Choral Societies and Nationalist Mobilization in Catalonia, 1850–1930

CHAPTER 10 Choral Societies and Nationalist Mobilization in Catalonia, 1850–1930 Dominique Vidaud How could an activity as apparently harmless as choral singing become in Catalonia a very strong vector of identity that contributed significantly to the emergence of a national culture starting from 1891, the date of the foundation of the Orfeó Català? How, at the end of the nineteenth century, did a regional culture that cultivated the Catalan personality without questioning its alle- giance to the Spanish community change into an exclusively national culture? Why was Catalan society enthralled by a repertoire that widely referred to the past and idealized Catalonia, with no real links to its everyday life? Who were the actors in what came to be called the ‘choral movement,’ and what moti- vated them? On what support for resistance was Catalan choral singing able to rely in such a movement, while in the rest of Spain, except for the Basque Country and Galicia, such activity attracted far less attention? Three Rival Federations of Choirs The first choral society in Catalonia, La Fraternidad, was created in 1850 by Josep Anselm Clavé. In 1857 its name was changed to Euterpe and it was quickly emulated. An association called the Asociación Euterpense was created to organize festivals in Barcelona and broadcast Clavé’s work by means of a periodical, El Eco de Euterpe, which become a weekly in 1863 under the name of El Metrónomo. By 1864, at the fourth festival of Euterpe, there were some 2,000 choir-singers and eighty-four societies in Catalonia. The death of Clavé in 1874 marked the beginning of a period of decline for the Association, which carried on the repertoire created by its founder until it split in 1886 with the creation of the Asociación de los Coros de Clavé. A reunification occurred in 1901, followed by a new split in 1915. The Clavérian movement still exists today, carried on by the Federación de los Coros de Clavé. In 1891, a new type of choir was created in Barcelona by Lluís Millet i Bagès and Amadeu Vives: the Orfeó Català. Although it invoked the legacy of Clavé, its innovative repertoire was open to traditional songs and to new works by young © Dominique Vidaud, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004300859_012 Dominique Vidaud - 9789004300859 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-NDDownloaded 4.0 license. from Brill.com09/27/2021 11:04:37AM via free access 158 Vidaud musicians such as Francesc Alió, Antoni Nicolau, or Lluís Millet himself, based on poems written by their contemporaries. Unlike the Choirs of Clavé, the Orfeó Català was mixed, and on this model eighty-eight Orpheon groups developed and federated in 1917 under the name of Germanor dels Orfeons de Catalunya. The Clavérian choirs had performed extracts from Tannhäuser since 1862, but the Orfeó Català was the first choral group to undertake an ambitious repertoire by interpreting for the first time in Spain such vocally complex works as J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor or the Magnificat, the Requiem of Hector Berlioz, the Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis of Beethoven, Handel’s Messiah, and Les Béatitudes by César Franck. Some Orpheons were even more ambitious, such as the Orfeó Gracienc, which performed difficult works by Liszt, Brahms, Kodaly, and Stravinsky. In 1895 a third choral society, Catalunya Nova, was founded by Enric Morera, who four years later, in 1899, created the Federació dels Cors Catalans, which remained very active until the early 1920s and often took part in the cycle of Festes Modernistes organized by the painter Santiago Rusiñol at Sitges, a small sea-side resort close to Barcelona. Its repertoire was based on the works of Clavé and numerous traditional songs harmonized by Morera, but also included songs which Morera composed for poems by his friends E. Guanyabens, I. Iglesias, and A. Guimerà. The Spread of Choral Societies in the Catalan Area Creating a reliable database of choral societies is difficult because sources are not always reliable and the results are often contradictory. In the case of the Choirs of Clavé, the newspaper of the main Association, L’Aurora, makes it possible to compile a list of affiliated choirs at the end of every year when subscriptions were renewed. But there were numerous splits in the Clavérian movement after the death of its founder in 1874: in 1886, the old Asociación Euterpense was challenged by the creation of the Asociación de los Coros de Clavé. A reunification in 1901 gave birth to the Asociación Euterpense de los Coros de Clavé, but in 1915 a new split appeared that would finally be resolved only in 1936. The total number of Clavérian choirs is therefore difficult to determine precisely except for the period 1901–1915, when it varied from 158 to 171, reflecting the flux of registrations and lapses. The year 1924—the fiftieth anniversary of Clavé’s death—appears to mark the high point of the Clavérian movement, with a peak of 171 listed choirs. The situation is clearer in the case of the Orpheons because there were no splits within the association; the Germanor dels Orfeons de Catalunya was Dominique Vidaud - 9789004300859 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 11:04:37AM via free access Choral Societies And Nationalist Mobilization In Catalonia 159 created in 1918 to group together the fifty-two choirs created since 1891 on the model founded by Millet. Several people strongly connected to the Orfeó Català served in the permanent council of the Association from 1918 till 1931, that is, from the first to the last assembly of the Association. As Pere Artis i Benach reminds us, the numbers of Orpheons represented at the three assemblies of 1918, 1920, and 1931 varied,1 which suggests that if some groups appeared after 1920, others could have disappeared before 1931 (the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera from 1924 to 1931 had an impact on certain societies connected to Catalanism, even on the right wing). There were apparently fifty-two Orpheons in 1918, seventy-five in 1920, and sixty-three in 1931. However, to give a complete image of the real spread of the Orpheonic movement, it seems preferable to count choirs at their peak (in 1920) by adding those present in 1918 and 1931, whose absence from the assembly in Vic was presumably only momentary and not a sign that they had ceased to exist. This method produces a total figure of eighty-seven choirs, or a little more than half the number of the Choirs of Clavé, which is surprising since the Clavérian sphere of influence was often considered, by its contemporaries as well as by historians of the choral movement, as decadent compared to the supposedly much more dynamic Orphéonism. Massive population increases privileged the eastern regions of Catalonia, especially the urban areas. A map of Orpheons and Choirs of Clavé indicat- ing the number of choral societies by district in 1924 shows that out of forty districts, only seven had no choral society: these were in the regions most remote from Barcelona, and the most rural ones. The region of Barcelona and its surroundings, the Barcelonès, was dominant with fifty-three permanent choirs, while the western Vallès (with Terrassa and Sabadell, two major industrial areas) followed with twenty-six. The less industrialized districts close to this nucleus followed, with between ten and twenty choirs each: the ori- ental Vallès, the Maresme, the Baix Llobregat, the Alt Penedès, and the Bagès. Then, with between five and ten choirs, came districts that were more distant but included important cities such as Tarragona and Gérone (with 23,000 and 15,000 inhabitants respectively in 1900), and industrialized regions such as the Anoia (Igualada) and the Osona (Vic). Certain areas (the Berguedà and the Ripollès, the Garrigues, the Urgell, and la Selva) look like exceptions to this pat- tern: less heavily industrialized and with no important cities, they nonetheless gave rise to a considerable number of choirs. Everywhere else choirs were less numerous and were concentrated in small urban areas (with 2,000 to 5,000 inhabitants) or large villages (of between 1 Artis i Benach (1980), 75–79. Dominique Vidaud - 9789004300859 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 11:04:37AM via free access 160 Vidaud 500 and 2,000 inhabitants). There was one big surprise: the inclusion of a large rural city in the choral landscape: Lleida (with 21,500 inhabitants in 1900). Of the total of 231 cities or villages with choirs, thirty-eight (or 16%) had two coexisting networks, representing both the Choirs of Clavé and brass bands, sometimes with several groups. This was the case in Barcelona naturally, but also in the western Vallès, the valley of Llobregat, and the cities of the Maresme; a group to the North which connected Berga, Ripoll, Olot and Figueras; and a group to the West which connected Tarragona with Lleida. In these privileged places for choral singing, it seems that coexistence was a source of rivalry and mutual challenge, but joint concerts were not rare, especially after 1917. Thus two choral societies could be found even in villages of from 1,300 to 2,500 inhabitants. This proliferation can be explained by several factors: economic, political, and in terms of human resources. The economic link with industrialization is evident, the Choirs of Clavé having served initially as ‘surrogate communities’ for the uprooted workers of Barcelona. The phenomenon then spread to other industrial areas, including the rural workshops, because the message of Clavé was encouraged by paternalistic employers. The Orpheons, on the other hand, recruited later among the rapidly growing middle classes (unprecedented in the rest of Spain) who identified all the more easily with the choral movement as they were themselves in search of identity.

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