Pau casals biography
•
By Erica Garcia
Pablos Casals, Catalan birth name Pau Casals i Defilló, was born on December 29th in Tarragona, Spain. His father was a native of Spain and the organist in a local parish. Casals grew up in a musical household. By age four, he could play the violin, piano, and flute. Casals did not begin his cello studies until he was 11 years old.
Rediscovery: Bach’s Cello Suites
In , Pablo Casals came across a tattered copy of the Bach Cello Suites in a second-hand music store in Barcelona. He would not perform these works in public until During this year period, it is believed that Casals practiced the suites daily. Before Casals, the Bach Cello Suites faded into obscurity, nearly lost to time. While Casals was studying these works, he had no reference to cite. These suites were not commonly played, and there were little to no phrase markings. Pablo Casals had to discover the music within these suites, and, unbeknownst to him at the time, create a model for all future celli
•
On vacation touring Alaska, in constant awe of the seemingly boundless display of spectacular natural beauty, it seemed appropriate to reflect on the life and art of Pablo Casals. Not only was Casals the greatest cellist of all time but, like the vast, unsullied Alaskan scenery, he was a pure force of natur &#; towering and uncompromising.
Casals' significance transcended his musicianship, phenomenal though it was. In the words of Thomas Mann's eloquent tribute, his "proud, utterly incorruptible integrity purifies and elevates our conception of the artist" and was "the symbol of the indissoluble union of art and morality." Yehudi Menuhin agreed: his "simplicity, grandeur and integrity restore our faith in human nature." Or, as Casals put it more humbly: "A musician is also a man, and more important than his music is his attitude to life."
Casals' art is intimately bound to his life; it's pointless to consider one without the other. His outlook was molded in his native Catalo
•
Pablo Casals: a total musician
Pablo Casals was an unconventional conductor. Nevertheless, he was a great conductor. Previously recognised as a brilliant cellist, he was a self-taught conductor with a genuine and original way of communicating with musicians. The musical advisor to the Pau Casals Foundation, Bernard Meiller, describes this unique facet of the maestro.
Pablo Casals was an innovator in cello playing technique and a virtuoso who made his mark on the history of this instrument. However, his role as a performer was associated from the outset with that of composer and orchestra conductor. Casals was therefore a total musician.
His vocation as a conductor appeared to him at a very young age inseparably with his discovery of musical performance and composition. The musician was already aware that he had a vocation as a conductor when he was only five years old! He had just joined the parish choir of El Vendrell, run by his father, and since then he wanted to teach other