What is the meaning of words written in a book that we do not open? The same as the musical notes of a score that are not played on any instrument. Melodies, songs, and hymns, in choirs, choruses, and chapels, allow us to cross the borders of time. Rescuing musical repertoire from ancient times from drawers, chests, and church archives, and making it heard again today is one of the tasks in the hands of musicologists like Bernat Cabré Cercós.
It is a meticulous job, almost like that of someone looking for fingerprints to reconstruct facts. Cabré, in his rescue of ancient documents, seeks instructions to reconstruct musical atmospheres silenced by the passage of time. "What I do is give a second chance to that music that is there, sleeping the sleep of the just. There is music that deserves it more, and other that deserves it less, but you have to act free of prejudices and, once you have it in front of you, you realize if it was worth it or not."
Apart from his academic work, Bernat Cabré directs a postgraduate course in the recovery of musical heritage at the Ateneu Universitari Sant Pacià, and also develops editorial activity, also related to heritage recovery. "I am always starting or participating in projects that are related, especially to my specialty, which is early music, music from the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque, between the 16th and 17th centuries, which is where I move."
Cabré studied Art History and then did a doctorate in Musicology. As in the art of loving, which first requires knowing, this archaeologist of scores and other ancient documents that allow reconstructing the history of music enjoys his research because he follows the thread of something he already knows. "I feel very good with the music of the first half of the 17th century, between the Renaissance and the Baroque, I find in it a kind of sincerity," he says.
Last year, however, Cabré took a break from all this work, to dedicate himself to curating the Any Cercós, the commemoration of the hundred years of the birth of Josep Cercós i Fransí, which presents this composer, pianist, and music theorist born in Barcelona, and uncle of Bernat Cabré Cercós.
These days, and until May 17, the Museu de la Música de Barcelona hosts the exhibition Josep Cercós, rara avis. The exhibition, organized by Bernat Cabré, together with music historian Helena Martín-Nieva, discovers Cercós as a key figure in the post-war Catalan musical renewal. He died in 1989.
The biographical portrait of Cercós coincides in time and space, at the Music Museum, with the review of the career of organist Montserrat Torrent, who had been a friend of Josep Cercós. On April 17, Torrent celebrated her hundredth birthday by attending the inauguration of the exhibition about her life. Today, although a centenarian, she continues to interpret music with the organ. Until next October, the exhibition that opens the events of the Any Montserrat Torrent, which reviews the life and work of this Barcelona native who was Bernat Cabré's organ teacher, can be visited.
"He sent me to the Biblioteca de Catalunya to look for manuscripts, original musicology documents, and that fascinated me," comments Cabré. Because in this activity his two great hobbies converge: music and history. It was Montserrat Torrent and also musician and musicologist Enric Gispert, who guided Bernat Cabré towards the music chapels. Gispert directed the music chapel of Santa Maria de Mar and Bernat, stimulated by these two references, sang in it.
With Bernat Cabré as commissioner of Any Cercós, we thus unfold two characters at once, two men from the musical world, each in their own way, creators of a piece of music history in Catalonia. To uncle and nephew, music has given a path of life. Josep Cercós had trained in Barcelona with Ricard Lamote de Grignon and Cristòfor Taltabull, and had expanded his studies in Switzerland. He wanted to seek direct contact with the nuclei of the European avant-garde, and ended up establishing links with creators such as Luigi Nono or Iannis Xenakis. His language, which he himself defined as "speculation," is based on his own intervallic system that endows his work with exceptional coherence and exigency. "My uncle was the first musician in our country who went to study in Switzerland to meet the avant-gardists," recounts the nephew.
In addition to being a composer, Cercós was an editor for Espasa Calpe and, on the occasion of Any Cercós, musicologist and architect Helena Martín Nieva has compiled all the articles he published until his retirement, around the 1960s. Cercós was also a pianist in dance schools, where he accompanied the dancers' movements on the piano. In fact, Cabré explains, "his wife, Carme Calvet, had a dance school in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, in whose classes Cercós played the piano." Josep Cercós's catalog includes works for piano, ballets, symphonic and chamber music, and several song cycles, among which Los bellos caminos stands out, based on texts by the poet Miquel Martí i Pol.
Being the curator of Any Cercós ---says Cabré--- "is a privilege, an honor, and good fortune for me." As a person directly involved in this life story, due to his emotional bond with the commemorated, his mother's brother, and with whom he had a good relationship, he considers that this celebration and all the events it has included and those still being held, such as the exhibition at the Museu de la Música, "is an act of justice, because I consider him a person who deserves to have an important place in the history of Catalan music, and, therefore, for me it has been an act of justice."
Rescuing the sound of the past
The commemoration has also included a premiere, which not only recovers a key work by Cercós, but also symbolically repairs a long silence in the history of Catalan music. It is a symphony with a history as exceptional as the music itself. It was composed in 1954, but the musical piece was never premiered because the post-war circumstances were not favorable for music, and even less so for Catalan culture. Cercós submitted the work to the City of Barcelona Award, hoping it could be performed, but it did not win the award.Frustrated by the situation, he threw the score into a street bin. And it was the poet Joan Brossa who rescued it, which allowed this work to finally see the light of day. Regarding this anecdote, the composer and orchestra conductor from Sant Pere de Ribes, Xavier Pagès-Corella, interprets that this reflects "the extreme difficulty of making a living as a musician in the post-war period, even having written works of that magnitude".
Cabré is a regular collaborator of the archive of the church of Pi, because his studies have always been basically focused on the repertoire of music chapels in this era in Catalonia, and very especially in those of Barcelona. And, as he explains, "the church of Pi preserved its archive, it was not destroyed during the Civil War, as happened with the archive of Santa Maria de Mar. In the church of Pi there is a very important musical collection and we have already carried out several projects to recover this material".
"Making a piece sound is the greatest aspiration I always have as a musicologist, and which I have had the luck and privilege to achieve in many cases"Afterwards, the documentation is studied. This is the work of musicologists dedicated to it. "It cannot be said that we save documentation, but we do participate in projects for cataloging musical collections that are still undocumented," he comments. In Catalonia ---he says--- "there are many old musical collections, from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and from the first years of the 20th, that are pending cataloging". And everything that is not cataloged -he comments- "is as if it didn't exist, because we don't know what's there". Now Cabré participates in the IFMuC project (Inventories of the Musical Collections of Catalonia) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), which is a heritage recovery initiative "in which archives are cataloged and, therefore, it could be considered a process of saving documentation".
From the cataloging and, consequently, making that documentation exist ---adds Cabré--- "it can proceed to its rescue as a sound document, if we are talking about scores. And the next step is to convert it into a modern document that allows it to be interpreted, which would be the maximum rescue operation. Making a piece sound is the maximum aspiration I always have as a musicologist, and which I have had the luck and privilege of being able to achieve in many cases". He has done so through projects with his brother, Josep Cabré, who is also a musician, organizing concerts where his brother conducted or sang, "from a saved repertoire, which we knew existed, in the Biblioteca de Catalunya or wherever, but which no one had yet taken and converted into a modern score and made it sound," he explains.
Although the musicologist ---Bernat Cabré points out--- "does not only deal with scores, despite being a fundamental part of the documents we work with. There is also a whole type of parallel documentation that is related, such as the account books of the parishes, for example, to know what each one charged or who charged".
Approaching ancient music
"Knowing and understanding the language of an era is the basis. Afterwards, you make that material your own, you enter and participate, despite the frontier of time, which is very difficult to cross. But, as for musical codification, you have already understood how it works, and you work from there," he specifies.In his career as an organist, there have been two main organs for Bernat Cabré: that of the parish of Santa Maria de Gràcia in Barcelona, which he played during his student days, and the organ of the cathedral of Solsona, which he played from 1995 to 1998. "These are the two that I have known well, because I have been an organist in these churches." He comments that "all organs are very different from each other, which is why everyone is crazy to play them. In addition to some in Galicia and Seville, where Cabré has given concerts, he has also played others in the city of Barcelona at one time or another. He asked his uncle to compose one of the works in his repertoire. "He would call me on the phone to tell me: look, I've done this, listen to it, and over the phone, he would let me listen to what he was composing," he recalls.
And, how should we approach ancient music? Cabré tells us: "If someone is very far from the world of music, I would start with Baroque music, from the late Baroque, which is perhaps the most accessible, that of the first half of the 18th century, which is very direct and close." But he also suggests, for those who want to have a first taste of this escape to the sonic past that filled temples, to listen to the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, who, "despite being from the early Baroque, from the first half of the 17th century, we can feel close to it. And he is a fascinating composer."