To My Mother - The Night Before Christmas

This piece is part of our collection of traditional Catalonian music for the
Cobla, a band-like ensemble of 11 or 12 players which traditionally plays outdoors.
These are two compositions from very different periods, but despite the logical evolution reflecting the difference in when they were written, in both pieces the firmness of his inspired melodies and an excellent musical quality are evident.
The lightness of his melodies and the ideas fitting to the sounds of his works were found at the most unexpected moments. For this reason, he was always ready with his pencil, his rubber, and lined paper, in order to be able to write down the first ideas, which later, in the silence of his office at home, he would write down definitively on lined paper, polishing the piano chords.
'A la meva mare' ('To My Mother'), written in 1928, when he was only 21 years old, is an inspired
sardana, with the musical quality of a more mature person, full of sentiment, transmitting a certain regret for his mother's fervent desire that he become a musician, which he experienced so intensely in his adolescence.
'La Nit de Nadal' ('Christmas Eve') was composed in 1966, when he was already 59. Anecdote has it that the first ideas of this
sardana were written during a night of insomnia spent in a train ride to Bilbao on professional business.