Viatge al present

Five songs from Joan Salvat-Papasseit

 

His modest background, his self-taught, rebellious spirit and his affinity with the anarchist and socialist movements of the early 20th century meant that Joan Salvat Papasseït was one of the most acclaimed avant-garde poets of the post-civil war period in Catalonia, especially as of the 1960s onwards when the authors of the Nova Cançó, as it is called, composed music for and disseminated their poems.
Of all of them, those from the collection “El poema de la rosa als llavis” from 1923 were favourites and five of them (Seré a ta cambra, amiga / Ulls clucs, l’amor / Més d’aquest somni / Si anéssis lluny / Tanca) are proposed by Sílvia Llanas in this choir piece for mixed voices under the title Viatge al present. Written in a language that approaches tone in a loose fashion, the work lays out the various moods expressed in the text with common descriptive hints of the elements appearing, all of them linked to love, first in a babble and ultimately with full effect:
mischief, closed eyes, party, cry, etc.
The most obvious, formal point of reference in perfect harmony with the intimate naturalness of the poems set to
music is the Renaissance madrigal.

 

Carles Comalada (choir signing teacher at the CMMB)