A little more than a century later, this work, result of the sound landscape heard in Céret and Cerdanya, it allows us to continue finding different possibilities to interpret it and to think about an artistic proposal like mine, where I incorporate the current soundscape into the performance. It is a way of following the example of these artists, of seeking new ways of offering their work. Since I am Catalan and I am from this region, this fact has been the key to start and approach this artistic research about the Suite for piano Cerdaña by Séverac.

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In this research I use the concept of soundscape in the performance understood as the set of sounds that define a specific space/time including the human, social dimensions, etc. implicit in it, such as the interaction with nature, beliefs, forms of leisure, forms of subsistence... It corresponds to the way it was defined by the first international standard dedicated to soundscape, published in August 2014[i].

 

In Cerdaña we find the catalan and cerdan soundscape explicitly. But this work, and this is what I wanted to explore with this incipient performative research, also allows us to find it in a more implicit way, in the features of his melodies and rhythms, in the structures, etc., and not only of the sardana but of other popular dances that we have seen that were enjoyed. We also find the imitation of the cobla instruments and the presence of his friendship with the famous composer and pianist Isaac Albéniz. My objective is to exploit with the piano the possibilities of an imaginary sound of Cerdanya in the first decade of the 20th century.

 

On the other hand, the current and familiar sounds to the listener of the same event, celebration or activity are intermixed, in form of recordings, with those that took place a little over a century ago, as Séverac captured them in his work and like my imagination of that soundscape takes me to perform them. The goal is to provoke a reaction from the audience and awaken associations, bringing another contextualized perspective to Séverac’s work and causing the audience to reflect on some larger social issues, such as pollution or the recovery and loss of traditions. 

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“If it is true that art changes us, it is no less true that art in turn becomes a way of imagining and reimagining our own past. A way to question ourselves about where we come from, how we have become who we are. And a way of conversing with those who are no longer here, constructing from the present our idea of what was their world” (Chiantore 2021, 179)[ii].

 

This paragraph from the book Malditas palabras by Luca Chiantore (2021), in which he proposes to us to move, both with music and with the words with which we refer to it in the field of classical music performance, is the summary of what Déodat de Séverac Cerdaña represents for me. On the other hand, my more recent professional background has allowed me to insert the present among the past.

 

In my performance of Cerdaña, I aimed to capture the listener's active attention and encourage reflection on the stimuli generated by the soundscape. On the other hand, it is a way of involving the listener in the soundscape that this work has evoked in me, offering me another way of approaching it. My performative proposal aims to reveal another aspect of a work that could otherwise remain hidden if we do not dare to experiment. I have opted for a performance that clearly conveys my interpretation of the piece, my thoughts on it and how I feel about it. The recordings I have included make this a pioneering attempt and, at the same time, a reference point. 

 

The search for the moments in which to launch each of the tracks, which track to launch, how to make it interact with my performance, whether during or stop it, has consisted of a single task for each of the tracks or for a set of tracks of the same number with similar characteristics. I have also discarded some tracks that I had initially considered including. The tracks related to public transport and nature were extracted from Internet sound catalogs because the quality and variety was much higher than I could obtain by recording with my own resources. The tracks with more specific sounds were recorded with the Zoom H8 audio interface.

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This performative proposal has also been part of a sound exploration in the mixing and mastering process, choosing different reverberation options for the multiple texture changes of the sections that contain each of the numbers in the Suite. The purpose has been to give the feeling of remoteness or proximity, or to simulate more open or closed spaces where the different scenes could take place in the valley. Recent recordings such as that of Alice Sara Ott (Field: Complete Nocturnes, Deutsche Grammophon 2025) that uses the Dolby Atmos sound or that of Pavel Kolesnikov (Johann Sebastian Bach Goldberg Variations, Hyperion 2020), make this manipulation explicit as part of the creative process. 

 

The Cerdaña suite for piano is made up of five pieces: “En Tartane” (L'arrivée en Cerdagne), “Les Fêtes” (Souvenir de Puigcerdá), “Ménétriers et glaneuses” (Souvenir d'un pèlerinage à Font-Romeu), “Les Muletiers devant le Christ de Llivia” (complainte) and “Le Retour des muletiers”.

 

Below, I will explain the characteristics of my artistic proposal to show you how I intermix the past and the present soundscapes and how I think the piano suite is imbued with traits of the cobla ensemble. I would also like to highlight the way that religion, tradition, popular festivals, belongingness, and nature are all present in Cerdaña. 

 

[i] I define the concept soundscape as “acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/or understood by a person or people, in context”, ISO 2014.

[ii] “Si es cierto que el arte nos cambia no es menos cierto que el arte a su vez se vuelve una forma de imaginar y reimaginar nuestro propio pasado. Un modo de interrogarnos acerca de dónde venimos, cómo hemos llegado a ser quienes somos. Y una forma de conversar con quienes ya no están aquí, construyendo desde el presente nuestra idea del que fue su mundo” (Chiantore 2021, 179).