Josep Maria Ventura i Casas
Josep Maria Ventura i Casas ( born February 2, 1817 in Alcalá la Real, Andalusia, † in Figueres 1875) best known by his stage name Pep Ventura, was a Catalan musician and composer. He developed as a composer today Sardana and formed to the Cobla, the eleven -member, Catalan Sardana orchestra with his twelve instruments.
Life
Josep Maria Ventura was coincidentally born in 1817 in the Andalusian Alcalá la Real, where his father, a military officer, was reassigned back. With two years, the family returned to Roses in Catalonia. As Pep Ventura was six years old, his mother died. From now on, he lived with his grandfather. Almost in poverty he grew more on the road than at school. Here he learned to play on homemade pipe - flutes. At 15, he learned the tailor's trade. He worked at a tailor who was head of the local Cobla. Here he learned to play various instruments and also lent itself to music theory knowledge. It is believed today that he already played from the age of 18 with the Cobla of Figueres. Around 1848, he was then probably even the conductor of this ensemble. He was in the Innovation Centre of the "old " Sardana.
Work
Pep Ventura tried the culture of the "old" Cobla with four instruments ( xeremia, Cornamusa, flabiol, tamborí ) and five to seven players develop, by integrating new brass instruments in the ensemble. The fact that he himself had already composed sardanas, made it easier for him enormously, to convert the Cobla in a new scheme. He ordered with the instrument maker Andreu Turon i Vaquer in Perpignan a kind of " Tenora " that anticipated the future in true manner. He ordered the "new" Cobla in a front row with the "old " woodwinds and a back row with the " new" brass instruments. At the beginning of both series he positioned the bass as a stringed instrument. Other Coblen imitated its novel scheme that is maintained until today for the Sardana. Music lovers were delighted with the performances of this new formation, in which solo trains strongly came to fruition. Many enthusiastic the new possibilities of the performance of folksong-like melodies.
Pep Ventura was a very intuitive musician; he valued not necessarily the fashion melodies of Italian opera from this period. But as a pioneer of the folk music he wrote sardanas on old folk songs like El cant dels ocells. He also wrote a completely new pieces such as "Per tu ploro " ("I weep for you" ). The latter was first performed in 1872 in Barcelona with a reinforced Cobla of twenty musicians. Pep Ventura wrote works in various forms:
- 312 Sardana llargas ( long sardanas )
- Many sardanas curtes
- Many choral compositions
Overall, he has more than 550 pieces composed in which he has probably processed about 2000 musical themes. The handwritten originals are in the archives of the Orfeó Català. Pep Ventura died in 1875 in Figueres. But his melodies have made him immortal for the Catalans.