Orphéon

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The Orphéon (from French Orphée , Orpheus , Catalan: Orfeó ) was a musical lay movement in France that gained great importance in the field of choral singing in the 19th century. The term was later transferred to the choirs involved in the movement. This movement was picked up in Catalonia and is still culturally significant in the form of the orfeós or folk choirs.

history

The Orphéon goes back to elementary music courses that the French music teacher Guillaume Louis Wilhelm (actually Louis Bocquillon ) introduced to primary schools in Paris from 1819. In 1829 this method was officially prescribed as a teaching method. From 1830 Wilhelm began to gather his students from several schools to sing together in a choir. From this emerged around 1833 the Écoles populaires de chant for the maintenance of a cappella singing. Wilhelm gave them the name Orphéon . In 1836 he set up similar events for adults as evening courses.

Following the example of this choral movement, which was based on music-pedagogical concepts, choral societies , the societés chorales , were formed throughout France under the name Orphéon . The Orphéon in Paris was assigned central administrative tasks for the movement, for the choral societies and for music education work in schools.

The first directors of the Paris Orphéon were Guillaume Louis Wilhelm, Joseph Hubert , Charles Gounod and François Bazin . From 1834 public concerts of the movement were given in Paris. From 1849 competitions of different Orphéons were held in different French cities. 137 clubs with 3,000 singers took part in an Anglo-French choir festival in London in 1860; at other singers' meetings up to 8,000 participants came together.

Josep Anselm Clavé introduced this choir concept in Catalonia. In Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands , numerous Orfeós such as the Orfeó Barcelonès (1853), the Orfeó Lleidata (1861), the Orfeó Català (1891), the Orfeó Mercantil de Palma or the Orfeó Maonès were founded. In the rest of Spain, the Orfeó movement was much weaker and only affected northern Spain. There was in San Sebastian the Orfeón Donastiarra (from 1897) and in Pamplona the Orfeón Pamplonés . After the Spanish Civil War , the Orfeó movement in Catalonia did not regain its vitality until the mid-1950s. In 1960 the Secretariat of the Orfeons de Catalunya was set up, which in 1982 was reorganized into the Federation of Catalan Choirs. The Catalan orfeós differed from the French in that they were open to women from a very early age. This enabled a strong expansion of the repertoire.

The repertoire of the French Orphéons and the Catalan Orfeós included, in addition to less demanding works, opera choirs and works by Adolphe Adam , Charles Gounod , Hector Berlioz , Giacomo Meyerbeer and other composers specially composed for these choirs . Various magazines such as La France orphéonique , L'Echo des Orphéons and L'Orphéon in France as well as El Eco de Euterpe (founded 1859) and El Metrónomo (founded 1863) in Catalonia supported the work of the associations. Following the choirs and choirs, wind orchestras and, in some cases, lay symphony orchestras were founded.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilibald Gurlitt, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht: Orphéon. In: Riemann Musiklexikon.
  2. ↑ a b c d section after: Wilibald Gurlitt, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht: Orphéon. In: Riemann Musiklexikon.
  3. ↑ a b section after: Orfeó. in: Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana.
  4. ↑ Section after: Gran Enciclopèdia de la Música. Orfeó.