The Lions of Catalunya

by Jeremy D. Rowe

  An undercurrent of commitment to the cause of Catalunya remained strong, however, and even the Mossos realised the strength of feeling against Madrid. These political police, recruited and trained by Castile, watched warily, and secretly dreaded the day when they would have to quell any further uprising. They were aware more than most, certainly far more than Enric Blanxart, the new Lion of Catalunya, that Madrid would remain angry, and would not rest until this upstart state had been returned to Spain. When this happened, as the Mossos knew it would one day, they knew they would be in the front line, and would be arresting or even executing these genial friends with whom they daily laughed and ate their meals.

  The school by the sea flourished, and remained the focus of learning the history of Catalunya and its culture. In addition to the teaching of the language, a great deal of effort went into translating books from other languages into Catalan, and everything, from opera libretti and popular songs, to the great classic novel of the time by authors such as Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo, were painstakingly translated. Jordi himself, struggling with German, assisted in translating Richard Wagner’s operas, but even such a gifted linguist found the task daunting and difficult.

  A regular visitor, at first as a student, and then to assist with teaching, was a young man called Pompeu Fabra. He would sit with Jordi and Juan, listening intently, and making copious notes. He gained a reputation for checking the spellings of the growing Catalan vocabulary, and pointing out when there appeared to be more than one way to spell a certain word. No-one took a lot of notice of the bookish and slightly pedantic young man, as he scribbled away in his notebooks, but on meeting him, you could not fail to be aware of his passion for the language and his growing expertise. Jordi developed considerable regard for the young man, and spent much time encouraging his enthusiasm.

  From the concentration of the day, the evenings were spent making music, and the schoolroom became a little concert hall on the beach. Enric suggested to his father that they should buy a piano, as not everything they were singing could be accompanied by the guitar, and Jordi agreed. The arrival of the piano caused a great ripple of excitement for everyone, and Jordi was puzzled that his wife had left the house early to go to the market on such a day. Anxious to hear the new instrument, Enric accompanied his father on the familiar walk along Almirall Aixada to the schoolroom. As they approached the beach, they could hear someone playing the new piano. They stood beside an open window to listen.

  “That’s Mozart. Who’s playing it so early in the morning?” asked Jordi.

  “I cannot imagine,” replied Enric.

  “I wish your mother hadn’t gone out so early. She would have loved to be with us.”

  They turned the corner and crept silently into the schoolroom. Juan was sitting listening, and indicated to Enric to be quiet.

  “Juan is here,” whispered Enric to his father.

  “Is he playing?” asked Jordi.

  “No,” giggled Enric, looking around. “Just sit and listen.”

  The notes rippled and flowed for a few moments more, and then suddenly slowed and ceased. “I can’t remember any more,” said Anna aloud, imagining that she was alone.

  “My wife, my dear Anna, is that you?” jumped up Jordi.

  Anna jumped at the sound of her husband’s voice. Enric laughed at his parents, “What a surprise!”

  “Yes,” said Anna, “I wanted to surprise you all, but I can’t remember any more. We had a piano in the house at Montcada, and I played regularly. It went with all of mama’s things when we lost the vineyards, and I had no idea if I could still play.”

  “How did you organise this?” said Jordi.

  “Juan was here to see the piano delivered early this morning, and I came down here to see it with him. I didn’t go to the market. I told him to keep it a secret whilst I experimented to see what I could remember.”

  “What a treat,” said Jordi. “Play some more.”

  “I can’t remember much without the sheet music,” said Anna, “But I’ll try. I played this hundreds of times, so I might get through.”

  So saying, she played the first few bars of Fur Elise.

  “Beethoven,” whispered Jordi.

  “I know,” said Enric.

  But as before, Anna started to falter and soon stopped altogether. “I’m sorry, but I need the music,” she said.

  “Come here, my clever wife,” said Jordi. “You have hidden this talent from me. We shall buy all the music you need, and you will be able to play new music to me. But first, let me try this instrument.”

  “Have you never played before?” asked Anna.

  “Oh there were many opportunities. There is a huge grand piano at the opera house, and I have walked around it, feeling its bulk. But I was never alone, and could not just sit and see if my fingers could find the keys. I could not experiment with an audience. What if I cannot do it, how would people think of the great Jordi Blanxart if they heard him stumbling about on the piano?”

  “Well there’s no-one here now,” replied his wife as she led him to the piano stool. Jordi sat, and felt for the keys. He played a few single notes and stopped.

  “You three must go,” he announced, “I can’t do this even with you here.”

  After a pause, Enric and his mother turned to go, motioning to Juan to go with them, although he didn’t move. Anna quietly closed the door.

  “Am I alone?” called out Jordi. There was a silence. “If anyone has remained, I will hear your breathing!”

  “Brother, let me stay. I promise there is no-one else,” came Juan’s quiet voice.

  “No-one else? Very well, but remain quiet. I’m strangely nervous as I do not know what will happen now.”

  Jordi turned to the piano. With his right hand he started to hunt for the notes, beginning with scales and arpeggios, his long tough fingernails clattering on the keys. After a while, he started to explore with the left hand, and gradually began to find harmonies which were familiar from his more complex guitar pieces. Slowly a sound started to emerge, not of Mozart or Beethoven, but of a syncopated, grinding rhythm, the beat and thump of flamenco. As he continued to improvise, he started to laugh. And then he suddenly stopped.

  Turning to his brother, he joked, “I can make music of a sort on this machine, but it does not take easily to the folk rhythms I know. I think others will do more with it than I!”

  Juan laughed with him. “It was not so bad, dear brother, and I think you have a career waiting for you in the bars and brothels of the old city. Sitting in a smokey corner, thumping out such improvised tunes and melodies, will give you a new and altogether different reputation.”

  “One, I fear, I do not want!” laughed Jordi. “You must take Anna to the music shops of the city, this very afternoon, and buy the music she needs. And what of your wife? Does Violeta also play the piano? You must take her also, if she does.”

  “I am ashamed to say I do not know,” replied Juan, “but I will go directly to find her and find out.”

  Students were arriving for the day’s language work, and puzzled to find the door closed, they knocked, and waited to come in. “That’s our signal to stop,” said Jordi. “Let them in, I’ll get the day started here, but you take some time away, and take our wives to the music shops.”

  Each day, the students would stop for lunch, and accompany Juan and Jordi to one of the chiringuitas. Thus the room was empty when Anna and Violeta arrived back from the music shop. Excitedly they opened the packages they had brought from Senor Alio’s dusty shop in the lane behind Santa Maria del Mar, and hunted quickly for the book which was giving them such a thrill of anticipation. Pulling an extra stool to the piano, the sisters sat together and opened the book, “Duets for four hands and one piano.”

  Cautiously, struggling to remember their technique, and embarrassed that they were not doing very well, they started to play. Slowly the skill returned, and they boldly attacked a second and a third piece. They laughed when they muddled sh
arps and flats, and giggled over mistakes of tempo, and emboldened by their growing success, started to play louder and louder. Such was the volume of their playing that they did not hear the door opening and the students, with their husbands, creeping in. At the end of a particularly noisy piece by Liszt, simple enough for them to sight-read with gay abandon, they came to a crescendo, and stopped, laughing together. Abruptly the group of students broke into loud cheering and clapping, and the sisters spun round, horrified and blushing, that they had been caught.

  Musical soirees became regular events at the school on the beach, and many new talents were developed there. Jordi founded two choirs, one for men only and one for mixed voices, and Juan revealed an unexpected talent as a conductor. Their wives worked hard at their piano technique, and so were able to accompany the choirs in some of the great oratorios of the day. When the accompaniment proved too complex for one of them, they would share it, breaking the score into the right hand for Anna and the left hand for Violeta.

  At home the women and their older girls were busy sewing elaborate banners for the choirs, as no self-respecting Catalan choir performed without displaying its banner, proclaiming its name and date of formation.

  The wives, determined to add more musical contributions, as well as their sewing skills, ensured that all their children learned to read music and play. Enric and Eduard said they were too old to start playing the piano, but their mothers dragged them reluctantly to it. Enric, painfully aware that he did not have his father’s talent with the guitar, became a proficient pianist, and eventually Eduard, all fingers and thumbs with both guitar and piano, obtained an old trumpet and drove everyone mad on the beach as he struggled to master it.

  Enric and Eduard, with the enthusiasm of young men, organised the language students and the musicians into all kinds of sporting groups. And when they weren’t declining verbs or struggling with strange melodies, the students would be found playing games of football on the beach, practicing gymnastics on the sand, or cycling in groups around the city. Excursions were regularly organised, and the most popular and regular of these was an overnight camping trip to Montserrat.

  Juan and the sisters became regular customers at Alio’s Music Shop, searching for some of the great classical pieces, as well as new music, especially new Catalan music. Francesc Alio, owner of the shop, was a diffident man, and reluctant to sell his own compositions to the women. As they became more familiar with him, the sisters persuaded him to visit the school on the beach, and soon he was a rather shy but interesting player in many of impromptu evening concerts.

  Jordi especially enjoyed Alio’s playing, as the latter would take an old folk tune, sometimes well-known to Jordi, sometimes new to him, and improvise a piece which was both original, but had an echo of the past.

  March 1892 saw the next step in Catalan independence with the Catalanist Union, and the publication of the aims of the state. Catalunya declared that it would become a sovereign country, divided into districts, with Catalan as its official language, and a volunteer army of its own.

  One evening in the same year, Alio arrived with a new tune he had been working on, and before the evening’s entertainment started, he played it to Jordi. It had a difficult rhythm, partly like a slow waltz, but then jerking away with unexpected four beat bars.

  “You have a powerful melody there, Senor Alio,” declared Jordi. “But I don’t know the tunes, nor where they come from. What’s it called?”

  “The Reapers,” said Alio. “And the tunes are very old, fragments from the sixteen hundreds, from the time of the Reapers’ War. Your ancestor wrote about it in his book, the Corpus de Sang - 1640 wasn’t it?”

  “Are there words?” asked Jordi.

  “Some fragments,” replied Alio, “but not much. There’s a kind of chorus which speaks of a good blow with a sickle. It represents Catalunya’s triumph over all. The reapers are cutting the chains of oppression with their sickles.”

  “My brother and I were talking earlier about this declaration of Manresa. If we are to go on striving for our sovereignty, we will need an anthem, as so many European countries are doing at the moment. Play it again: perhaps you have stumbled upon just the right piece of music.”

  Francesc Alio played the piece again for Jordi, and then again at the evening concert. His original compositions always received a very favourable response, but none more so than the tune of the song of the reapers. At the end, he told the audience that there was a need for words to fit the tune, and many people were very interested in this, and offered to contribute.

  It was through Francesc Alio that Jordi met members of the biggest and most influential choir in Barcelona, the Orfeo Catala. The choir was too big to fit into the little schoolroom by the sea, and rehearsed in warehouses and churches around the city. It gave many successful performances in the Liceu Opera House, as well as the old cathedral and Santa Maria del Mar. In a similar way to Jordi’s music school being funded by the chiringuitas, the many choral societies of Barcelona had their industrial sponsorship; and the greatest choir had the greatest resources backing it.

  Tired of such an important organisation being peripatetic, the directors of Orfeo Catala met with their wealthy backers with an outrageous and expensive plan: to build their own concert hall. Musicians such as Jordi and Francesc Alio, who were known to be sympathetic to the promotion of Catalan music, were invited to assist with artistic contributions and fund-raising. Soon it became clear that there was enough goodwill to be very ambitious with the scale and design of the new auditorium, and the controversial young architect Lluis Montaner was recruited.

  Montaner started by visiting many of the choral societies and immersing himself in the musical traditions of his city. Jordi was keen to play him some of the music of Isaac Albeniz, who had produced many piano works which Jordi himself had transcribed for guitar. Montaner also listened to pieces by Francesc Alio. As he travelled around the city, however, he found a music scene with far more in it than Catalan folk tunes. He found advocates for Palestrina, Beethoven and Bach, and was slightly alarmed by the passionate esteem with which Wagner was held in the city.

  In 1906, a ceremony was held on a slum-clearance site close to the Via Laietana to lay the foundation stone of the new concert hall. Jordi was invited to the ceremony, but declined. At over seventy years, he was beginning to find public events a strain, and sent Enric in his place. Enric was by now married to a good Catalan wife and they had produced the required first-born son, Rafael, named for one of his famous ancestors, at the turn of the century. Jordi had delighted in his grandson, and Juan had watched his brother with the tiny baby in the arms of the blind old man. The baby was perfect with blue eyes and blond curls.

  Enric with his wife and son stood with Senor Alio to watch the positioning of the foundation stone. Alio was, like Jordi, feeling the strain of old age. “I fear I may not live long enough to see this great venture finished,” sighed Alio, “but at least I was here at the start.”

  Much was made of the new-fangled invention of photography, and the ceremony of laying the foundation stone for the new concert hall was well documented. At the appearance of the photographer, all the small boys rushed to be in the official photograph, and they can all be seen, including the six-year-old Rafael in his sailor’s suit. With so many small boys clustered together, the foundation stone is almost obscured in the photograph.

  Enric was surprised to hear his name called as his little party were about to leave the building site. “Enric, it’s Enric Blanxart isn’t it?” said the man, and coming forward he introduced himself. “I’m Pompeu Fabra, do you remember me?”

  After a pause, Enric recognised the man as the serious student who had made such copious notes with Juan some years before, and had assisted with some of the teaching at the school. “Why Pompeu, I’m sorry I did not recognise you. This is my son, Rafael.” And turning to Rafael, he explained, “This is Senor Fabra, who used to come to the school by the sea, and worked very hard at
learning his Catalan spelling and grammar.”

  “Just as I have to!” replied Rafael, shaking hands solemnly with Fabra.

  “It is providence that we have met, my friend,” continued Fabra, “as I have been meaning to come and visit your school on the beach. How is it? Does it continue to thrive? And do you still have those wonderful musical evenings?”

  “Indeed it thrives, and yes there is still much music making. Do you remember Senor Alio whose music we still enjoy to play?”

  The small-talk and introductions continued for a while, until Enric said, “I think it is time we tried to catch a tram down the Via Laietana. Rafael will be getting tired, and I have promised to see Senor Alio safely home.”

  “Come and see at my office,” said Fabra. “I’m at the Institute of Catalan Studies, everyone knows me there. Try and bring your father, and Juan, if they can come. I’d love to see them and show them what we’re doing.”

  Just as the Mediaeval and classical church builders built the skeleton first and then clothed the skeleton with walls and roof, so the temple to music was similarly constructed; but whilst masons spent months and years piling stone on stone, not only for masterpieces like Santa Maria del Mar, but also for more recent structures like Sant Miquel in Barceloneta, the skeleton for the new concert hall leapt skywards in just a few days, the stone of old being replaced by the latest technology in steel.