Josep Maria Ventura i Casas (

Alcalá la Real Alcalá la Real is a city in the province of Jaén, Spain. According to the 2024 INE figures, the city had a population of 21,581. Geography Alcalá la Real is situated from the provincial capital, Jaén, and from Granada, on the slopes of L ...

( Jaén), 1817 –

Figueres Figueres (; ) is the capital city of Alt Empordà county, in the Girona region, Catalonia, Spain. The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Dalí Theatre and Museum, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which att ...

(

Catalonia Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situate ...

), 1875), popularly known as Pep Ventura, was a Spanish musician and composer from

who consolidated the long

sardana The ''sardana'' (; plural ''sardanes'' in Catalan) is a Catalan musical genre typical of Catalan culture and danced in circle following a set of steps. The dance was originally from the Empordà region, but started gaining popularity through ...

and reformed the

cobla The ''cobla'' (, plural ''cobles'') is a traditional music ensemble of Catalonia, and in Northern Catalonia in France. It is generally used to accompany the sardana, a traditional Catalan folk dance, danced in a circle. Structure The modern Cobl ...

, adding instruments to give it its current formation. He is considered the father of the modern

Sardana The ''sardana'' (; plural ''sardanes'' in Catalan) is a Catalan musical genre typical of Catalan culture and danced in circle following a set of steps. The dance was originally from the Empordà region, but started gaining popularity through ...

by the profound transformation that he printed to these compositions, based on giving it greater musical extension, in the inclusion of new instruments, especially the tenora (instrument creation of Andreu Turon) from 1849 and its arrangement in the cobla, which will imitate another musical formations of this type. His performance before the Queen

Isabella II of Spain Isabella II (, María Isabel Luisa de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias; 10 October 1830 – 9 April 1904) was Queen of Spain from 1833 until her deposition in 1868. She is the only queen regnant in the history of unified Spain. Isabella wa ...

in the Monastery of Montserrat together with other artists of the

Renaixença The ''Renaixença'' (; also written ''Renaixensa'' before spelling standardisation), or Catalan Renaissance, was a romantic revivalist movement in Catalan language and culture through the mid 19th century, akin to the Galician '' Rexurdimento ...

consecrated him as a figure in the Catalan cultural world.

Life

Ventura's family came from the Catalan region of

Empordà Empordà (; ) is a natural and historical region of Catalonia, Spain, divided since 1936 into two '' comarques'', Alt Empordà and Baix Empordà. The city of Figueres, an important urban and economic center of the Empordà, was designated th ...

. He was born in

Andalusia Andalusia ( , ; , ) is the southernmost autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain, located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomou ...

, where his father, a low-ranking military officer, was assigned to participate in the operations of repression of banditry that followed the War of Spanish Independence. At the age of two years, the family moved again to

, to the Gironan town of

Roses A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be e ...

in 1819, when the father was assigned to that city. The boy was soon left an orphan and went to live with his paternal grandfather. He learned the office of

tailor A tailor is a person who makes or alters clothing, particularly in men's clothing. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to the thirteenth century. History Although clothing construction goes back to prehistory, there is evidence of ...

and notions of

solfège In music, solfège (British English or American English , ) or solfeggio (; ), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a mnemonic used in teaching aural skills, Pitch (music), pitch and sight-reading of Western classical music, W ...

from his future father-in-law, Joan Llandrich, director of the cobla that bore his name. Around 1848, Ventura inherited the direction of the Llanrich cobla. Ventura considered the sardana form too limited, always 98 measures and hardly two minutes in length, emerging as an important figure in the period of innovation of the sardana with an unlimited number of measures (long sardanes) in opposition to the traditional, short sardana. He altered the composition of the cobla, which he likewise considered too limited, transforming the archaic ''cobla de tres quartans'' (

bagpipes Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, N ...

shawm The shawm () is a Bore (wind instruments)#Conical bore, conical bore, double-reed woodwind instrument made in Europe from the 13th or possibly 12th century to the present day. It achieved its peak of popularity during the medieval and Renaissanc ...

flabiol The flabiol () is a Catalan woodwind musical instrument of the family known as '' fipple flutes''. It is one of the 12 instruments of the cobla. The flabiol measures about 25 centimeters in length and has five or six holes on its front face a ...

and

tambori The tambori ( ) is a percussion instrument of about 10 centimetres diameter, a small shallow cylinder formed of metal or wood with a drumhead of skin. Its usual function is to accompany the playing of the flabiol in a cobla band, beating the rhy ...

) into a formation that was initially composed of five or seven musicians but which progressively incorporated

brass instruments A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. The term ''labrosone'', from Latin elements meaning "lip" and "sound", ...

. He organized the

woodwind Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and Ree ...

and brass instruments into two rows, headed by a

double bass The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...

. Other ''cobles'' adopted this model, which has endured with only small changes. Ventura died in 1875 in Figueres, leaving his mark on Catalan musical culture. His melodies, arranged by masters like ,

Nicolau Nicolau is a Portuguese and Catalan given name, a variant of Nicholas. Nicolau may refer to: *Nicolau Coelho, Portuguese explorer * Nicolau dos Reis Lobato (1946–1978), East-Timorese politician * Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida (1740–1811), P ...

, and , have made Pep Ventura immortal. He left 312 long sardanes, many of them untitled, and many short sardanes and choral compositions. His opus of 550 pieces is conserved, in Ventura's originally handwriting, in the archives of the Orfeó Català. There is a small street named after him in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

, as well as a subway stop, presumably because of this achievement.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ventura i Casas, Josep Maria 1817 births 1875 deaths People from Alcalá la Real People from Alt Empordà Composers from Catalonia 19th-century composers Sardana