On An Overgrown Path

Absolutely not to be missed is the reissue of a classic album from 1990 seen above. Songs from the Thousand-Year-Old Land of Catalonia sung by Montserrat Figueras with La Capell Reial de Catalunya directed by Jordi Savall was originally released by Astrée and has now been re-released on Alia Vox's mid-price Heritage series, complete with three additional tracks. This is the album that really launched Montserrat Figueras' career and you only need to listen to the first track to understand why. A young Arianna and Ferran Savall joined their parents at the Astrée sessions and Ferran went on to cover the Thief's Song and Els Segadors sung by his mother in 1988 on his woefully underrated 2008 solo album . If you need any more convincing let me tell you that the opening track is Montserrat Figueras singing El Cant Dels Aucells ( The Song of the Birds) made famous by that other great Catalan musician Pau Casals . The final track on Songs from the Thousand-Year-Old Land of Ca...

I took a room at the one hotel in Prades. It was called the Grand Hotel. Its accomodations were perhaps not regal, but the view from the window of my little room was surely fit for a king. Close by, Mount Canigou rose towards the heavens. This magnificent mountain - which is celebrated in the works of our beloved Catalan poet, Jacint Verdaguer - has a special meaning for Catalans. Perched in solitary grandeur on one of its crests is the Abbey of St. Martin, which was built at the beginning of the eleventh century by Count Guifred. According to legend, the count's great-grandfather - the founder of the Catalan dynasty - created the flag of Catalonia, with its four stripes on a yellow background. Mortally wounded in battle, he dipped his fingers in his blood and drew them down the face of his shield, declaring, "This shall be our flag" ~ Pablo Casals The traditional Catalan tune Sant Martí del Canigó [St. Martin of Canigou] was arranged for cello and orchestra by Pablo C...

Catalonia, triumphant - Catalunya, triomfant - is the opening declamation of Els Segadors , the Catalonian national hymn which was recorded in 1988 in a deeply moving rendition by Jordi Savall and his much-missed wife Montserrat Figueras . Catalonia is a creative powerhouse which has given us the two great string players, Pau Casals and Jordi Savall. So, to mark the fortieth anniversary of Pau Casals' death this month , I invited Jordi to record this brief exclusive tribute to his compatriot. In that tribute Jordi Savall remembers Pau Casals not only for his great musicianship, but also for his human engagement for peace and concord, dialogue and justice. Jordi shares those values and this week releases Orient-Occident II , his personal homage to war-torn Syria which brings together musicians from Lebanon, Israel and Syria in a long awaited follow-up to his best-selling Orient-Occident project. As always with Alia Vox this lavish new CD/book is a thing of great beauty, n...

'How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons, or a carpenter and his apprentice can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grew up at the cost hundreds of thousands of dollars on the campuses of American universities?' - Thomas Merton writing in The Seven Storey Mountain Trappist monk, advocate of inter-religious dialogue, poet and peace activist Thomas Merton was born in this house in Prades in French Catalonia. I took the photos recently and the house, which is still a private residence, has hardly changed since Merton was born in 1915. Back then his artist father rented the upper two floors and the lower storey was used as a wine store. The French inscription on the plaque simply reads "Here was born the American author Thomas Merton". This article is rich in paths. Our journey to Catalonia was inspired by the Forgotten Kingdom project from that great Catalan mus...

When asked why his oratorio El Pessebre (The Manger) ignored contemporary musical developments the great Catalan musician Pablo Casals replied with a smile "The figures in a crèche are folk figures; why, they can't sing twelve-tone music!" In 1939 the Catalan writer Joan Alavadera had fled from Franco's forces in Spain with the draft of a poem celebrating his region's tradition of Christmas crèches. In exile Joan Alvadera shared Pablo Casals' house in Prades , and in 1943 his completed Poema del Pessebre won the annual contest in nearby Perpignan for poems written in Catalan. Many years later Casals asked Alvadera to add extra verses and in 1960 his "peace oratorio" El Pessebre was premiered in Mexico. The little-known oratorio is a delightfully derivative concoction; just let's say that if you like Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel you will like El Pessebre . Fortunately the work is very well served by the Naïve recording from the Orque...

Of all the various manifestations of popular art, song is undoubtedly the one with the greatest ethnic and psychological value; through it may be glimpsed and studied the most profound and unplumbed manifestations of the soul of people. That observation from the Catalan folklorist Joan Amades appears in the booklet of Montserrat Figueras' Songs from the Thousand-Year-Old Land of Catalonia . Seen above is the recently released Trilogy album which packages Joan Baez's first three albums, all icons of popular song, together at an astonishingly low price . Joan Baez, together with Björk, is headlining the 2012 Fez sacred music festival . In 2010 Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall took their Jerusalem project to the Fez festival . The Quaker faith of Joan Baez's parents was important in moulding her pacifism. In 1915 peace activist, Catholic monk and author Thomas Merton was born in Prades in French Catalonia to a New Zealand father and American Quaker mother. Joan Bae...

So it was that in the spring of 1939 I came to Prades. I could not have imagined at the time that I would spend the next seventeen years of my life in this little town in the Pyrenees. And in spite of the sorrow in me, I found respite in my surroundings. With its winding cobbled strees and whitewashed houses with red tiled roofs - and the acacia trees that were then in bloom - Prades might have been one of the Catalan villages I had known since childhood. The countryside seemed no less familiar to me. The lovely patterns of orchards an vineyards, the wild and craggy mountains with ancient Roman fortresses and monasteries clinging to their sides - these too were a replica of parts of my homeland. Indeed, centuries before, this very region had been part of the nation of Catalonia - from Joys and Sorrows by Pablo Casals Today Prades wears its Casals connection lightly but proudly. There is no Café Casals in the main square, none of his recordings grace the shop windows and the two house...

'Shortly after arriving at Prades, I visited some of the concentration camps - there were a number nearby, at Rivesaltes, Vernet, Le Boulou, Septfonds, Argelès - where the Spanish refugees were confined. The scenes I witnessed might have been from Dante's Inferno . Tens of thousands of men and women and children were herded together like animals, penned in by barbed wire, housed - if one can call it that - in tents and crumbling shacks. There was no sanitation facilities or provision for medical care. There was little water and barely enough food to keep the inmates from starvation. The camp at Argelès was typical. Here more than a hundred thousand refugees had been massed in open areas among sand dunes along the seashore. Though it was winter, they had been provided with no shelter whatsoever - many had burrowed holes in the wet sand to protect themselves from the pelting rains and bitter winds. The driftwood they gathered for fires to warm themselves was soon exhausted. Score...

Jonathan Harvey 's daughter Anna has posted via Twitter the new to me photo above of Jonathan outside IRCAM where he created among other seminal pieces Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco . In the Music Machine electronic music anthology Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco is highlighted, together with Désintegrations by Tristan Murail and Digital Moonscapes by Wendy Carlos , as an outstanding example of a composition using spectral analysis, and Jonathan's composition is cited as - and here comes the money quote - evidence that esoteric technology can produce music that appeals to a wider audience. There is a valuable spoken introduction in French to Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco from Pierre Boulez and others at IRCAM on YouTube . My 2013 post ' Britten looking forward ' told how Jonathan met the young composer Ramón Humet at a summer workshop for young composers organised by the National Youth Orchestra of Catalonia, and how Jonathan went on to endorse the 2007 recording of Humet...

That interview with Jordi Savall about the Catalan independence movement appeared on France24 . There have been many posts On An Overgrown Path celebrating Catalonia and one back in 2011 featured the album Songs from the Thousand-Year-Old Land of Catalonia sung by the much-missed Montserrat Figueras with La Capell Reial de Catalunya directed by Jordi. But, as with Brexit , we must not forget that for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

Catalonia is a creative powerhouse: Pau Casals *, Joan Miró, Antoni Gaudí, and Salvador Dalí were all proud Catalans, and today Barcelona is a vibrant centre of the arts . Jordi Savall is just one of the contemporary Catalan musicians who has had a global impact, and modern modal master Ross Daly 's Crete-based music co-operative has an annual Labyrinth in Catalunya outreach workshop. My recent plea for the composers in the photo above taken at the summer workshop of the National Youth Orchestra of Catalonia in 2000 to be identified has been answered by Santi Barguñó of Neu Records  with help from Ramón Humet who is in the photo. They are from left to right: Benet Casablancas ( bio & music ), Marcos Bosch ( bio  & music ), Josep Maria Guix ( bio & music ), Carles Tort, Moisés Bertran ( bio & music ), Ramón Humet ( bio & music ), Enric Riu ( bio & music ), Joan Guinjoan ( bio & music ) and Jonathan Harvey . I have added links to biogra...

Pau Casals died at 2 p.m. on Monday, 22 October 1973 in the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital, San Juan, Puerto Rica. It is one of many paradoxes that in an age when classical music is obsessed with anniversaries , this important anniversary is passing virtually unnoticed. Here, in an attempt to at least partially rectify that, is a reblog of my 2010 tribute to the great Catalan musician and humanitarian titled A musician is also a man . 'So it was that in the spring of 1939 I came to Prades. I could not have imagined at the time that I would spend the next seventeen years of my life in this little town in the Pyrenees. And in spite of the sorrow in me, I found respite in my surroundings. With its winding cobbled strees and whitewashed houses with red tiled roofs - and the acacia trees that were then in bloom - Prades might have been one of the Catalan villages I had known since childhood. The countryside seemed no less familiar to me. The lovely patterns of orchards an vineyards, the wild...

'I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where the edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international boundaries. Often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one' - from Anne Fadiman The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down For music the action most worth watching is also found where the ( ragged? ) edges meet - on the shorelines where traditions mix, in the weather fronts where styles collide, and at the international boundaries where cultures fuse. Not at the dead - in more ways than one - centre where risk and tension are bleached out in the name of accessibility. At the point of tangency you can see things better, as in the new CD of choral music by the Catalan composer Bernat Vivancos. Born in Barcelona in 1973, Vivancos trained at the world famous Escolania de Montserrat which is one of the oldest choral schools in the world. His studie...

A surprising connection between jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and cello legend Pablo Casals, who is seen above, has been uncovered by American reader Tim McCarthy. In the past Tim has taken us down other absorbing paths including one to Ravi Shankar and George Harrison's Collaborations box set, and his latest email captures the eclectic spirit of On An Overgrown Path perfectly, so here it is verbatim: Bob: While reading the liner notes to the excellent double cd of "Coleman Hawkins: A Retrospective: 1929-1963" ( RCA Bluebird 1995 ), I was surprised to discover that Bean played cello and loved Pablo Casals. Since I owe my appreciation of both Bach and Casals to OAOP , I thought I'd send you the following. Excerpted from a conversation between Hawkins scholar James T. Maher and the liner note's author Bill Kirchner : "In the late Twenties, Casals had begun to record some of the Bach solo pieces as well as a great variety of other material, from l...