During the early twentieth century, in a context of growing nationalism, Catalonia experienced a period of great cultural and musical development through the Noucentisme movement, which promoted a national culture through the modernization of Catalan arts. This development was notable not only in literature, painting, and architecture, but also in music. Forms of popular music and folk instruments entered the concert hall and became ‘high art’; sardana music and the instruments of the cobla ensemble proved particularly popular in this context. The cobla was originally a popular Catalan musical ensemble featuring emblematic xeremies (shawms) — the tible and the tenora — which were introduced into symphonic and chamber music during the 1910s, 20s and 30s. This move was encouraged by ensembles such as the Banda Municipal de Barcelona and the Orquestra Pau Casals, which sought to create a ‘Catalan’ sound within the repertoire of western classical music. The conductor of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona, Joan Lamote de Grignon, considered that the xeremies in particular had a ‘characteristic Catalan sonority’.Footnote 1 However, the distinctive sound of the instruments — a strident timbre with difficult intonation — posed a challenge in the symphonic context, which required them to be technically improved (e.g. with a revised key system). Lamote de Grignon also proposed the creation of a barítona (baritone shawm) and a bajo (bass shawm) to complete the orchestral family of the xeremies. Footnote 2
The musical developments of the Catalan Noucentisme followed a ‘common form of musical nationalism in the twentieth century [which] involves the reformist fusion of local, non-cosmopolitan instruments, sounds, and genres within a largely cosmopolitan aesthetic, stylistic, and contextual frame’.Footnote 3 The modernization of the Catalan xeremies must also be understood within the wider trend during the early twentieth century of movements seeking to ‘improve’ instruments, such as in China (e.g. the suona) or the Soviet Union (e.g. the balalaika);Footnote 4 when folk instruments were adapted to ‘cosmopolitan aesthetics’, such as symphony orchestras, technical improvements and new instruments were often required. It is not surprising that xeremies, rather than other cobla instruments such as the flabiol fipple flute, became a symbol of Catalan music, as their sonorities are the most recognizable and evocative of the ensemble. Writing on the use of folk music and instruments as a device for cultural nationalism tends to focus on musical features that may be considered ‘national’, such as melody, harmony, and rhythm. However, discussions of musical nationalism often overlook another crucial factor: the sonority of the instruments. Dahlhaus points out that ultimately, the intention of the composer and the reception of the listener are crucial in understanding music as ‘national’;Footnote 5 the sound of the xeremies functions as a national symbol as much as folk melodies or dance rhythms do. Thus this case study serves to make a strong case for the study of timbre as a musical device in cultural nationalism.
The history of the xeremies of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona highlights the complex story of the Catalan shawms, which are often misunderstood as purely folkloric, thus overlooking the range of repertoire and musical contexts in which they are found in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first question we will address is the process by which the xeremies underwent a process of folklorization, then a process of modernization, both of which supported cultural nation-building. We will survey the technical changes proposed by musicians and instrument makers to improve xeremies, and their influence on the eventual construction of the barítona. The second question we discuss pertains to the technical shifts required to introduce the instruments into chamber and symphonic repertoire while retaining their characteristic ‘Catalan’ sound, as well as the construction of new instruments. A single barítona was built around 1929 and received some limited performances before becoming obsolete; its rediscovery in 2013 will be described in this article.Footnote 6 Finally, this case study also offers a glimpse into the musical life of Barcelona during the 1920s and 30s, which ended with a complicated time for Catalonia — including the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War — that permanently changed the nation and the city’s musical landscape.
The Reinvention of the Cobla: From Popular Dances to Symphonic Repertoire
The cobla is a Catalan musical ensemble that typically plays the sardana, a music and dance genre which originated in the northeastern Empordà region (see Figure 1).Footnote 7 The sardana follows an A–B structure, with a variable number of repetitions depending on the performance setting. It is danced in a circle to a standard sequence of steps while the dancers hold hands, and is a common element of Catalan festivals. While cobles mostly play sardanes, their repertoire can also include other popular dances, such as waltzes, polkas, or habañeras.Footnote 8 Before Pep Ventura initiated its expansion and standardization in the mid-nineteenth century, the cobla did not have a set instrumentation.Footnote 9 Nowadays, its standard instrumentation consists of two trumpets, one trombone, two fiscorns (bass flugelhorns), one double bass, and three autochthonous instruments — a flabiol and tamborí (pipe and tabor), two tibles (treble shawms), and two tenores (tenor shawms) (see Table 1).Footnote 10
A map of Catalonia showing North and South Catalonia, the Empordà region, and the location of Perpignan, Figueres, Girona, and Barcelona. Source: modified by James Quinn from Wikipedia under Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Catalonia_location_map.svg. Reproduced with permission.
STANDARD CONTEMPORARY INSTRUMENTATION OF THE COBLA
| Instrumentation | Comments |
|---|---|
| One flabiol and one tamborí | Played by the same musician; flabiol in F |
| Two tibles | In F |
| Two tenores | In B♭ |
| Two trumpets | In B♭ |
| One trombone | Traditionally with valves rather than a slide; in C |
| Two fiscorns | A type of bass flugelhorn; in C |
| One double bass | Traditionally with three strings (verra); bass string removed |
During the last third of the nineteenth century, the sardana quickly became popular beyond the Empordà region and gained popularity in, for instance, Barcelona. Its spread coincided with the awakening of a Catalan national consciousness through the Renaixença, a nineteenth-century Romantic revivalist movement of cultural Catalanism which focused on the recovery of the Catalan language, history, and traditions. Through a process of folklorization and invention of tradition, the cobla and the sardana were reimagined as Catalan and ancient, and became considered symbols of Catalan popular culture.Footnote 11 The sardana and cobla went from being a regional tradition to becoming a national one by the turn of the century.
During the early twentieth century, Catalonia was experiencing a cultural restlessness that led its institutions to embrace the ideology of Noucentisme. This cultural movement brought together artists, politicians, and intellectuals who promoted a Catalan identity through the modernization of Catalan arts and culture and their institutions.Footnote 12 One of the fundamental bases of the movement was the creation of a culture perceived to be equal to those of more ‘advanced’ European nations, as the construction of a national culture was equated to the construction of a nation.Footnote 13 Noucentisme ideals rejected Romanticism and modernism in favour of order and reason; thus the origins of the sardana as a rambunctious folk dance were replaced by a new conception of an orderly and civilized dance, with music that followed European musical conventions of instrumentation and harmony, for instance.Footnote 14 The Banda Municipal de Barcelona (reformed in 1915), the Orquestra Pau Casals (founded in 1920), and the Cobla Barcelona (founded in 1922) are clear examples of cultural noucentista institutions in their conception of the sardana as concert music.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, some sectors of Barcelona society had adopted the sardana as an emblematic symbol of national identity.Footnote 15 During the 1910s, some Barcelona institutions (such as the Orfeó Català and Foment de la Sardana de Barcelona) and artists created initiatives with the common objective of bringing cobla ensemble music to the concert hall (as had happened with similar European popular ensembles, such as wind bands).Footnote 16 Composers were encouraged to write for cobla through composition contests, and award-winning works were performed as part of concert series at prestigious music venues.Footnote 17 The musical prizes Premis Musicals Eusebi Patxot i Llagostera, organized by the Orfeó Català, were intended to enrich Catalan cultural heritage and specifically included prizes for cobla compositions from 1920 onwards.Footnote 18 Juli Garreta’s sardana for cobla, Juny, won one of the 1920 prizes, for example.Footnote 19 The concept of the sardana was being expanded: it became music to be listened to as well as danced to.
The expressive possibilities of the cobla expanded with the creation of highbrow chamber and symphonic repertoire. By the early 1920s, some cobles had incorporated the glossa, a genre using traditional Catalan melodies as themes for development. Josep Sancho Marraco’s Joc: Glossa del ball de gegants de Solsona, for example, is a glossa for cobla based on the Ball de gegants de Solsona melody, which was premiered by the cobla Els Montgrins; the piece also won a 1920 Premi Musical Eusebi Patxot i Llagostera.Footnote 20 From the mid-1920s onwards, some composers freed themselves entirely of the formal constraints of the sardana or traditional melodies and wrote free-form pieces, such as Joaquim Serra’s Impressions camperoles for cobla, premiered by the Cobla Barcelona in 1927. Major Catalan composers of the time, including Enric Casals, Pau Casals, Garreta, Robert Gerhard, Ricard Lamote de Grignon, Enric Morera, Serra, Eduard Toldrà, and Amadeu Vives, wrote concert repertoire for cobla.
At the same time, the sound of the xeremies and the musical forms of the sardana were being incorporated into symphonic and chamber music outside of the cobla. The first example of this practice dates from 4 August 1868, when Ventura included two tibles, a tenora, and a tamborí in his orchestration of the sardana Les noietes de Figueres for its Barcelona premiere.Footnote 21 In 1883, Josep Rodoreda, who was appointed as conductor of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona in 1886, wrote the symphonic poem La primavera, which included a sardana movement with a tenora, a flabiol, and a tamborí. These are the two earliest known examples of the inclusion of cobla instruments in symphonic ensembles. The sonority of the Catalan shawms attracted the interest of many other composers, in fact: Déodat de Séverac claimed that the success of these instruments’ sonority was ‘considerable with French composers: Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Fauré (even Massenet and Vincent d’Indy)’.Footnote 22 His lyric tragedy Héliogabale (1910) and his opera Hélène de Sparte (1912) include two tibles and two tenores. When Bach’s Mass in B minor received its Spanish premiere at the Palau de la Música Catalana in 1911, performed by the Orfeó Català and conducted by Albert Schweitzer, two tibles were used to double the oboe parts.Footnote 23
Furthermore, some symphonic ensembles began performing arrangements of sardanes and introducing xeremies to the instrumentation. In June 1920, the Orquestra de l’Associació d’Amics de la Música performed symphonic arrangements of two sardanes by Juli Garreta, Nydia and Maria; the former required the addition of two tenores and a flabiol to the orchestra. This importance of this fact — which was perceived as unprecedented at the time — was reflected in the programme: ‘Our national dance has reached such a high artistic level through modern Catalan composers that its inclusion in concert programmes is justified in its own right, as a manifestation of a very high, and our very own, art.’Footnote 24 In November 1920, the Orquestra Pau Casals, founded in 1920 and conducted by the cellist, also performed two arrangements of sardanes by Garreta: Giberola and A en Pau Casals. For this performance, musicians from the Cobla La Principal de La Bisbal, Albert Martí, Joaquim Roldós, and Josep Gravalosa, joined the orchestra — the latter was not part of this cobla but was a close friend of Garreta.Footnote 25
In the same period, composers showed interest in the sardana form as a compositional device in instrumental music. Enric Granados included a sardana for piano in his Danzas españolas (1890), and in the same decade, Frederic Mompou began to write his Cançó i dansa no. 3, in which he used the popular Catalan melody El noi de la mare and stylistic characteristics of the sardana; the performance instructions read: ‘sardana — temps de marche’.Footnote 26 In 1927, Pau Casals wrote a sardana for eight cello voices dedicated to the London Violoncello School, while in the following year, Joaquín Turina also included a sardana in his suite Evocaciones (1928), a work that, according to the composer, was ‘a tribute from an Andalusian to the Catalan land’.Footnote 27 Gerhard even included a sardana in the ballet Els focs de Sant Joan (also known as Soirées de Barcelone), which he composed for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in 1936 and which was choreographed by Léonide Massine. These examples demonstrate just some of the heterogenous approaches to the sardana in art music, ranging from late Romanticism to avant-garde expressions, and its adaptability to musical movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In conclusion, during the 1910s and 20s, the sardana, the cobla, and the xeremia entered the concert hall in a variety of manners: commissions for ‘concert’ cobla music, arrangements of symphonic music for orchestras with xeremies, the arrangement of sardanes for symphonic ensembles, and the use of musical and formal characteristics of the sardana in instrumental music. Through institutionalization, the sound of the cobla became a symbol of Catalan national culture in a way that is perhaps best exemplified by the Banda Municipal de Barcelona. At the same time, the symphonic turn of the sardana and cobla music gave it international visibility, as composers such as de Séverac, Igor Stravinsky, and, later, Benjamin Britten were captivated by its sound and forms.
The Banda Municipal de Barcelona and the Cobla Barcelona: Expanding the Symphonic Cobla
One of the ensembles that contributed definitively to the introduction of the xeremia to the symphonic field was the Banda Municipal de Barcelona. Founded in 1886, the wind band is one of the oldest musical ensembles still in existence in Barcelona. Lamote de Grignon was appointed as conductor in 1914 and began undertaking a major revision of the instrumental forces from 1915. In the spirit of Noucentisme, he aimed to turn the ensemble into a referential institution of Catalan high artistic culture. The practical issues he sought to address were a lack of musicians (who were not being replaced when they left) and the resulting lack of balance between sections, low salaries, a lack of symphonic repertoire, and a lack of national and international recognition.Footnote 28 One of his actions was his proposal in late 1921 to include one tible and two tenores in the Banda; in doing so, the ensemble would become unique in the world through its ‘characteristic Catalan sonority’ and new sonic possibilities.Footnote 29 The tible player Benvingut Tapis and the tenora players Albert Martí and Robert Renart were hired in 1922; they replaced three vacant positions (trumpet, bass trombone, and percussion).Footnote 30
In the same year, musicians of the Banda Municipal founded the Cobla Barcelona, with the aim of specializing in the most demanding repertoire of cobla concert music. The Cobla Barcelona was initially directed by Josep Gravalosa and Josep Serra — with artistic advice from Lamote de Grignon — who encouraged the premieres of symphonic music for cobla, such as the glosses and free-form compositions discussed previously.Footnote 31 Other cobles outside Barcelona, such as the Cobla La Principal de La Bisbal or the Cobla La Principal de Peralada, also excelled in the performance of cobla concert music around the same time, but they did not have the same institutional support and prestige as the Cobla Barcelona.
Lamote de Grignon described the sardana as ‘the most local aspect of Catalan music’, and imagined it in a symphonic setting: ‘The spirit of this genre escapes the regional to fly towards more ambitious realms.’Footnote 32 The first sardanes to be transcribed for the Banda Municipal de Barcelona were Juny and A en Pau Casals by Juli Garreta, La rosa del folló by Joan Lamote de Grignon, Nupcial by Ricard Lamote de Grignon, and La processó de Sant Bartomeu by Antoni Català.Footnote 33 Notably, they also performed arrangements of works by renowned foreign composers that included xeremies: popular transcriptions included Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and Tannhäuser, Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, and Isaac Albéniz’s ‘Triana’ from the Iberia suite.Footnote 34 Many transcriptions were made by Lamote de Grignon, who considered them ‘translations’ of symphonic music for wind band;Footnote 35 other arrangements were completed by Lluís Oliva Roca. In these arrangements, the xeremies add timbral complexity and colour to the ensemble, creating its unique sound; they do not play any solos in transcriptions of symphonic works.Footnote 36 In symphonic arrangements of sardanes, however, the xeremies play solo passages as they did in the original scores, as can be seen in transcriptions of Festívola by Pau Casals or La processó de Sant Bartomeu by Català.
The development of noucentista musical institutions put Catalonia — and Barcelona in particular — on the musical map during the first third of the twentieth century. Important musical figures visited Barcelona to be present at concerts and festivals, as orchestras regularly invited guest conductors, including Stravinsky, Britten, Richard Strauss, Manuel de Falla, Béla Bartók, Max von Schillings, Sergei Prokofiev, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Maurice Ravel.Footnote 37 Some attended concerts by the Banda Municipal de Barcelona and the Cobla Barcelona during the 1920s and became familiar with the sonority of the xeremies. In 1924, Stravinsky listened to a concert by the Banda Municipal at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, as he was in Barcelona to conduct the Orquestra Pau Casals. The newspaper La Tribuna reported that he enjoyed the concert ‘extremely’ and congratulated Lamote de Grignon ‘warmly’.Footnote 38 He also attended a concert by the Cobla Barcelona a few days later, which was described as follows in La Veu de Catalunya:
Stravinsky listened with sustained and strong attention and with growing interest. The works of Juli Garreta […] attracted and captivated him above all others, so that he could not help exclaiming, on hearing the sardanes Juny and Llicorella: ‘Ah! Ça c’est fort, c’est beau!’ [‘Ah! This is great, this is beautiful!’].Footnote 39
After the concert, Stravinsky studied some of the xeremies, and several members of the Cobla Barcelona suggested that he should write a sardana. Despite his request for some sardana scores for study and his promise of a composition, this piece unfortunately did not materialize.Footnote 40
In March 1927, Richard Strauss attended a concert of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona at the Plaça del Rei, where he heard a transcription of Tod und Verklärung; he was in Barcelona to conduct the Orquestra Pau Casals at the Gran Teatre del Liceu’s ‘Festival Strauss’. He was impressed and deeply moved by the quality of the Banda, and requested to conduct it a few days later at the Plaça de Sant Jaume.Footnote 41 He had also heard the Cobla Barcelona in 1925; Albert Martí recounted that ‘Strauss, visibly satisfied, told us in his goodbyes that the most pleasant impression he took away from our city was that he had heard the Cobla Barcelona’.Footnote 42 The composer subsequently invited the Banda Municipal to take part in the International Music Exhibition in Frankfurt in 1927, where it played eight concerts to notable critical acclaim.Footnote 43
At this point, it is interesting to consider that Lamote de Grignon may have taken inspiration from Strauss and Wagner when proposing the idea of the barítona. As a Wagnerian with close links to Strauss, he would certainly have been familiar with the heckelphone, a bass oboe sounding an octave below the oboe. Supposedly ‘suggested’ by Wagner, it was built by Wilhelm Heckel and first used in Strauss’s Salome (1905) and then in Elektra (1909).Footnote 44 The heckelphone was intended to fill a missing register in the woodwind family and solve issues faced by bass woodwind, including ‘pitch and tonal consistency’, in the same way that the barítona expanded the xeremia family.Footnote 45 The construction of the barítona demonstrates Lamote de Grignon’s noucentista vision of local yet ambitious music; it may also reflect his Wagnerian tendencies.
De Falla attended a rehearsal of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona in 1931 to study the sound of the xeremies, with a view to incorporating them into his opera Atlántida. Footnote 46 This visit was documented by the newspaper Ahora on 25 November 1931, which described the composer’s experience of the rehearsal: ‘Falla listened attentively to the demonstrations that the soloists gave with the instruments and asked for the realization of the sonorous possibilities of each one of them and also the results of the fusion of them all.’Footnote 47 Lamote de Grignon’s testimony completes the article:
I wanted to raise the aesthetic category of the ‘shawms’, direct relatives of the bagpipe, which are called sac de gemecs in Catalonia […] I did the same with the Valencian dulzaina, as I applied the advances in instrumental technique to the tenora and the tible to make it easier to play certain passages, but without giving them the possibility of virtuosity.
I also completed the shawm family by creating the ‘baritone’ and the ‘bass’ — the latter is under construction — to complete the range of sonority of this instrument family.Footnote 48
The article is accompanied by a picture of de Falla, Lamote de Grignon, the journalist Lluís Gongora, and the Banda Municipal de Barcelona. It is overlaid with depictions of three musicians playing a tenora, a tible, and a barítona; the latter is played by Robert Renart (see Figure 2). It should be noted that the tible and the barítona appear to have been printed mirrored, as the hands of the musicians are inverted. The accompanying description reads:
This is the barítono, whose antecedent and relative is the chirimía, direct relative of the bagpipes, which in Catalonia is called sac de gemecs (bag of groans), to which the maestro Lamote has applied the advances of instrumental technique.Footnote 49
A barítona played by Robert Renart during a rehearsal of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona at the Palau de Belles Arts, November 1931 (Ahora, 25 November 1931, p. 22). Image provided by the Biblioteca Nacional de España, CC BY. Reproduced with permission.
In fact, the article describes the completion of Lamote de Grignon’s instrumental project for the Banda Municipal de Barcelona: improving the technical construction of the xeremies and expanding the instrumental family through the invention of the barítona and the bajo.
The second part of this article will discuss Lamote de Grignon’s project within the context of the history of the tible and the tenora, with a particular focus on the 1920s. As musicians and instrument makers became aware of the technical and sonic deficiencies of the xeremies when played in a symphonic context, they proposed solutions to improve the instruments, culminating in the construction of the barítona.
The History of the Tible and the Tenora: Technical Deficiencies, Rudimentary Manufacture
The history of the tible and the tenora reflects the tension between their traditional origins and the continuous push towards more ambitious repertoire, including symphonic music. They are both conical double-reed instruments of the shawm family with keys and a flaring bell. They measure c. 57 cm and c. 85 cm, and play in F and B♭, respectively. The invention of the tenora is commonly attributed to an instrument maker from Perpignan, Andreu Toron (1815–86), who supposedly presented his new oboè-tenor at the Société agricole scientifique Pyrénées orientales in Perpignan on 23 December 1849 and unsuccessfully attempted to sell his invention to the French Army. Nevertheless, Ventura commissioned a tenora from him in 1850, therefore leading to its popularization it as a solo instrument in the cobla. Footnote 50 Toron built a keyed tenora with a metal bell (see Figure 3a), which became a prototype for many future instruments, such as those by Enric ‘Catroi’ Soldevila and Pere Llantà.Footnote 51
Two instruments by Andreu Toron. Fig. 3a. Tenora (c. 1845–86), Fons Museu de la Música de Barcelona, MDMB 63. Photograph by Sara Guasteví, CC-by-nc. Fig. 3b. Tible (c. 1845–86), Fons Museu de la Música de Barcelona, MDMB 1514. Photograph by Jordi Puig, CC-by-nc. Both reproduced with permission.
However, other instrument makers were building similar instruments in Perpignan around 1850, including Pierre Brisillac, Jean-Joseph Vallote, and Toron’s father, Valentin Touron.Footnote 52 Their instruments were generally more primitive in construction and keywork, but can nevertheless be considered types of tenores. It can be argued that Toron did not invent the tenora but rather carried out improvements which resulted in the instrument as we know (including a metal bell and keywork resembling the Triébert oboe systems). The invention of the tible is less well documented but is attributed to Toron as well (see Figure 3b), although one can assume that other makers were attempting similar modernizations of the treble shawm. In any case, the tenora and the tible developed from folk shawms already undergoing a process of mechanization during the mid-nineteenth century. Toron became part of the foundational myth of the cobla because of his connection to Ventura and because of the quality of his instruments.
The technical and sonic deficiencies of the xeremies have been highlighted by many musicians and instrument makers. In 1929, Lamote de Grignon pointed out the instruments’ ‘technical deficiencies, due to their rudimentary manufacture’.Footnote 53 In the same decade, Albert Manyach explained that the cobla instruments had not yet undergone the same improvements as the clarinet and the saxophone and were still in a ‘rustic’ state.Footnote 54 Gerhard drew a similar comparison between xeremies and saxophones in 1930, declaring the latter ‘far superior’ to the tible and the tenora; he also took the opportunity to mention Lamote de Grignon’s ongoing reforms of the shawms, which he followed with interest.Footnote 55 Indeed, modifications and repairs are common on historical xeremies, indicating the difficulties faced by its players. The shortening of the tube (by cutting some length off the top of the bore) and the enlargement of finger holes sought to address tuning and intonation issues as well as raise the overall pitch. While such iterative changes can improve the tuning of individual notes, they can also change the timbre of the instrument and introduce new intonation problems.Footnote 56 In fact, many historical instruments found in museum collections have become unplayable, partly because of damaging attempts at repairs which resulted, for example, in overly large finger holes.Footnote 57
Around 1930, Joan Fabra and Josep Coll proposed improvements to the xeremies, seeking to address similar concerns to those of Lamote de Grignon.Footnote 58 Fabra filed patents for the construction of a novel tible and tenora in 1929, in which he described the traditional construction of the instruments as having some ‘inconveniences’.Footnote 59 He noted that the separation of the wooden bore into two separate tubes made it difficult to align the joints and the keywork. His instruments consist of a single wooden joint and a metal bell — the feature for which the patents were granted — with a characteristic keywork system. Lluís Albert considered Fabra an instrument maker of the same ilk as Toron for his introduction of the Boehm system to shawms.Footnote 60 His instruments are significant because these appear to be the only patents ever filed for the construction of the tible and the tenora.
Coll, the tenora player of the Cobla Barcelona, built a metal tenora which he premiered on 4 May 1931 and played until his retirement twenty-six years later.Footnote 61 In his 1933 method for tenora and tible, he justified it as follows:
The tenora used by the author is made of metal and was built on the initiative of the masters Francesc Pujol and Josep Serra with the aim of finding a more stable intonation when changes in temperature happen, and also so that — differing from other tenoras in terms of shape and distance between holes — a more homogenous, brighter, and less nasal sound could be obtained. Other tenores, due to the lack of logic that often prevails in their deficient and rudimentary construction, have an unbalanced sound in their three registers: the low notes are too full and the high notes too shrill in comparison to the mid-range notes.Footnote 62
In the method’s preface, Serra, the conductor of the Cobla Barcelona, reiterated that Coll was improving on the ‘rudimentary construction’ of the instrument. Supposedly, Coll heard American-made metal instruments at the 1929 Barcelona Universal Exposition and realized they did not sound ‘metallic’, which convinced him to build his own metallic tenora. Footnote 63 Jordi Puerto claimed that the instrument was built by the makers Montserrat and Jiménez (probably Josep Giménez), under Coll’s supervision.Footnote 64
The construction of the metal tenora is extraordinarily light and narrow, even though it preserves its typical conical bore. It features innovative keywork — a variation on Boehm keywork — which addresses, for example, the problem of its long keys. These are prone to damage, for instance when balancing the instrument on crossed legs during performance. Note that the metal body is covered with black paint, perhaps to create the illusion of wood, such as ebony. Audiences were initially dismayed by its sound because they thought that a metal instrument could not sound pleasing. Coll decided to paint over it to fool audiences into thinking that it was in fact a wooden tenora; public reaction is said to have been enthusiastic thereafter.Footnote 65 On numerous occasions, the Cobla Barcelona defended the instrument in the press; for instance, an open letter in the magazine La Sardana in April 1933 said:
In concert pieces, composers strive to find new sonorities and effects so extreme that sometimes it seems like another, even more interesting cobla […] Coll’s tenora […] is simply a more perfected instrument than the others, with more secure tuning, a sweeter and more vibrant sonority, a clear rather than nasal sonority, which makes it fit much better with the other instruments of the cobla […] [Pau] Casals, [Francesc] Pujol and [Joan] Llongueras have warmly congratulated us on our work, especially Maestro Casals on Coll’s.Footnote 66
The introduction of the xeremies to the Banda Municipal de Barcelona and the founding of the Cobla Barcelona led Lamote de Grignon to seek improvements to the tible and the tenora, and to imagine the expansion of the instrumental family. In September 1921, the magazine Scherzando discussed his plans for the inclusion of xeremies in the Banda Municipal:
Despite the successful reorganization by Maestro Lamote de Grignon, the Banda was still not what he dreamed of when he was put in charge: it was not yet an ensemble with an unmistakable identity, stamped with Catalanity. Luckily, in a few weeks the dream of the maestro will become reality: one tible, two tenores, and a bass [shawm] — an octave below the tenora and which still needs to be built — will enrich and complete the excellent instrumentation which it [the band] already possesses.
The attempt already carried out with the first three instruments has resulted in a perfect fusion with the others, contributing an undefinable sonic nuance to the ensemble: one hears them, but they do not stand out more than necessary. The Banda Catalana will thus soon be an actual reality.Footnote 67
In 1923, Lamote de Grignon ordered a tible and two tenores ‘with normal pitch’ for the new xeremia players of the Banda Municipal (and the Cobla Barcelona), Martí, Renart, and Tapis.Footnote 68 In March 1928, the instrument business Casa Giménez of Barcelona announced in La Veu de Catalunya that they were manufacturing two further tenores for Martí and Renart, of which Lamote de Grignon said: ‘while conserving the typical sonority, they have gained in tuning thanks to the addition of keywork, which facilitates the artist’s performance’.Footnote 69 Lamote de Grignon had recognized the technical and sonic deficiencies of the xeremies at the time he introduced them to the Banda Municipal de Barcelona. In 1931, he was finally able to announce the result of his instrumental renovation project through adverts announcing the new tibles, tenores, and barítona.
The Casa Giménez Advert: The Barítona and Josep Giménez Carrión
In April 1931, Casa Giménez published a double-page advert in the Gaceta Musical announcing their new xeremies. It includes the reproduction of a hand-written note by Lamote de Grignon (dated August 1929), which reads:
The tiple and tenores which the intelligent instrumentalist Mr José Giménez Carrion has built for the Banda Municipal de Barcelona at my request have solved the different problems which arose when trying to use said instruments in my scores, because of the technical deficiencies due to their rudimentary manufacture.
Giménez has managed to expand the technical abilities of this instrumental family without losing their characteristic timbre and volume. With this, he has done a great service, for which I effusively thank him, as well as congratulating him cordially for the excellent result obtained.Footnote 70
The advert describes the instrument family (referred to as chirimías, meaning xeremies) which consists of the tiple in F and tenora in B♭, but also the novel barítono in F and bajo in B♭. The tible and tenora in the advert are presented with two different keywork systems: ‘mixed’ (mixto) and ‘perfected’ (perfeccionado).Footnote 71 The accompanying text indicates that musicians who already play the ‘old’ system should be able to play the new instruments without too much difficulty. The ‘mixed’ keywork on the tible and tenora incorporates some Boehm keywork but no ring keys; they both have a right-hand cluster of little-finger keys for lower notes. The ‘perfected’ system presents a complete Boehm system with covered or plateau-key tone holes, which facilitates chromaticism and eliminates the need for cross-fingering as well as improving the tuning. The barítona is shown with the ‘perfected’ system only, and the ‘perfected’ instruments shown here are almost certainly those pictured in the Ahora article. The bajo is not shown in the advert and was likely never built, even though its first mention predates that of the barítona. Footnote 72 According to Lamote de Grignon, the bajo was not completed because of an ‘unexpected’ (and unexplained) problem, despite plans to repeat the ‘success’ of the barítona. Footnote 73
In the advert, Lamote de Grignon names Josep Giménez Carrión as the maker of xeremies. Footnote 74 Born on 30 October 1891 in Jumilla (Múrcia), Giménez entered the Banda Municipal de Barcelona on 31 March 1917 as a clarinettist and second-rank teacher; he unsuccessfully attempted promotion to first rank in 1918.Footnote 75 He established an instrument repair business in 1917 and opened a shop in 1923 at 25–27 Carrer Sant Antoni Abad in Barcelona, which also sold instruments.Footnote 76 Giménez supplied instruments for the Banda Municipal de Barcelona and the Orquestra Pau Casals, among others; he was regularly tasked with the conservation and repair of the instruments of the former. In 1928, he claimed to have begun a ‘reform’ of the tenora and tible, having already completed two instruments for Joan Puigdueta (the tible player of the Banda Municipal between 1926 and 1937) and being in the process of finishing two tenores for Martí.Footnote 77
By 1933, Giménez had opened a new shop at 18 Rambla de les Flors in Barcelona and advertised himself as ‘José Giménez’ (or ‘Josep Giménez’), distancing himself from Casa Giménez (‘Antigua Casa Giménez’). He listed his skills as professor and instrumentalist of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona and was an exclusive agent for Besson and Selmer in Spain. His adverts targeted jazz musicians in specialist publications between 1934 and 1936.Footnote 78 The Casa Giménez premises on Carrer Sant Antoni Abad were acquired by Ferran Ripoll, which he advertised as ‘previously Casa Giménez’ (‘Abans Casa Giménez’) in 1934.Footnote 79 Ripoll sold instruments made by Bach (New York) and Piccadilly (the tradename for Boosey & Hawkes, London) and advertised in the same jazz publications as Giménez, such as the Jazz Magazine. At the end of the Spanish Civil War in April 1939, all the musicians of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona (and all other employees of Barcelona’s city council) were dismissed, and the activities of the ensemble ceased until its revival as the Orquestra Municipal de Barcelona (without Lamote de Grignon) in 1944.Footnote 80 Josep Giménez and his brother Pascual suffered the same fate. The revived Orquestra Municipal de Barcelona included a wind section, and those musicians who only played in this section received fourth and fifth ranks.Footnote 81 Giménez became a fifth-rank clarinettist in 1944 (now listed as ‘Jiménez’, the Spanish spelling) until his retirement in 1953 at age 62, after thirty years of service, when he received a lump-sum pension of 17,269.66 pesetas (later revised up to 24,535.27 in 1954) — a lesser amount than most other musicians in the orchestra.Footnote 82
Overall, Giménez’s career as a musician appears to have been relatively modest. His abilities as an instrument repairer, however, were demonstrated by his repeated commissions by the Banda Municipal de Barcelona. His activities as an instrument maker are not documented, although he may have contributed to the construction of Coll’s metal tenora. Footnote 83 Rather, our evidence suggests that Casa Giménez instruments, including the barítona, were the work of another maker: the Italian firm Rampone. Neither Lamote de Grignon nor Giménez mention this possibility in any of their writings, but the publications of the Casa Sobrequés shop in Girona offer a different side of the story.
Rampone: Josep Baró Güell and ‘Perfected’ Instruments
The Girona-based instrument shop Casa Sobrequés, under the direction of Tomàs Sobrequés i Masbernat, was the exclusive dealer of Rampone for the Spanish territory and publisher of the music magazine Scherzando (1906–35).Footnote 84 In 1930, the magazine advertised a new tenora built by the Italian firm Rampone & Cazzani, which was exhibited alongside tibles and flabiols on the Sobrequés shop’s premises in January 1930.Footnote 85 The tenora was advertised as ‘foreign-made, achieving the most accurate perfection due to the deep analysis carried out by the professor Josep Baró Güell, achieving great sweetness in sound, excellent construction, and a mechanism that permits the most difficult passages with the greatest ease’.Footnote 86 Favourable opinions about this Rampone instrument were published in Scherzando in July 1930. Pujol, solo tenora player of the cobla La Selvatana, declared that the tenora had a ‘perfect mechanism, sonority, and tuning’; Pere Mercader, of the same cobla, said it had a perfect mechanism, good tuning, and a beautiful sonority in each register, while Ismael Granero, conductor of the Orquestra Simfònica de Girona, found that ‘its solidity, mechanism, sweet and delicate sound, and perfect tuning make [it] an instrument which can bring to musical compositions all types of hues and expression that the most demanding performer aims for’.Footnote 87
The Rampone tenora was based on designs by Josep Baró Güell (1891–1980), a performer, composer, and conductor from Girona who was the deputy conductor of the Orquestra Simfònica de Girona and occasionally played the tenora for the Orquestra Pau Casals.Footnote 88 As a prominent Gironian musical figure, he was certainly acquainted with the symphonic turn of the xeremies and appeared to have a personal interest in modernizing the tenora. He ordered his new instrument in 1929 and described it as ‘perfected’.Footnote 89 It may seem surprising that Catalan xeremies were built in Italy, given that they are almost exclusively played in Catalonia. In fact, a considerable number of tenores held in European museum collections are of French manufacture, specifically Thibouville (and associated brands).Footnote 90 Three letters from Baró to Rampone discuss a tenora prototype built by the instrument manufacturer, which was returned to them for further modifications.Footnote 91 Baró gives detailed descriptions of technical issues of the instrument across each register; he explains that some notes are out of tune by as much as a semitone, suggests Boehm keywork, and pleads for a reduction in weight. The letters suggest that he was not satisfied with the Rampone prototype, which he describes as ‘very beautiful’ but ‘impractical’.Footnote 92 This is an indication that despite the favourable reviews and glowing adverts for the Rampone instruments, they may not have been as technically accomplished as expected.
The mention of ‘perfected’ tibles and tenores occurs in adverts by three separate brands of cobla instruments between 1929 and 1931. Apart from those for Casa Sobrequés and Casa Giménez already mentioned, Casa Parramón of Barcelona also advertised ‘perfected’ instruments branded as Omniphon, the brand name for all instruments from this shop (see Figure 4).Footnote 93 The instruments in the Casa Giménez and Casa Parramón adverts appear identical, with their distinctive ‘mixed’ and ‘perfected’ keywork. The Museu de la Música de Barcelona holds an Omniphon tenora with keywork identical to that shown in the Omniphon advert. We can deduce that ‘perfected’ tenores and tibles were ordered from Rampone in 1929, on the initiative of Casa Sobrequés and Josep Baró Güell, before being branded and sold by other instrument businesses. We can also assume that Casa Giménez instruments were built by Rampone, although we do not know whether Giménez had any input into their construction. The invention and commission of the barítona, however, appears to have been the sole initiative of Lamote de Grignon and Josep Giménez Carrión, in collaboration with Rampone. We can also reasonably assume that the financial burden of this endeavour was carried by the Banda Municipal de Barcelona, although this question requires further investigation.
Advert by Casa Parramón in Hermes Musical (February 1931) announcing tiples and tenores with an ‘ordinary system’ and a ‘perfected Boehm system’. Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona, R 1928 4, public domain. Reproduced with permission.
Only very few examples of ‘perfected’ instruments have survived, which hints at their limited success. The instruments we have been able to verify are an Omniphon tenora at the Museu de la Música in Barcelona, the lower part of a Casa Giménez tenora at the Musée de la Musique in Céret, France, a tible in Paris (in a private collection; no stamps but ‘perfected’ keywork), and a Casa Giménez barítona in Barcelona (in a private collection). Some more unverified instruments are in circulation.
The Barítona of Casa Giménez
A single example of a Casa Giménez barítona is known to us. It was located by researcher Jaume Nonell in 2023 in the private collection of descendants of Robert Renart, the tenora player of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona and the Cobla Barcelona who was pictured playing the instrument in 1931 (see Figure 2). Renart also played a Rampone clarinet and perhaps a ‘perfected’ tenora. It is possible that the Omniphon tenora at the Museu de la Música de Barcelona belonged to Renart, although its provenance is still unclear. The instrument was donated to the museum in 1940, about ten years after its construction, suggesting that enthusiasm for ‘perfected’ instruments had already waned by then. If Renart did play a ‘perfected’ tenora, he had returned to a ‘traditional’ instrument by the 1940s (see Figure 5).
Robert Renart playing a tenora with ‘traditional’ keywork during the 1940s. Private collection of the Renart family. Reproduced with permission.
The barítona is in excellent playing condition and shows few signs of use (see Figure 6), which indicates that it was not played much. When it was presented to a public audience at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans on 12 April 2023, it required only a little maintenance; the player on this occasion was Jordi Campos.Footnote 94 The barítona is not made of jujube wood, as is common for tibles and tenores, but of more porous wood, perhaps pine. This could mean that this instrument was intended as a prototype. The reed well is made of rosewood and the double reeds are larger than those of a tenora. It carries saxophone Boehm keywork and shows good quality of manufacture. It is tuned at 440 Hz and sounds an octave below the tible, thus playing in F; it carries a Casa Giménez stamp.
The Casa Giménez barítona, now held in the private collection of the Renart family, photograph by Albert Fontelles-Ramonet. Reproduced with permission.
The existence of the Casa Giménez barítona had been doubted for a long time. While the depiction of Renart playing the instrument was known, the lack of instrument cast doubts over its construction. Some hypothesized that the xeremies in the Casa Giménez advert had been drawn rather than photographed, or that Renart was pictured playing a bass clarinet. Lamote de Grignon explained in 1948 that the barítona was premiered to great acclaim during a concert at the Plaça de Sant Jaume in Barcelona in the spring of 1931 or 1932:
I envisaged building a xirimia playing exactly an octave below the tible and another playing an octave below what is called a tenora. The first of the instruments, which I called baríton, became reality; its result was magnificent and Barcelonians were able to hear it at the Plaça de Sant Jaume during a sardana concert which the Banda Municipal de Barcelona played in the spring of 1931 or 1932.Footnote 95
This premiere may have taken place during a concert on 22 April 1930, when the Banda Municipal performed a programme of sardanes arranged for wind band and xeremies. The programme consisted of Lo toc d’oració by Ventura, La Rosa del folló by Joan Lamote de Grignon, Festa major and A la plaça by Morera, Pastora enamorada and Juny by Garreta, Festívola by Pau Casals, Nupcial by Ricard Lamote de Grignon, El cavaller enamorat by Joan Manén, and La processó de Sant Bartomeu by Català.Footnote 96 Some of the composers conducted their own pieces on this occasion, including Casals, Manén, Morera, Català, and Joan and Ricard Lamote de Grignon; this is documented in Renart’s personal diary.Footnote 97 It is also confirmed by a letter from Lamote de Grignon to Pau Casals: ‘Dear and admired friend Casals, I invite you personally to conduct your sardana Festívola at the sardana concert that the Banda Municipal de Barcelona will perform at the Plaça de Sant Jaume at half past ten.’Footnote 98 Significantly, barítona parts have been located in the Banda Municipal de Barcelona’s archives for each of these pieces apart from Garreta’s Juny (see Table 2). We believe that 22 April 1930 is therefore the more likely premiere date of the barítona.
SCORES FOR THE BARÍTONA LOCATED IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE BANDA MUNICIPAL DE BARCELONA
| Piece | Composer |
|---|---|
| A la plaça | Enric Morera |
| Festa major | Enric Morera |
| El cavaller enamorat | Joan Manén |
| Festívola | Pau Casals |
| Lo toc d’oració | Pep Ventura |
| Nupcial | Ricard Lamote de Grignon |
| La rosa del folló | Joan Lamote de Grignon |
| La processó de Sant Bartomeu | Antoni Català |
The barítona parts in the archives are notated for xirimia barító; they are written in treble clef for an instrument transposing in F and sounding an octave below the tible. In the transcriptions, the barítona expands the sonic palette of the pieces. In Festívola, it only plays six bars of the bass line in the A section (in 3/4); in the B section (in 6/8), it doubles and then accompanies the main tenora melody. In La processó de Sant Bartomeu, it again supports the bass line in the A section; in the B section, however, it plays a mixture of bass line and a melody which does not directly double the tenora nor the bassoon or bass sarrusophone lines. This suggests a certain degree of creative liberty by Lamote de Grignon in his barítona arrangements of sardanes.
On 22 April 1931, the Banda Municipal gave another sardana concert at the Plaça de Sant Jaume; the programme this time consisted of Recordant by Garreta, Cant de les ones by Agustí Oriol, Merceneta by Silvestre Peñas Echevarría, Margaridó by Joaquim Zamacoís, Heroica by Enric Casals, Matinada Santpolenca by Vives, Sant Telm by Ricard Lamote de Grignon, Sol ixent by Toldrà, Testament de n’Amèlia by Joan Lamote de Grignon, and La santa espina by Morera.Footnote 99 This concert was significant because it was the first time Morera’s La santa espina (one of the most famous sardanas, and a patriotic hymn) had been played since the end of Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship in 1930, when it was banned. Curiously, no barítona parts were located in the archives for these pieces, suggesting that the instrument was not used on this occasion, so the 1930 concert at the Plaça de Sant Jaume is the only ‘confirmed’ barítona performance, although it was played again in November 1931 during a Banda Municipal rehearsal, as witnessed by de Falla and documented in Ahora. Until Lamote de Grignon’s 1948 mention of the barítona during his talk on the future of xeremies, mentions of the instrument vanish.Footnote 100
A probable explanation for its rapid obsolescence is the difficult times that the country was entering, as the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931. This marked the beginning of a more turbulent era, culminating in the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War on 17 July 1936. Although the Banda Municipal de Barcelona and the Cobla Barcelona continued to perform until the end of the war, it significantly impacted on their activities. The staffing situation worsened again as musicians left for the front or died without being replaced. This may explain why the barítona is not included in the instrumentation of the 1931 concert; it may also explain the lack of success of the barítona and why the bajo was never built. We must also consider the possibility that the experimentations with the tible, tenora, and barítona were simply not satisfactory for the musicians, as the ‘perfected’ instruments did not find long-term success. With the establishment of Franco’s dictatorship, all municipal employees, including the members of the Banda Municipal, were dismissed. Lamote de Grignon was let go in 1939 and never returned to the helm of the orchestra; in 1943, he moved to Valencia with his son Ricard, where they founded the Orquestra Municipal de Valencia.Footnote 101 This also marked the end of instrumental experiments for the Banda Municipal de Barcelona and the Cobla Barcelona.
Conclusion
The invention of the barítona represents a significant milestone in the history of Catalan music because it is the pinnacle of a process of cultural nationalism as applied to the cobla and the sardana. The introduction of the xeremies in chamber and symphonic ensembles created a ‘high-prestige musical vehicle[e] equipped with the power to consecrate small-nation cultural legitimacy’.Footnote 102 In fact, the musical developments of the Noucentisme put Catalan music on the cultural map of Europe, which drew interest from composers such as Bartók, de Falla, Stravinsky, and Britten.Footnote 103 The sonority of the xeremies helped create a ‘Catalan sound’ in the Western European tradition, but was also promoted as an exciting creative avenue for non-Catalan composers. In fact, the writings of Lamote de Grignon in particular provide ample evidence for the vision of a national music with a distinct sonority which could attract the attention of European composers and audiences. It is worth pointing out that the repertoire of the Banda Municipal de Barcelona which included xeremies did not just consist of sardana music, but also of transcriptions of works by European composers, which emphasizes the interest in creating a Catalan sound within this repertoire. To achieve this, musicians and instrument makers offered their proposed solutions for the instruments, with varying degrees of success. Thus the paradox of the modernization of the Catalan xeremies — and perhaps all ‘improved’ instruments within cultural nationalism movements — is that the sonority which makes them characteristic is also the main barrier to their incorporation in the ‘cosmopolitan’ ensembles which should ‘elevate’ them.
The reasons for the disappearance of the barítona and the ‘perfected’ xeremies are probably manifold. The obsolescence of new instruments in general can be explained by musical but also economic, technological, social, and political reasons.Footnote 104 There is evidence that the instruments may not have been as technically accomplished as musicians wished; the barítona also required new compositions or arrangements to become useful. However, the political situation of Catalonia probably compounded the fate of the latter instrument, as the Banda Municipal de Barcelona was disbanded after the Spanish Civil War. This also marked the end of a flourishing period in Barcelona’s cultural life supported by the ideals of the Noucentisme. Nevertheless, the example of the xeremies makes a compelling case for the importance of the sonority of ‘national’ instruments which is often overlooked in wider discussions about musical nationalism.
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