Catalan cello master bowed Bach into moral law
Pau Casals, born 29 December 1876 in El Vendrell, rebuilt cello tone and treated Bach's solo suites as daily scripture. After Franco's 1939 victory he chose exile over Nationalist Spain. A 1963 Presidential Medal of Freedom capped a life ending 22 October 1973.
His father, a strict parish organist, drilled him by playing scales behind a piano pulled from the wall; by four the boy played violin, piano and flute. After seeing a travelling musician play a cello-strung broom handle, he got a homemade cello with a gourd for a body. His mother took him to Barcelona's municipal music school in 1888, and at thirteen, browsing a harbourside shop, he found a battered edition of Bach's six unaccompanied suites. He practised them daily for thirteen years before performing them publicly.
A café trio performance in 1893 caught Isaac Albéniz's ear, bringing palace concerts and a royal stipend to study in Madrid. When that money ran out in Paris he played second cello in a theatre pit. Success came fast after: Queen Victoria at Osborne House in 1899, a first American tour in 1901, the Roosevelt White House in January 1904 and a Carnegie Hall debut under Richard Strauss that March. His trio with Alfred Cortot and Jacques Thibaud played from 1906 to 1933, and his main cello, long labelled a 1733 Tononi, turned out to be a Goffriller of about 1700.
A fierce Republican, he left Spain after Barcelona fell in 1939 and vowed not to return until democracy did. Franco's press mocked him and he was fined a million pesetas. From Prades he refused to play in countries recognising Franco, relenting in 1950 for a Bach bicentenary festival whose proceeds went to a refugee hospital, and in 1961 for President Kennedy at the White House.
Settling in Puerto Rico, his mother's birthplace, he founded its symphony orchestra and conservatory. At 94 he conducted his Hymn to the United Nations and gave his I Am a Catalan speech.
Source: Pablo Casals
