X is for Xavier Montsalvatge

 

              I am participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, and my theme this year is classical music. Check out the list of other participants by clicking here! X is for Xavier Montsalvatge. He was a Spanish composer who lived from 1912 to 2002. Today’s featured video is “Cuba dentro de un piano” from Xavier Montsalvatge’s Cinco canciones negras. The lyrics were written by Rafael Alberti, the soloist is Ana Belén and the music is played by the group, Trío Malats.

Video link: https://youtu.be/puKqCWfu8VU

 



Xavier Montsalvatge is on the left

·   Xavier Montsalvatge had a significant amount of influence over Catalan music of the latter half of the 20^th century.
 

     ·   He composed several songs for voice and piano, operas, including El gato con botas (Puss in Boots), chamber music, and orchestral music.
 

    ·   In addition to composing music, he worked as a music critic and wrote for the newspapers, Destino and La Vanguardia.
 

  

·   He has one piece that gained him international fame, the Cinco canciones negras (Five Black Songs), which were five songs written for mezzo-soprano and orchestra. These songs used rhythms and themes from the Antillean Islands of the Caribbean.



·    Montsalvatge’s style changed throughout his career. His early works were influenced by Richard Wagner and twelve-tone technique. He was then influenced by Caribbean styles. His later works took on more abstract and eclectic styles, with influences from Impressionism and polytonality.



Barcelona, where Xavier Montsalvatge
lived most of his life
(Picture from pixabay.com) 

Sources: http://www.montsalvatge.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Montsalvatge

Yesterday’s Trivia: Besides Star Wars, what franchise film came out last year which had an original theme composed by John Williams? Answer: Jurassic World. John Williams composed the main theme for Jurassic Park, which was used in all the films in the series.

For this challenge, I’m keeping a playlist of the videos I’m using plus some extras for anyone who wants to hear more. I will update with the latest letter each day. In the video I added today, you can get a taste of Xavier Montsalvatge’s abstract techniques with harp and guitar, Fantasia para Arpa y Guitarra: III. Brasilado: Allegro Moderato.

 

 

I must admit, I had to dig a little to find this composer. I pulled up a Wikipedia list of 20^th century composers and used my browser’s find function (CTRL + F) to find the X’s on the page. I then looked for first or last names that started with X, and Voila! Xavier appeared :) Did you have to go to strange lengths to get any of your letters for the A to Z?