Cerdanya is a Spanish and French divided region, with half of it located in the department Pyrenees-Orientales, following the annexation to France in the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659. Séverac settled in Céret, next to his artist friends Manolo Huguet and Frank Burty Haviland, very late in 1909. It was in 1911 when they received for the first time the visit of Picasso himself and Georges Braque, painters of maximum importance in the Parisian artistic avant-garde. The stabilization of the residence of the first three in the capital of the Vallespir originated a coming and going of artists from Paris that would turn it into the so-called Mecca of Cubism and a very culturally active region.

 

It was there where Séverac, and the painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque discovered its soundscape, and the cobla ensemble instruments took center stage in their work. The Roussillonnaise cobla, at that time, used to be the one in charge of entertaining the social gatherings of the North Catalonia. It had been established then more or less in a formation of six musicians, a tible or prima, as it is called in the region, two tenoras, a trumpet, a tuba and a three-string bass, but it could also be two tibles, two tenoras, a cornet and a bass, such as a saxhorn[i]. Among these, it was the tibles and the tenoras that caught the attention of these artists, the typical Catalan instruments that bring the characteristic color to these ensembles.

 

It is important to name the differences that existed at that time between the Roussillonnaise and Catalan cobla to contextualize the work that these authors created in Céret and to show that the presence of Catalan instruments in it has been excessively related to the sardana[ii], as for example, in the Suite for piano Cerdaña. The Catalan cobla, spread out in Southern Catalonia, was definitively established by Pep Ventura from 1860 with about eleven musicians with the flabiol the tambourine, two tibles, two tenoras, two cornets, two flugelhorns, a trombone and a three-stringed double bass[iii].

 

The difference in the instrumentation and the number of musicians is decisive to understand that the Roussillonnaise cobla did not usually perform sardanas, since they had been composed for the Catalan cobla and had to be adapted. But they played traditional dances such as the ball de ramallets, the ball de la toia, the ball de corre, the cascavellada and the contrapàs; “modern dances” such as mazurkas, waltzes, polkas, xotis, fox trot, americana…; and opera arrangements[iv]. The coblas of the French side did not usually perform sardanas until the arrival of the Catalan immigrants due to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The sardana gained great national identity in Catalonia during the first half of the 20th Century, and Picasso would also adopt it in his work, often drawing the dance linked to the concept of peace and brotherhood[v]. But in 1911 the incorporation of the tenora in the artistic work still had nothing to do with the sonorous universe of the sardana. The fact that since the Catalan cobla and the sardana were established to the detriment of the disappearance of the Roussillonnaise cobla, has made this assessment overlooked.

 

Furthermore, Séverac's letters to the Catalans musicians Francesc Pujol and Lluis Millet confirm my suspicions that he did not know their soundscape as well as writings about him have usually insisted[vi]. In addition, when he wrote “Les Fêtes” (1908), piece of the Suite for piano Cerdaña, he hadn’t even lived in Céret yet; and when he wrote “En Tartane”, “Ménétriers et Gleneuses” and “Le Retour des muletiers” (1910), pieces of Cerdaña piano suite, he was beginning to know the Catalan instruments better. Séverac confesses to Pujol having heard the sardana since his childhood, but pieces of information clearly provide an idea of the effort that he made to get to know it better. In his letters he asks “Could you introduce me to the history of Catalan instruments (tibles, tenores and flabiol and fiscorn? Do you know why these instruments don’t exist, or not at this moment, but only in the Catalan speaking countries?” (Séverac, s.d.) [vii]. In 1912 he confessed that he had lately been interested in Catalan popular music and stated that "I’m sure that that magazine would love to introduce generally unknown popular Catalan music to France” (Séverac 1912) [viii]. 

 

Although he tells Millet that he knows some sardanas as Aucellets and Maynada, Séverac is very interested in learning about this danse, and for this reason he asks for the publishers of sardanas or other popular Catalan dances because he wants to have the scores with all the cobla instruments. When he received the first scores, he realized that in Céret he did not have the complete cobla… (Séverac 1912)

 

All this does not mean that Séverac did not listen to the Catalan cobla and the sardana, since the Catalan coblas were also heard from time to time on the other side of the Pyrenees. Furthermore, Séverac traveled to Catalonia on various occasions, as demonstrated by his own correspondence[ix] or the writings from other testimonies, and the work that concerns me: Cerdaña. To his esteem for the Catalan region, we must add his friendships with the numerous Catalan artists with whom he coincided during his Parisian period. 

 

Thus, it seems that in September 1908 Séverac traveled to Cerdanya, according to Pierre Guillot date in a letter to M. Cipa Godebski[x]. The first number of Cerdaña, “Les Fêtes”, dates from 1908. In 1909 he could also have traveled with famous Catalan pianist Ricard Viñes to Cerdanya, as testified by the writing dedicated to his friend and published in January 1910 in the Courrier Musical [xi]. The truth is that according to Jean-Bernard Cahours d'Aspry “Séverac went often to Puigcerdà where he frequented the poet, art critic, designer and journalist, José Maria Junoy"[xii].

 

We also know the impression made on him while listening to the Cobla Pep de Figueres in Céret, his new place of residence: “Déodat's eyes were full of tears and he was trembling with emotion”[xiii]. Fortunately, this impression materialized in his work, together with the various motivations as a convinced regionalist that had led him to leave Paris and return to his region of the Midi[xiv]. From then on, these sounds would form part of his work, both with the incorporation of the Catalan instruments that were heard in the city squares as in Héliogabale (1910), as well as with its imitation with other instruments as in Cerdaña or the appropriation of the characteristics of that music as also in Cerdaña, Minyoneta (Souvenir de Figueras) for violin and piano (1919) or Sous les lauriers roses (Soir de carnaval sur la côte catalane) for piano (1919). 

 

[i] We can hear samples of its sound in the CD Albert Manyach et les Cortie-Mattes contained in the book by Albert Manyach Étude sur la musique et les instruments Catalans. Suivie de l’étude biographique par Oriol Lluís Gual (2020).

[ii] Cecília García Marco deals with the presence of musical instruments in this artistic period of Picasso and Braque, but on numerous occasions she insists on relating them to the sardana (García Marco 2011, 200, 245, 246 i 391). In Lewis Kachur's 1993 article "Popular Music and Collage Cubism (1911-12)", he also insists on providing as an example a postcard showing the six-member cobla Roussillonnaise, but describes it as cobla Catalana (Kachur 1993, 252). Only Pierre Camo in 1949 rightly refers to the difference among the two coblas: “Those of Catalonia are more scholarly and of a more orchestral character, led by excellent conductors who are nearly all composers, and moreover than their French neighbors, a copper instrument of heartbreaking sonority, the fiscorn, as well as accompaniment by the Ampourdanese Sardana with a high fife and a tambourine” (“Celles de Catalogne sont plus savants et d’un caractère plus orchestral, conduites par d’excellents chefs presque toujours compositeurs eux-mêmes, et comportant, de plus que leurs voisines françaises, un instrument de cuivre aux sonorités déchirantes, le viscorne, ainsi que l’accompagnement pour la sardane ampourdanaise d’un fifre aigu et d’un tambourin”), Camo 1949, 550. 

[iii] We can hear samples of historical recordings of a Catalan cobla ensemble in Sardanes a Villassar de Mar: gravacions històriques. Amics de la Sardana de Vilassar de Mar, [CD] Audiovisuals de Sarrià, 2003.

[iv] This was noted by Manyach in his article “Cobles espagnoles et cobles roussillonnaises”: “In these ensembles”, referring to the Catalan one, “Catalan instruments are in the minority. The general tone, especially when all the brass instruments are involved, is not the same as that of our coblas. […] At times, the voices of the primas and tenores are as if annihilated, and it is then when the copper element dominates […]. However, we believe that the originality of our coblas is more characteristic” (“Dans ces ensembles les instruments catalans sont une minorité. La teinte générale, surtout lorsque ous les cuivres interviennent, n’est pas la même que celle de nos cobles. […] Par moment, la voix des primes et tenors est comme anéantie, et c’est alors l’élément cuivre qui domine […]. Cependant, nous croyons que l’originalité de nos cobles est plus caractéristique”), Manyach 2020, 89. The Roussillonnaise cobla, doesn’t have the flabiol, the tambourine or the flugelhorn, which changes the general sound, being less punchy and the bass notes poorer.

[v] For more information see: Mainar, Josep i Vilalta, Jaume. 1981. Iconografia de la sardana en l’obra de Picasso. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya. 

[vi] See: Buser Picard, Catherine. 2007. Déodat de Séverac ou Le Chantre du Midi. Geneva: Papillon; Fàbregas i Marcet, Jaume. 2002. «The influence of spanish music in Cerdaña by Déodat de Séverac». Doctoral Thesis. College of Creative Arts, West Virginia University; Guillot, Pierre. 2010. Déodat de Séverac: musicien français. Paris: L’Harmattan; Waters, Robert Francis. 2002. «Regionalism and Catalan Folk Elements in the Compositions of Déodat de Séverac, 1910-1919». Doctoral Thesis. Faculty of the Graduate School, University of Maryland; Waters, Robert Francis. 2016. Déodat de Séverac: Musical Identity in Fin de Siècle France. New York: Routledge. 

[vii] “¿Pourriez-vous me faire conaître l’historique des instruments catalans (triples, tenores et fluviol et fiscorn)? Savez-vous pourquoi ces instruments n’existent (on n’existent plus en ce moment) que dans les pays de langue catalane?” (Séverac s.d. CAT CEDOC 3.2 2327).

[viii] “Je suis certain que elle aidorait beaucoup a faire connaître en France la musique populaire catalane généralement ignorée” (Séverac 1912).

[ix] For example: "Come to Cerdagne, come to the valley of the Vallespir, as the poet Jean Amade has sung so well, you will hear the most moving, the most tender and the most expressive melodies in the world! You will see the singers of 'Goigs' wandering through the countryside in silence and suddenly stopping in front of a farmhouse to repeat in chorus what their ancestors thought. A minstrel, playing a small boxwood chalumeau, is enough to accompany this double vocal quartet that answers each other, without looking at each other, as if explaining ancient legends full of mystery and poetry" (“Venez en Cerdagne, venez dans la vallée du Vallespir, qu’a si bien chantée le poète Jean Amade, vous entendrez les mélodies les plus émouvantes, les plus tendres et les plus expressives du monde! Vous verrez les chanteurs de “Goigs” parcourant la campagne en silence et s’arrêtant soudain devant une ferme pour reire en choeur les mêmes choses que pensaient leurs aïeux. Un ménétrier, jouant d’un petit chalumeau de buis, suffit à accompagner ce double quatour vocal qui se répond de lin, sans se regarder, comme s’il racontait d’antiques légendes remplies de mystère et de poésie”), Séverac 1911, 211, cited in Pierre Guillot 1993, 94. Also: “Puigcerda is a delightful place that the baron present here knows very well and as this village is not far from his home, it will not be too much to ask the divine Albéniz family to go there this summer...” (“Puigcerda est un endroit délicieux que le baron ici présent connaît trés bien et comme cette ville n’est pas éloignée de chez lui, il ne saurait trop engagér la divine famille Albeniz a y aller cet été…”), Séverac s.d. Biblioteca de Catalunya.

[x] “I have just returned from a lovely trip to Cerdanya. Why didn't you go there? 'How wonderful!' ” (“J’arrive d’une charmante excursion en Cerdagne. Que n'y étais-tu! “Quelle marveille!”), Letter from Séverac to Pierre Guillot 2002, 302.

[xi] “You have not forgotten, dear friend, those delightful days of our last vacation, those beautiful summer days, when we were touring together the austere slopes of Languedoc or the high plateaus of peaceful Cerdanya?” (“Vous n'avez pas oublié, n'est ce pas, cher ami, ces charmantes journées de nos dernières vacances, ces bells journées d'été, quand nous parcourions ensemble les coteaux austères du Languedoc ou les hauts plateaux de la douce Cerdagne?”), Séverac 1910, 29-31, cited in Pierre Guillot 1993, 88.

[xii] “During the summer of 1909, it had been decided between Séverac, Manolo, Totote, Havilland and Gastilleur, to go on a walking trip to Andorra. But it was not until mid-September that Séverac was able to join Manolo and Franck who were waiting for him in Bourg-Madame, at Pierre Salvat's lodging” (“Pendant l’été 1909, il avait été décidé entre Séverac, Manolo, Totote, Havilland et Gastilleur, d’aller faire une excursion pédestre en Andorre. Mais ce n’est qu’à la mi-septembre que Séverac put rejoindre Manolo et Franck qui attendaient à Bourg-Madame, dans l’auberge de chez Pierre Salvat”) and “Séverac went often to Puigcerdá where he frequented the poet, art critic, designer and journalist, José Maria Junoy” (“Séverac se rendait souvent à Puigcerdà où il fréquentait le poète, critique d’art, dessinateur et journaliste, José Maria Junoy”), Cahours D’aspry 2011, 78.

[xiii] “Les yeux de Déodat étaient remplis de larmes et il était tremblant d'émotion”, Gustave Violet, “L’homme et l’Artiste (Souvenirs d’Amis)”, in Déodat de Séverac, ed. Blanche Selva, Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1930, 23. 

[xiv] Séverac was born in Saint-Félix-Lauragais (Haute-Garonne) on July 20, 1872.