Dissolving Music In Mind Chapter 2

When it comes to life choices, there is often only one path to take.

For me, the story of Jesus' birth has a special meaning.

One of the first pieces I wrote was a collaboration with my father, and it was for the play The Adoration of the Shepherds, which I wrote when I was six or seven. It was a historical play at the Catholic Center in Bendrell, and I played the role of the devil, who was plotting all sorts of schemes...like a devil, of course...to stop the shepherds and the Magi from going to Bethlehem.

More than seventy years later, after the civil war, I left Spain and went into exile. During my exile, I developed a habit: at the end of concerts or festivals, I would play an old Catalan folk song. It was actually a Christmas song called "La Canto de los Niños". The melody later became well-known - it was seen as a song of homesickness for Spanish refugees. Today I have a cottage in the small village of Moly-les-Bains in the French Pyrenees, close to the pleasant thermal baths of the Grand Hotel des Termes. 

In recent years, I have stayed there during the Prades Festival[1]. The owner of the hotel has a fifteen-pipe chime in a tower there. I recorded "La Canto de los Niños" with the chime, and every hour you can hear the low melody echoing in the mountains. On the longest pipe is a message that says that I have expressed the sadness and homesickness of the Catalan people through this song, and that "this is a song of peace and hope for the people of tomorrow."

Ten years ago, when the so-called "Cold War" was intensifying and fears of global nuclear war loomed, I launched a personal crusade for peace with my only weapon: my music. I once again drew on the story of the birth of Jesus and wrote an oratorio called "The Manger". It was based on a poem about the birth of Jesus, written by my good friend, the Catalan writer Alavedra. I began to perform this oratorio in many capitals. Through this music, I wanted to draw the attention of the world to the suffering of mankind, to the dangers of nuclear war, and to the happiness that could be achieved if mankind could work together peacefully and as brothers. Therefore, in this nuclear age, the ancient story of the birth of Jesus has a special significance for me.

What a beautiful and tender story this is, with its reverence for life and for man, who is the noblest manifestation of life! Think of its symbolic meaning: the symbol of mother and child - the symbol of birth and creation; the symbol of shepherds - the ordinary working people, who reverence the newborn baby and the joyful world he promises; the symbol of the "Prince of Peace" - born not in a palace, but in a stable. How simple, yet so profound!

And how much nature is brought into this story! In the Catalan folk song, “The Song of the White Bird,” the eagle and the sparrow, the nightingale and the little wren sing a hymn of welcome to the baby, singing him into a flower that will bring joy to the world with its sweet fragrance. The thrush and the linnet sing of the coming of spring, the unfurling and greening of leaves.

In "The Manger," the fisherman sings:

In the flowing river

I saw the water flow

In the flickering light

My fish is waiting for me

Its tail is dancing

Flashing

Pure and bright

Like silver and gold

Yet in the story of Jesus' birth there is a recognition of human suffering - a foreshadowing of the fate that the Son of God would one day endure. This is expressed in the song sung by a woman as she weaves a shroud for the time to come, filled with pain and suffering...

Finally, the angels and shepherds sang: "Glory to God! Peace has come to the world! War will disappear forever. All mankind will share peace!"

I have said before that I wrote my first piece about the birth of Jesus when I was seven, but of course I knew the story long before that. One of my earliest and most indelible memories is of a Christmas mass in the church in Bendrell. I was five years old and had started singing in the choir a few months earlier. There was no midnight mass in Bendrell, so I would sing at the "cock-crow mass" held at five o'clock on Christmas morning. I had hardly slept the night before, and it was still dark when my father came to my room and told me that I should get ready to go to mass. We went out of the house, and it was dark and cold outside. 

Although I was wearing a lot of clothes, the cold still seeped through my clothes, and I was shivering as I walked, although I was not shivering only because of the cold. Everything was so mysterious, and I felt that something wonderful was about to happen. The sky was still full of stars, and we walked quietly, holding my father's hand, feeling that he was my protector and guide. The village was silent, and there were shadows swaying on the dark narrow road, hazy, like ghosts, and also silent, moving towards the church in the starry night. Then, a light suddenly appeared, streaming out of the open door of the church. We walked towards the light, quietly, and walked into the church with the others. My father played the organ, and I sang, my heart sang, and I poured out everything in my heart...

From infancy, I was surrounded by music. Music was like an ocean to me, and I swam in it like a little fish. It was in me, it was all around me, and from the time I could walk, it was the air I breathed. Listening to my father play the piano enchanted me. When I was two or three years old, I would sit on the floor next to him while he played, with my head pressed against the piano to absorb the sound more completely. I could sing in the right pitch even before I could speak clearly, and the notes were as familiar to me as words. 

My father would have my brother Artur and me stand behind the piano, too short to look over the top, and he would stand in front of it, with his back to the piano, and stretch his hands behind him, fingers spread, and play chords on the keys at random. "What notes did I just play?" he would ask, and we would name each note of the dissonant chord he had just played. Then he would play it again, and again. Artur was two years younger than me, and he died of meningitis at the age of five. He is a lovely little boy, and he has a keener ear for music than I do.
 
I started playing the piano when I was four years old. I must say that I am glad that I started out by learning to play the piano. For me, the piano is the best instrument of all, and it is true, even though I love the cello. On a piano, you can play anything. For example, a violinist has a lot of repertoire to choose from, and many violinists don't have the time or the desire to take the time to learn music that composers wrote for other instruments or for a whole orchestra. 

Therefore, in this sense, many violinists are not complete musicians. The piano is different, this instrument contains everything. That is why everyone who intends to devote himself to music should know how to play the piano, regardless of whether he prefers another instrument. I can say that I later played the piano very well, although I am afraid not now, because I lack the skills. However, I still play the piano every morning.

My father taught me to play the piano, and he also gave me my first composition lessons and taught me to sing. When I was five, I became the second soprano in the church choir. That was a big event in my life: to be part of the choir, to sing while my father played the organ! I was paid ten cents for singing in church services, and that was my first job as a musician. It was a serious responsibility for me, and I felt responsible not only for my own singing, but also for the singing of the other boys. I was the youngest in the choir, but I would say, "Watch out! Pay attention to that note," as if I had already wanted to be a conductor.

Some mornings I woke to the sound of folk songs as the villagers...fishermen and workers in the vineyards...sang as they prepared to go to work; some evenings there were dances in the square. If there was a festival, someone would play the gralla, a reed instrument, perhaps of Moorish origin, that looked like an oboe and had a very shrill sound. 

Every day I would listen to my father playing the piano or the organ, songs he had written, church music, and compositions by the great masters. He took me to all the church services, and the Gregorian chants, the choruses, and the solo organ before and after the services became part of my daily life. And the beautiful sounds of nature were always there, the sound of the sea, the wind blowing through the trees, the sweet song of the birds, and the infinite variety of the human voice, not only in song but in conversation as well. What a rich music! It supported me and nourished me.

I was curious about all musical instruments and wanted to play them all. At seven I played the violin, and at eight I gave a solo at a concert in Bendler. I especially wanted to play the organ. But my father said I couldn't touch the instrument until my feet could reach the pedals. How I waited for that day to come! I had never been tall, so that day seemed to come slower for me than for other children. In fact, the wait seemed endless. 

I tried again and again, sitting alone on the organ bench in the church and stretching my feet, but, alas, that didn't help me grow any faster. The exciting moment finally came when I was nine years old. I hurried to my father and said to him, "Father, I can reach the pedals!" He said, "Let me see." I stretched out my feet and they touched the pedals, just barely, but they did. My father said, "Okay, now you can play the organ." It was a wonderful old instrument, made at the same time as the one Bach used in Leipzig. The organ is still in the church in Bendrell today.

Soon I was good enough at the organ to occasionally fill in for my father when he was ill or busy with other work. One day, after I had finished playing and was leaving the church, a friend of my father's who was a shoemaker came up to me and said, "Your father played so beautifully today!" In those days, shoemakers in our village sat on stools and worked in the street. This man had been sitting outside the church, listening as he worked. 

I told the shoemaker that my father was not feeling well and that it was me who had been playing. At first he did not believe it, but I assured him that it was true. He called his wife and told her with great excitement, "It was not Carlos who played the organ. You will not believe it, but it was the young Xavier who played the organ!" The shoemaker and his wife hugged me, k!ssed me, and took me to their house, giving me biscuits and wine.

In those days, bands of travelling musicians travelled from village to village, eking out a living on the money the villagers saved for them. They played in the streets and at village dances. They often wore strange costumes and played all sorts of strange instruments, usually of their own invention. Their presence always excited me. One day three such musicians came to Vendrell. They called themselves the Three Flats. The crowd gathered in the square to hear them play, and I squeezed to the front and squatted on the gravel, completely mesmerised. 

I was fascinated by the appearance of the players, who were dressed as clowns, and I listened to every note they played. Their instruments particularly attracted me. There were mandolins, bells, guitars, and even instruments made from kitchen utensils, such as teapots, teacups, and glasses, which I thought must be the forerunners of some of the strange things played in jazz bands today. One played on a broomstick with strings on it, which looked like a cello, although I had never seen a cello or even heard one at that time. 

I can't say why, but the instrument made of a broomstick attracted me the most. Maybe I had some kind of foresight! I couldn't take my eyes off that instrument. It sounded so beautiful to me. When I got home, I told my father about it breathlessly. He laughed, but I was so eager, so he said, "Okay, Xavier, I will make you an instrument like that." He did, and I have to say, with only one string, I guess you could say it was my first cello. It's still at home in San Salvador, and I keep it in a glass case, like a real museum piece.

With this homemade invention, I learned to play many of the songs my father had written, as well as popular tunes that had come into our village from the outside world. Many years later, when I visited the ancient Holy Cross Abbey nearby, I met an elderly innkeeper who said he remembered hearing me play that strange instrument one night when I was a boy of nine in the cloisters of the abbey. I remember that night, too...I played in the moonlight, the sound echoing in the shadows, surrounded by the mottled white walls of the abbey...
 
I don't feel any special achievement in the fact that I was an artist at the age of eleven. I was born with an ability and music in my heart, that's all. I have no special merit of my own. What we do with the talent God has given us is the only merit we can claim. That's why I always urge young musicians: "Don't be vain just because you happen to have talent. That can't be attributed to you, it's not your achievement. What matters is what you do with your talent. You have to cherish this gift and don't devalue or waste your talent. Work on it, nourish it with constant effort."

Of course, the gift that should be most cherished is life itself. One's work should be a tribute to life.