Spanish--Catalan Boy Choirs: Escolania of Montserrat St. Miquel


Figure 1.--This is a view of Montserrat of St Miquel--L'Escolonia in Catalonia. The boys sing in the Catalan language.

The college of music, the Escolania on Montserrat with its boys' choir, was first mentioned in the 13th century, but it certainly existed long before that. It ranks as the most significant factor in that heritage and is the most important of the monastery's cultural institutions. The musical daring so beautifully exemplified by Gesualdo's bold chord sequences has always been a dominant feature of cultural life on Montserrat. In the archives of the Benedictine monastery on the "Serrated Mountain*', the very oldest manuscript of all is the "Llibre Vermell" which contains 2- and 3-part songs dating from the 13th and 14th centuries; these pieces reveal an open-minded attitude towards innovations which even in retrospect seems startling. The choir, which has close links with the college of music, has achieved an exceptionally high standard of singing, largely thanks to a method of training the voices, La Voz del nino cantor, developed by Padre Ireneu Segarra; it has also been widely adopted especially in Spain, Italy and France, and is used by the Vienna Boys Choir and the Regensburger Domspatzen.

Catalonia

Catalonia is a eastern Spain centered on Barcelonia. Like several areas of Spain, Catalonia has its own traditions and indeed a separate language--although much more related to Spanish than the Basque language. A reader tells HBC that it is not correct to call the Escolania of Montserrat St. Miquel a Spanish choir. He writes, "Your webpage title below is in error. This is not a Spanish choir. It is a Catalan choir. The boys do not speak or sing in Spanish. This region of Spain is not Spanish. It is Catalan. The Catalan language is older than Spanish and French. It has its own literature and its own culture. Please change the title to Catalan Boy Choir so as not to misinform those who access your website." HBC is glad to point out that the boys sing in Catalan and are a Catalan choir. However, being a Catalan choir does not therefore mean they are not a Spanish choir. Catalonia is very much part of the Spanish Kingdom.

History

The college of music, the Escolania on Montserrat with its boys' choir, was first mentioned in the 13th century, but it certainly existed long before that. It ranks as the most significant factor in that heritage and is the most important of the monastery's cultural institutions. According to accounts dating from the end of the 15th century, even in those days the twenty choir boys enjoyed such popularity that if a worshipper happened to meet an escolán he would give him alms coupled with a request to sing a hymn to the Holy Virgin. The art of singing cultivated on Montserrat had its heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries, as numerous admiring accounts confirm. The tradition, interrupted only during the Napoleonic era when the monastery was destroyed, has carried on again since the middle of the 19th century.

The Music

The musical daring so beautifully exemplified by Gesualdo's bold chord sequences has always been a dominant feature of cultural life on Montserrat. In the archives of the Benedictine monastery on the "Serrated Mountain*', the very oldest manuscript of all is the "Llibre Vermell" which contains 2- and 3-part songs dating from the 13th and 14th centuries; these pieces reveal an open-minded attitude towards innovations which even in retrospect seems startling.

This important document on early European polyphony contains amongst other things five religious dances with detailed choreographic instructions and quite unmistakably encourages the pilgrims not just to pray and sing during the vigil, but to dance as well. Five hundred years later, Antonio Solar--incidentally like Fernando Sors a former pupil of the college-- retorted to those critics who thought his work Llave de la Modulacián excessively modern that he had come across all the innovations in question on Montserrat as a boy.

It would be easy to offer any number of further illustrations of the enterprising and progressive attitudes towards music, which have always prevailed on the mighty rock near Barcelona. It should be enough to point out that all the truly great innovators have cherished their close connections with the monastery--Picasso, for instance, Mirá, and Pablo Casals, who in this context speaks of one of the most durable bonds in his whole life and makes the plea that "every musician should be familiar with the name of Montserrat, for Montserrat is a vital part of our heritage from that past without which our modern culture would be quite inconceivable".

The College

The college bears the title of the oldest conservatoire in Europe; as well as voice training and singing technique its pupils are given a thorough grounding in at least one instrument, and take courses in theory of music, sometimes including composition.

The Boys

The boys, who are carefully hand-picked, enter the Escolania at the age of ten and are automatically enrolled in the College of Music in Tarrasa. Their training, which includes elementary school work, lasts 3 years and closes with a recognised higher qualification. The most gifted musicians in Catalonia have passed through Montserrat, and throughout the whole course of the College's history the finest composers have acted as teachers

Training

The choir, which has close links with the college of music, has achieved an exceptionally high standard of singing, largely thanks to a method of training the voices, La Voz del nino cantor, developed by Padre Ireneu Segarra; it has also been widely adopted especially in Spain, Italy and France, and is used by the Vienna Boys Choir and the Regensburger Domspatzen. The essence of this method lies in blending the vowels into one another from U via O, A, E to I, in the same order as low harmonics are narrowed to high ones This produces a warm, rounded, almost tangible beauty of tone which has become so famous that it attracts dozens of pilgrims every day when, in accordance with long tradition, at 1:00 in the afternoon the choir sings the polyphonic Salve and Montserrat's popular hymn, Virolai.






Christopher Wagner





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Created: December 18, 1999
Last updated: December 4, 2001