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Now Montjuic Mountain is a place full of culture exactly as it had been in other times too, where you can visit numerous institutions and museums. From the well-known National Museum of Art of Catalonia to the Joan Miró Foundation, passing through the Olympic Museum, the Ethnological Museum, the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia or the Museum of Funeral Carriages. This website has information about all the hidden corners and places to visit on Montjuic Mountain.
For the story of this publication, we have to go back in time to the year 1936, just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. At that time, the city of Barcelona was an important cultural centre in the Second Republic with international relevance. We want to focus on just some of the many events, festivals and exhibitions that were held at that time, showing the importance of the city of Barcelona.
Popular Olympiad
Preparations for one of the events of the year flooded the city with news in the press. Between July 19th and 26th, the People’s Olympiad was to be held to protest the Berlin Olympic Games. The Republic decided not to send athletes to Hitler’s games and organised this alternative event, intended to promote peace and harmony which was conveyed in the opening ceremony. On July 19th 1936, the Pau Casals Orchestra, with the maestro conducting, was scheduled to perform Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the Teatre Grec de Montjuic. It could not be. Just one day before, July 18th, the military uprising took place beginning three years of Civil War in Spain.
Pau Casals was at the Palau de la Música Catalana rehearsing the concert when the news of the military uprising arrived and the orchestra played together for the last time. They never played at the concert on the 19th, and the Popular Olympiad was never held.
The Spring Exhibition
A few weeks before the Popular Olympiad, an artistic cultural event was also being prepared on Montjuic mountain. From May 31st to July 12th, the Spring Exhibition was held at the Saló d’Art Modern, where pavilion 8 of the Fira de Barcelona now stands. That building was inaugurated in 1929 as the Electricity Palace on the occasion of the International Exhibition of that year. The official documents and catalogues with all the exhibiting artists are preserved and it is known that there were many participants.
April 36, musical events
Continuing with our journey back in time, in April 1936 two great events captured the attention not only of the national press, but also international interest. Between April 18th and 25th, the Third Congress of the International Society of Musicology and the XIV Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music were held simultaneously. The celebration of these events was thanks to artists with international prestige and good connections such as Pau Casals, the composer Robert Gerhard or the musicologist Higini Anglés. For the start of the congress, the General Director of Fine Arts of the Republic from Madrid attended and the opening ceremony was chaired by the President of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys.
Among the concerts that took place that week was the world premiere of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto in Memory of an Angel. Likewise, many international composers were present in the city.
Tourism also featured
In addition to the musical events, the organisers of the Festival and Congress organised a series of excursions during the day for international attendees to see other places in Catalonia. They visited the Costa Brava, Montserrat, Sitges, Tarragona and Poblet by bus. With so much activity, many artists had the opportunity to meet each other. This was the case of two British composers who had not greeted each other until they met in Barcelona.
Britten and Berkeley, united by Barcelona.
The two composers, Benjamin Britten and Lennox Berkeley, coincided at this time in Barcelona and together attended the “Festival of popular dances and ballets of the various Hispanic regions,” held in Poble Espanyol on the last day of the congress, April 25th. There they were able to hear numerous popular Catalan songs for the first time and fell in love with the magic of Montjuic Mountain. It seems that later they met in a cafe in Barcelona to transcribe the melodies they remembered. It would be the beginning of a musical relationship.
The Montjuic Suite is born
The Civil War had been affecting the lives of citizens for almost a year when the British composers took up the idea of capturing those melodies they heard in Barcelona in a piece. Between April and December 1937, they composed the Montjuic Suite. The work consists of 4 movements and in it you can hear popular Catalan music. The first movement hides the Ballet de Déu de Rocafort de Bages and the Ball del vano i el ram de Sant Cugat. The second movement is dedicated to La Ratolinesa de Sant Julià de Vilatorrada. The third movement is slow and has the subtitle “Lament (Barcelona July 1936)” an allusion to the threat of the Civil War. In it you can hear the Muntanya Ballet from Folgueroles and the Contrapàs from Sant Genís de Palafolls. In the last movement the Ball cerdà from La Seu d’Urgell appears.
We recommend listening to the Montjuic Suite, and have prepared a Spotify playlist with all these original melodies.
P.S. Who wrote what?
For a long time, Britten and Berkeley did not reveal who had composed each movement. In the 80s, Berkeley himself confessed that he was the author of the first two movements and Britten the last two.
