# Brossa



## RamonC (Jun 7, 2018)

This is my latest piece of music that I have written.

It is intended to be heard at the presentation of a book about *Joan Brossa*.


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https://soundcloud.com/ramon-capsada-blanch%2Fbrossa

On the SoundCloud page is the explanation that helps to appreciate some details of the work. To facilitate your reading, I copy this text below:

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Explanations about the work:

1. It was written to be heard at the presentation of the book "El paraigua de Joan Brossa" edited by "Papers de Versàlia" a group formed by poets from Sabadell (Barcelona). It is a book of poems made by about a hundred poets who write in Catalan and Spanish, as a tribute to Catalan poet Joan Brossa on the centenary of his birth on 2019.

2. It consists of two parts, designed to be heard separately. Between each part the reading of several poems is planned.

3. These two parts are musically symmetrical. The music of the second part has been written strictly following a horizontal symmetry of the different musical elements of the first part, retrograde them. This arrangement wants to emphasize the importance that geometry and symmetry have in the visual poems that Brossa wrote.

4. Some key concepts regarding the Brossa figure are: avant-garde, transgression, heterodoxy, multiple facets of art, sharpness, magic, play, criticism of power, honesty. He carried out various "musical actions", with the collaboration of the composer Josep M. Mestres Quadreny who composed the music and also of Carlos Santos who played the piano. All this has formed the background on which I have wanted to base my inspiration.

5. This is why the general approach of my musical piece has been to obtain a mixture, a heterogeneous blend of diverse ingredients, through the use of different musical genres; the work has a part of tonal music and another of music of a more atonal and serial nature. A mixture that wants to refer to this capacity for interrelation and the use of different facets of art by Brossa and also wants to refer to the romantic music that Brossa liked but also to the more transgressive and experimental aspect (very evident in his musical actions, previously mentioned), which would be represented by the most atonal part of the music.

6. Since the proposal was not to perform live music, but through the computer and since the computer makes all the instruments you want available to you, I wanted to make a symphonic instrumental approach. I have used: piccolo, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, timpani, xylophone, drum kit, and tambourine. The piano has outstanding appearances because it was the dominant instrument in Brossa's musical actions, played by Carlos Santos, as I mentioned before.

7. To reinforce the poetic character, I have also incorporated a short passage with the feminine human voice spoken, not sung (speech is genuinely poetic). It is as if she were the voice of Christa Leem, who was an actress and vedette, considered an icon of freedom in the 70s in Barcelona and muse of great artists, including Joan Brossa who created several shows for her. This passage is a short poem located at the beginning of the first part and at the end of the second, due to the symmetrical nature of the two parts. To preserve this symmetry, the poem is made up of verses that are palindromes, that is, with the same meaning whether reading backward or forward. In this way the spoken message has meaning when it is pronounced in the two directional senses of the two symmetrical musical parts (only the order of the verses changes).

8. I have also wanted to incorporate a small detail of "Musique concrète" (Mestres Quadreny collaborated with John Cage; Carlos Santos said that Joan Brossa was the catalan "John Cage"). It is a short passage that is located just when the first part ends (and at the beginning of the second). It is a sound that is perhaps a little difficult to identify, so I wish to explain that it is the noise that a seesaw makes when swinging. The seesaw is an object that appears frequently in the world of Brossa and in his poetry. When reading the poems in the middle of the two parts of the musical piece, this reading will be sandwiched between the two sounds of the seesaw. This fact can make us pretend that the poet's presence exists while the reading of the different poems inspired by his work lasts.


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## neofite (Feb 19, 2017)

Lively and colorful. I enjoyed it. 

It may be just me, but do I hear just a faint hint here and there in it to the style of a well-known work by Stravinsky?


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## RamonC (Jun 7, 2018)

Thanks for listening to the piece and for your kind comment.

It may be that some passages recalled Stravinsky's music (which would be quite a compliment to me), for example the use of chord-based harmony with more than four diatonic notes. But there is no intention to make a specific reference to any particular work (at least quotiently).


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

I really liked it Ramon. It kept me guessing and was all the more interesting for it. The contemporary edge and harmony was excellent too as was the counterpoint. A good listen.


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## RamonC (Jun 7, 2018)

Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to my piece. I also appreciate your kind comments.

One of my intentions was to achieve a heterogeneous mix of styles, as a resonance of the poet Brossa's way of doing. For this reason, it has parts in the "contemporary style" and parts in the "style of Romanticism", among others. I've also tried to give it a good color and a good sense of rhythm.


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