Dansa i música [Dance and music]- La ciutat del Born. Barcelona 1700 Collection
- Albert Garcia Espuche (director)
- Barcelona City Council. Museu d’Història de la Ciutat
- Barcelona, 2009
- 326 pages
The Dansa i música (2009) volume of the Barcelona 1700 collection is written by Albert Garcia Espuche, Josep Borràs i Roca, Joan Pellisa i Pujades, Josep Dolcet and Carles Mas i Garcia, and also includes Joaquim Albareda’s transcription of the unpublished manuscript –kept in the city’s Historic Archive– entitled Memòria de les danses [Memory of the dances], by Josep Faust de Potau i de Ferran (1701). It is worth noting that this salvaged text is exceptionally important and that in the last three or four years it has had a major repercussion in ballet all over Europe, being one of the few documents that details how to execute a great number of cult dances. The transcript of the dance steps that the noble Potau learnt from his teacher from Barcelona Francesc Olivella is now part of the repertoire of some companies and we trust that one day, sooner rather than later, some of these choreographies will be performed on our stages.
Academic dance, along with fencing, was central to the socialisation of eighteenth-century nobles and high society, as Josep Dolcet explains in a well-documented article in this volume, “L’expansió de la dansa d’escola“ [The expansion of school dancing], which precedes the publication of the manuscript. Between 1603 and 1721 it is estimated that there were no fewer than 35 dancing teachers in Barcelona, an impressive figure for a demographically limited society. However, Dolcet suggests that Catalan dancing teachers, who ultimately made their living in a society with few nobles and far removed from the Court, “were probably in contact with very broad layers of society“; their clients were the wealthy bourgeoisie, merchants who wanted to organise soirées and young hotheads out to get married. The data is significant because it allows us to establish sociologically that social change was afoot in the Barcelona of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: if there were dancing teachers it meant that there were affluent social strata looking for new outlets for their socialité. Anyone interested in the forms of sociability of the Ancien Régime will find exhaustive documentation on the topic in the pages of the book. But in the pre-industrial world, music was not just the privilege of the nobles or an accompaniment for religious functions, rather the entire city abounded with music. The role of chapel masters and religious music was not, in Barcelona in 1700, as decisive as had been believed, because it was also accompanied by an abundant popular musical tradition, but even so it should not be underestimated.
Music, as is well known, possesses an amazing and strange characteristic; it can arouse an unconscious, deep-rooted and almost irrational aspect of human personality that marks a person’s character. If people sing to keep trouble at bay, then music accompanies (or if you want, it “drives”) the beat of the city, heightens personal relationships and adds sol-fa and counterpoint to life and death. Music was a well-known key element in socialisation in all ancient cities. The role festivities play as a “social lubricant” in the traditional setting cannot be overlooked. The rhythm of the bells laid down the beat for cities and civil or religious festivals were accompanied by music and dances. The residents of the different districts hired bands (and were often part of them) to act at local festivals, guild celebrations and family gatherings. In old cities, music was never “background music”, but rather a tune to work to and a call to socialisation and celebration. Until the industrial revolution and noise of the looms choked the city’s songs, music played a central role in coexistence. There are numerous accounts of how in the great European cities, particularly in the middle of the nineteenth century, the noise of the factories silenced the songs of the blind and the voices of women who would sing while hanging out the washing. Even in the twentieth century, in the grim aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán penned his classic texts on the role of music and radio songs on popular sensitivity.
As is inferred by the research from the volume in question, Barcelona, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was a “city of dancing and guitars” with lively carnivals organised “by each neighbourhood”, with autonomy in spending and very often conceived from the grass-roots level. Garcia Espuche cites a text from the chronicler Miquel Ribes, who wrote thus about Carnival in 1616: “The people dance/ with sails to the wind/ with great energy,/ as is the custom/ with a great beat/ of drums;/ young and old/ and artisans,/ on such days/ everyone celebrates.” In Barcelona, guitars were “the bachelors’ instrument” and tavern life was still a main cause of concern for do-gooders and ecclesiastical authorities, who looked warily upon such pursuits; inducement to sin (youth, music and taverns) was central to the concerns of the public authorities at the time, as it is today.
Josep Borràs, in a documented article titled “Els instruments musicals i els seus constructors” [Musical instruments and their makers], describes how Barcelona’s instrument-making workshops in the seventeenth century “have a technological foundation which would have been unthinkable not so long ago”, and as from 1556 they had had a guild of their own (the turners’ guild) which produced a whole range of instruments, including flutes, flageolets, oboes and bassoons. Barcelona had a band of minstrels (the forerunner of the city orchestra) that performed at official receptions, processions and public events, as well as at masses on particularly solemn saints’ days. He even goes into some detail regarding the organisation of the city’s trumpeters (nearly twelve members), who were “on the city’s payroll”, just like other cities such as Bologna, Naples, Florence and Antwerp. Joan Pellisa, besides contributing some very interesting information about the luthiers of the time, also comprehensively documents the connection between the city’s guilds of carpenters and musicians.
Obviously, a city of Barcelona’s standing had to have lineages of organists, and in this regard the article by Josep Borràs recovers the information provided by two very important books for the musical culture of the eighteenth century: Guía para los principiantes [A beginner’s guide; 1720), by Pere Rabassa (Barcelona, 1683-Seville, 1767), and Mapa armónico [Harmonic map), by Francesc Valls (c. 1671-1747), the former teacher and chapel master at the Cathedral of Barcelona between 1709 and 1726.
But perhaps, for the curious reader and non-music professional, the most significant part of the volume is to be found in the pages of the article Músiques de la Barcelona barroca [Music of Baroque Barcelona] (1640-1711), by Joseph Dolcet, documenting the world of chapel masters, organists and choirboys, and particularly the birth of the opera in Catalonia in the royal court of Charles III. Italian opera was the great novelty of the time and the Catalan Government’s Diaries narrate how after the king’s wedding and “the kissing of hands Their Royal Majesties went off to see an Italian opera in the Llotja del Mar”. The reader cannot help but imagine the scene. It would be very interesting to probe the relationship between the Catalan and Italian Court musicians, and perhaps one day we will have more information on the relationship between the Catalan composer Domènec Tarradellas, who had settled in Italy, and pro-Habsburg sentiment. Few Catalans know that the work of Tarradellas, now being reissued, is held on a par with Europe’s best, so much so that even Diderot cites him in Rameau’s Nephew. In any case, reading the volume leaves the reader in no doubt whatsoever: Barcelona has been a sophisticated and musical city for centuries! And it will continue to be so.