certain that an outstanding musician and an outstanding dancer had to coordinate with each other because of the division and integration of steps and sequence of steps in the more complex Sardana llarga movements. Supporters of the second opinion see Miquel Pardàs as the great choreographer, which is expressed in the Mètodo per apendre de ballar sardanes llargues and in Pep Ventura the savior and innovator of Sardana now as Sardana llarga . This Sardana llarga then spread from Figueres through the surrounding villages (also via Torroella) to Girona, Ripoll and Olot and began its unstoppable triumphant advance. It is also certain that during this triumphant advance of the sardana, first in Figueras and later in the surrounding area, both Miquel Pardàs and musicians from the Cobla of Pep Ventura taught and imparted the new dance.

In any case, based on the currently available sources, it cannot be decided whether Pep Ventura himself had the ingenious musical idea of Sardana llarga , which Miquel Pardàs then added to the choreography, or whether Miquel Pardàs had this inspiring idea that Pep Ventura willingly and willingly gladly recorded and then implemented compositionally in new sardanas. On the occasion of this fact of the joint work of the two friends Pep Ventura and Miquel Pardàs and the people close to them, the question arises whether it is at all appropriate to speak of a single inventor of the sardana llarga , especially since it presents itself as a unity of music and dance .

Private

Miquel Pardàs was born in Verges, the fourth of eight children of Baldiri Pardàs (* Torroella 1785 †?) And Rosa Roure (* Verges 1785 †?). He grew up with a total of seven siblings. His father was an employee of the town hall in Verges. Miquel Pardàs and his wife Dolors Roig i Saguer married on June 13, 1841 in Torroella. They had six children, two of whom died very early.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Miquel Pardàs is a pretty blank slate biographically. This can be seen, among other things, in the Spartan article about himself in the Enciclopèdia Catalana. For this reason, links to Jaume Nonell i Juncosa's blog are included in the article. Jaume Nonell is a Catalan cultural manager who is deeply involved in the history of Sardana. In doing so, he came across studies on Miquel Pardàs by Salvador Raurich from 1921 to 1923, which enable a biographical approach to Miquel Pardàs. Raurich had publicly asked for information on Miquel Pardàs for his sardana research in 1921 at a sardana festival in honor of Pep Ventura in Torroella. On the basis of this research he was the first and so far the only one to write a biography, or rather a biographical sketch, of Pardàs (published on October 22nd and November 15th, 1922 in Las Noticias under the pseudonym Salvatore ). Among other things, Nonell has compiled this information in a total of three articles about Miquel Pardàs in the festival books for the city festival of Torroella 2015, 2016, 2017 and published it online on his blog (see links): (Nonell 2015, 2016, 2017)
  2. ↑ The daily life data are given according to Jaume Nonell i Juncosa 2016 (see in particular footnote 13 and pages 50, 51). The sometimes mentioned wrong year of birth 2018 goes back to the main source of information for the biographer Raurich, the carpenter Eduardo Viñas. Nonell himself provides evidence of the date of birth in Verges' baptismal register from 1817.
  3. ^ Based on Jaume Nonell, 2016.
  4. ^ Based on Jaume Nonell, 2017.
  5. ^ For example, the biographer of Pep Ventura, Pous i Pagès, and also the musician Josep Badosa from Pep Ventura's Cobla.
  6. ↑ For example, Xicu Notari (real name Francesc Puig Miralles, 1835–1929), one of the fellow dancers at the Sardana festival of 1860 on Montserrat. He passed this information on to Salvador Raurich in 1920.
  7. ^ Based on Jaume Nonell, 2017
  8. ↑ Detailed information on Miquel Pardàs' family tree can be found in Nonell, 2016.

Literature by Miquel Pardàs

  • Miquel Pardàs (Pàrdas i Roure): Mètodo per apendre de ballar sardanes llargues . Figueres 1850.

literature

  • Enciclopèdia Catalana: Pardàs i Roure, Miquel . In: Gran enciclopèdia catalana. 2nd edition 3rd reprint 1992. Volume 17 . Enciclopèdia catalana, Barcelona 1987, ISBN 84-7739-017-7 , p. 246 (Catalan).
  • Jaume Nonell i Juncosa: Miquel Pardas. Els primers mètodes de comptar i repartir sardanes . In: Llibre de la Festa Major 2015 de Torroella de Montgrí . Torroella de Montgrí 2016.
  • Jaume Nonell i Juncosa: Miquel Pardas (II). Una aproximació a la biografia d'aquest ballador de sardanes i contrapassos . In: Llibre de la Festa Major 2016 de Torroella de Montgrí . Torroella de Montgrí 2016.
  • Jaume Nonell i Juncosa: Miquel Pardas (i III). El ballador de sardanes i contrapassos . In: Llibre de la Festa Major 2017 de Torroella de Montgrí . Torroella de Montgrí 2017.
  • Salvador Raurich: Notas musicales. Sobre la invención de la sardana larga. In: Las Noticias (10/22/1922) and (11/15/1922) .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Pardàs i Roure, Miquel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Catalan music theorist and choreographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Verges , Catalonia
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1872
Place of death Barcelona