[1] Salvador Bacarisse (1898-1963), Fernando Remacha (1898-1984), Gustavo Pittaluga (1906-1975), Julián Bautista (1901-1961), Juan José Mantecón (1895-1964), Rodolfo Halffter (1900-1987), Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989) and Rosa García Ascot (1902-2002)

[1] Festival  Rosa García Ascot 2025. Torrelaguna

Robert Gerhard (1896 – 1970)

Robert Gerhard standing and Felip Pedrell seated circa 1918 Public Domain

He was born in Valls (Tarragona). His father was Swiss-German and his mother was French.

He became interested in music during his childhood but began to study it as a young man in Munich. When World War I broke out, he returned home and began to study piano with Enric Granados, and composition with Felip Pedrell, with whom he maintained a strong relationship throughout his life.

Later, he studied with Arnold Schönberg (1874 - 1951) in Vienna and Berlin in 1923, being the only Spanish pupil. At that time he met Leopoldina Feichtegger, who became his wife in 1930.

For Schönberg the relationship with Robert Gerhard was highly valued, he even put it in his will to say that he (Gerhard) could advise the Schömberg family about publishing the unpublished manuscripts[1].

In 1929 he returned to Barcelona and on 22^nd December he premiered at the Palau de la Música ‘Wind Quintet’, Concertino for strings’, ‘Eight Catalan Folk Songs’ (he wrote 14), the singer was Conxita Badia (1897 - 1975), soprano, he dedicated these songs to her, the pianist was Alexandre Vilalta (1905 - 1984). Other compositions that were premiered were ‘Hai-Kai’ and two sardanas[2].

Conxita Badia and the Pau Casals Orchestra premiered on 1 November 1931, also at Palau de la Música, the orchestral version of the ‘Six Catalan Popular Songs’ (the other six songs), conducted by the composer. Pau Casals conducted the first part of the concert with the overture of Carl Maria von Weber's ‘Der Freischutz’ (1786 - 1826) and Franz Shubert’s ‘Ballet Rosamunde’ (1797 - 2828)[3]

In 1932 he joined 'Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya' (a political party). He was hired to work in the Modern Music Section of the National Library of Catalonia and also as a teacher at the Escuela Normal de la Generalitat de Catalunya (Normal School of the Generalitat of Catalonia)  He developed musicological studies, as the transcription and publication of the ‘Six quintets by Antoni Soler’.

He managed for Schönberg to visit Barcelona. 

He also became one of the founders of the Associació of Compositors Independents de Catalunya (CIC)[4] (Association of Independents Composers of Catalonia), also known as the ‘Barcelona Group’.

During this decade he composed music for the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and the cantata ‘L'alta renaixença del Rei en Jaume’.  A work that came about at the suggestion of the poet Josep Carner (1884 - 1970), based on one of his creations. Some fragments of the work were premiered at the Festival of the International Music Society in Vienna in 1932. It was not premiered in Barcelona until 1984, thanks to Antoni Ros Marbà (1937), who rescued and conducted it.  On 25 April 2021, in the year dedicated to Gerhard, it was performed at the Palau de la Música.

In 1934 he wrote the music for the ballet Ariel with a script by the poet and writer Josep Vicenç Foix (1893 – 1987), with scenary by painter Joan Miró (1893 - 1983). It was commissioned by Colonel Wassili de Basil (Vasilīj Grigorjevič Voskresenskij) but was never performed during the author's lifetime. However, in 1935 he won for this work the Isaac Albeniz award. Finally, the work was premiered in Valls (Tarragona) in 2011 to commemorate the Issac Albeniz award it had won in 1935.

He received another commission from Colonel de Basil which was not performed at that time because of the Spanish Civil War. It was a ballet inspired by the festivities that Basil had seen in Berga (Barcelona). The choreography was to be by Leonid Massine (1896 – 1979) and the costumes and scenography by Joan Junyer, painter (1904 – 1994), the plot was by Ventura Gassol (1893 - 1980), a writer and politician.   The work was finally premiered in 2021 in a co-production of the Teatre del Liceu de Barcelona and the Fundación Juan March, the title ‘La nit de Sant Joan’, choreographed by Antonio Ruiz.

Gerhard was the driving force behind the creation of the Catalan Section of the International Society of Contemporary Music (SIM) and managed to get the SIM festival held in Barcelona in 1936. Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976) and Ernst Kréneck (1900 - 1991) took part in the festival, and Alban Berg's 'Dem Andenken eines Engels' (In memory of the Angel) (1885 - 1935), which had recently died, was performed for the first time.

In 1938, in the middle of the Civil War, he premiered ‘Albada’, ‘Interludi i dansa’ in Barcelona with the Orquesta Nacional de Conciertos.

In 1939 he went into exile, first to France and then to Cambridge, where he settled until the end of his life.

To survive he wrote soundtracks, incidental music and arrangements of zarzuelas and Spanish popular music. He uses a pseudonym.

He returned to Catalonia in 1948 for a holiday on the Costa Brava due to an invitation of his friend and former pupil, the composer Joaquim Homs (1906 – 2003). These holiday visits were repeated over the years.   

He also continued to write his own music, such as the opera ‘La Dueña’ and the ‘Cancionero de Pedrell’[5], among others. In 1956 The Score magazine dedicated an article to him and from that moment onwards a new stage began with recognition and financial security.

In 1959 he was hired as musical director of the BBC. In 1967 he was made a Commander of the British Empire and received an Honorary Doctorate from Cambridge University.

He always felt close to Catalan culture and expressed this in a letter sent to Joan Ventura.

Robert Gerhard Phot: Enricalbiol CC4.0

The last composition performed at the concert held on the 21st in El Vendrell was the study for the film ‘Secret People’, with themes that are an absolute reference to Catalan popular folklore such as ‘El cant dels ocells’ or ‘La Mare de Déu quan era xiqueta’.