Manuel Blancafort i de Rosselló (La Garriga, 12 August 1897 - Barcelona, 8 January 1987) was one of the most important Catalan composers of the 20th century, with a significant and internationally recognized symphonic repertoire. He obtained the Creu de Sant Jordi award in 1982 and the Barcelona City Council gold medal in 1986.
His personal collection is preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya. (Library of Catalonia).
Biography edit
His parents were Joan Baptista Blancafort and Carme de Rosselló. Manuel was the fourth of the ten children of the marriage. At first he did not have any academic musical training and he learned music from his father, a very well trained musician and specialist in choral music. After seeing his son's musical aptitude, he helped him to obtain musical instruction with Joan Baptista Pujol, at the same school where Enrique Granados and Ricardo Viñes also studied.
Manuel Blancafort had a childhood surrounded by many Catalan intellectuals and politicians from the first decades of the 20th century (Jacint Verdaguer, Francesc Cambó, Santiago Rusiñol, Josep Carner, Josep Maria de Sagarra, Eugeni d'Ors, etc.).
He was self-taught and a key event in his musical training was the creation of the Victoria piano roll factory (1905) run by his father and known as "La Solfa", in the same town of the Garriga. Located in buildings built by Joaquim Raspall, this factory came to have a catalog of around four thousand works and went on to export pianola rolls to Europe, America and Oceania. It was a real school for Manuel Blancafort, who worked there transferring notes from the staves to the continuous tapes of the pianola.
Manuel Blancafort married the violinist Helena París in 1920 and they had eleven children. This, and the closing of the pianola roll factory, led to him having to work in various businesses and companies until his retirement. Together with his family, they lived in La Garriga until the end of the Spanish Civil War, when they settled in a spacious house in the Barcelona neighborhood of Sarrià. All his children learned solfege and two of them (Albert and Gabriel) made the world of music their profession.
Style edit
Blancafort became a disciple of Joan Lamote de Grignon and his friendship with the composer Frederic Mompou also deeply marked his style. With Mompou, he shared tastes and hobbies which facilitated his contact with the publisher Sénart who took charge of the edition of the composer's first works. There are features of his music which coincide with Mompou such as the love for nature, the evocation of childhood memories with certain features of melancholy, often in intimate, short-form pieces which highlight a love of simplicity, conciseness and formal clarity.
With a clear commitment to his own French-inspired music, along the lines of Debussy and Fauré, Blancafort declared a desire for a strong Wagnerian current: "Being Wagnerian is the first of the commandments that must be imposed on new Catalan music [...] It is not about "frenchifying" our music. {...] It must be something more than just a sardana and a popular song; one must talk about Catalan things in a European language". Days later after these statements, on March 10, 1929, at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, he premiered the Matí de festa, a play inspired by a chapter of Solitud by Víctor Català.
Along with Eduard Toldrà, Robert Gerhard, Ricardo Lamote de Grignon, Frederic Mompou, Agustí Grau and Joan Gibert Camins, they formed the so-called Group of Eight or Independent Composers of Catalonia, which had an ephemeral life, between 1929 and in 1936, and which spearheaded the new musical movement within the Noucentisme trend.
He later composed music for orchestra, moving away from his earlier French impressionism but characterized by a more classically specific musical structure.
Important Works edit
He became known worldwide with the premiere in Paris in 1924 his piano suite: The Amusement Park (El Parc d'atraccions). He wrote symphonic works, piano concertos and string quartets as well as numerous solo piano works. Some highlights include:
- Record (1915)
- Cançons de muntanya (1915-1918)
- Notes d'antany (1915-1920)
- Cants íntims (1918-1920)
- Matí de festa a Puiggraciós
- El Parc d'atraccions (1924)
- Sonata antiga (1929)
- El rapte de les sabines (1931)
- Concerto omaggio (1944)
- Preludi, ària i giga (1944)[1]
- Concert Ibèric (1946)
- Quartet de Pedralbes (1949), premi al concurs nacional de música.[2]
- American Souvenir, suite orquestral (1959)[1]
- Simfonia en mi major (1950)
- Simfonia en si bemoll major (1951)[3]
- Rapsòdia catalana (1953)
- Cantata a la Verge Maria (1965), premiada per l'Orfeó Català,[4] estrenada per aquesta coral al Palau de la Música Catalana el 1968.[5]
- Evocacions (1969)
- Salve estrella de mar (1972), estrenada a la parròquia de la Garriga.[6]
He is also the composer of two sardanas: La Verge de Palau-solità and Sardana symphonica.
- ^ a b "Manuel Blancafort Catalan Encyclopedia".
- ^ Vanguardia 1950, p. 15.
- ^ "Informació de l'obra". Archive.org. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
- ^ Cruset & 27-05-1965, p. 51.
- ^ Vanguardia 1968, p. 51.
- ^ Estruch 2012, p. 1 del suplement Amindola.