Well, it seems a shame not to share the Blancafort article with
everyone else now so here it is!  The text is an adaptation and
translation of a pre-existing potted biography of Blancafort and
for player-piano interest purposes I left off at the end of the
mechanical music era.  Do go and track down some of his music and
broaden your musical horizons!

Incidentally, as a recent topic was laughing at on-line translations
-- I cannot speak one word of Spanish or Catalan and the article
translation and adaptation was done with on-line software, heavy
re-writing, a little intuition, a knowledge of Latin and French and
the odd question or two to my barber who is from Barcelona and speaks
basic English.  Translating that German article and web site should
not be too hard...

  MANUEL BLANCAFORT

This is the unexpected tale of how a young Spanish boy working in the
family piano roll factory came to become one of the leading Catalonian
composers of the 20th century.  The roll company was "Victoria" and
the young boy was Manuel Blancafort.  This then is my PPG-adapted
translation of a short biography of Blancafort which will be of some
interest to readers.  I have taken the liberty of including additional
detail not given in the original about many of the places and names.
To a Spanish / Catalan readership these names are well known but to an
English readership most will be entirely unfamiliar.

The names and places are all worth looking up on the internet if you
have a spare evening for you will find a most worthy parallel musical
and literary tradition lurks there ; invisible to the average
non-Spanish reader.  The musical history of Europe contains many
interesting corners like this.  These generally remain hidden to
English-speakers due, I suspect, to an unwillingness on our part to
conduct research in any language apart from English.

Manuel Blancafort i de Rosselló was born the 12 of August of 1897 in
La Garriga (a suburb peripheral to Barcelona).  He was the fourth of
ten children of the marriage of Joan Baptist Blancafort and Carme de
Roselló.  His father was a very capable musician and a specialist in
choral music who had founded a small choir ("La Espiga") in La Garriga
which he directed himself.  His father had an inexhaustible curiosity
for the modern scientific advances of the age such as photography and
astronomy and also studied pharmacy until his fortieth year.  It was
this fervor for music and unbridled inquisitiveness that his son was
to inherit.

By 1900 Joan Baptist Blancafort, father of the composer, had inherited
the "Balnerio Blancafort" (Blancafort Spa) in La Garriga.  This was
a very prestigious thermal water spa-resort at the turn of the 20th
century which welcomed clientele from the highest social strata of
Catalan society in those years : names such as Santiago Rusiñol [Spanish
Catalan post-impressionist/Decadent painter, author, and playwright],
Josep Carner [famous Catalan poet], Francesc Cambó [conservative
Catalan politician, founder and leader of the autonomist party Lliga
Regionalista], Jacint Verdaguer [famous Catalan poet whose picture
appears on 1971-issue 500 peseta banknotes], Josep Maria de Segarra
[author] and Eugeni d'Ors [Catalan / Castillian writer].  It was in
this atmosphere surrounded by intellectual greats that Manuel
Blancafort spent his childhood

Around 1905 Blancafort and his brothers sang together as a family
choir under their father's stern musical direction.  It was in this
manner that the young composer received his very first musical
instruction.  In 1905 Joan Baptist Blancafort founded the "Victoria"
piano roll manufacturing company : the first in Spain.  It was via
arranging notation onto piano rolls that Manuel first began to acquire
a deeper understanding of music.  The musical director of the company,
Joan Alius, gave him his first proper formal musical tuition which was
later supplemented by lessons in harmony from Joan Lamote de Grignon
[once a conductor and composer of some international renown]

1912 : The daily work routine of arranging music rolls in a piano
roll factory was perhaps an atypical route for laying the musical
foundations of any future composer.  However, during the fifteen years
that Manuel Blancafort worked at the Victoria factory this work routine
allowed him to discover in detail an extensive body of repertoire.
The laying out of metronomic arrangements enabled him to gain intimate
knowledge of the construction of music at a most fundamental level.

On a social level, as industry proprietors, the Blancafort family had
the further benefit of being at liberty to mix among the higher circles
of the Catalan bourgeoisie.

During the company's golden years of 1919-1930 the roll catalogue was
remarkably extensive and rolls were exported to numerous countries
through Europe, America and the Australia.  Martí Sunyol, in "Historia
de La Garriga" explains the process of piano roll manufacture.

[The Martí Sunyol book "Historia de La Garriga" referred to might make
an interesting project to track down.  It's not in English but may well
contain further interesting information about Victoria.  Fancy going on
the hunt?]

1914 : Paradoxically, Blancafort senior did not want his son to take
a more in-depth interest in music as, amongst other things, he feared
that this would separate him from the work in the factory.  Young
Blancafort however became good friends with the composer Federico
[Frederic] Mompou who spent long seasons at the family spa and it
was this friendship that helped young Blancafort decide to pursue his
aspirations of a musical career.  Mompou acted as an older brother and
advised to him to maintain his vocation.  The maestro showed young
Blancafort the musical innovations that were emerging from Paris
at that time and set Blancafort in contact with his own Parisian
publisher, Sénart, who would latterly publish Blancafort's first works.

The mutual support of both young composers was all-encompassing : they
even shared a type of small sanctuary room inside the spa (known there
as "the Hermitage"), where they freely exchanged ideas that ultimately
blossomed in musical compositions.  Their first musical compositions
both shared characteristics of a tendency toward the melancholy,
memories of infancy and a love of nature.  The friendship also
generated a rich correspondence and even a co-written work : "L'Hora
Grisa" with music by Mompou and text by Blancafort.

1915 - 1920 : Manuel Blancafort's first works were very close in
style to the early works of his friend Mompou.  They are miniatures of
a very fresh intimate and simple style.  They embrace the modern French
influences of the period with all the characteristics that it tolerated
(harmonic refinement, concision and formal clarity).  [Mompou's
compositional style is likewise one characterized by a minimalistic
musical style condensed into delicate short miniaturistic works.  His
main influences were likewise the French impressionistic school of
composition and composers such as Satie]

They are short conceptual works that strive for the maximum expression
via a minimum of notation and include "Record" (1915), "Cançons de
muntanya" & "Jocs i dances al camp" (1915-18), " Notas de antaño "
(1915-20) and the first set of "Cants íntims" (1918-20).

1920 : Manuel Blancafort married Helena París, whom he had known for
six years, in 1920.  She was a first-rate violinist who had studied
with Eduard Toldrà [another important Catalonian 20th century composer]
and left behind her a promising musical career in Brussels in order to
get married.  They were to be together for the next 63 years.  After
they were married Manuel continued working at the music roll company
although the rise of the gramophone was beginning to impact on roll
manufacturing generally.

The work at the roll factory enabled Manuel to make numerous
business-related trips and in July 1923 he went on a month-long trip
first to Paris and then to New York on the steamship "Mauretania".
The principal objective of the trip was business dealings with other
roll manufacturing companies.  However, Blancafort used the opportunity
to establish contact with the musical torch-bearers of the age.  The
luxurious atmosphere aboard the liner coupled with the solitude
mid-ocean gave him melodic ideas that latterly were coalesced into his
"American Souvenir" piano suite.

1924 : Blancafort gained international recognition with the premiere by
legendary pianist Ricard Viñes of his piano suite "Parc d'Atraccions",
a success repeated across the musical salons of Europe.  [Viñes was
world-renowned at one time as the pianist who had premiered Ravel's
Menuet antique (1898), Jeux d'eau (1902), Pavane pour une infante
défunte (1902), Miroirs (1906), Gaspard de la nuit (1909) and works by
Erik Satie, Manuel de Falla, Déodat de Séverac and Isaac Albéniz.  He
was a pupil of Charles-Wilfred de Bériot, Benjamin Godard and Albert
Lavignac] In this work of six pieces Blancafort wanted to give more
projection to his compositions, introduce the concept of musical irony
and simultaneously leave behind brevity and the intimate atmosphere of
works such as "Cants íntims" & "Notas de antaño".

In 1929 Manuel Blancafort decided to make the leap to symphonic
writing.  He aimed to create a new symphonic style, specifically
Catalan, whilst noting (in a letter to Mompou) that this was no
small undertaking since there was no precedent in Catalonian music
for symphonic music for him to follow.  He rejected the schools of
Wagnerism and musical-nationalism : "To get rid of Wagner is, in my
opinion, the first commandment of the new Catalan music...  A few
of us in Catalonia would rather lean towards Paris than to Berlin".
Surely, to get rid of Wagner is, my opinion also, the first commandment
of new music full stop!

For the purposes of the Player Piano Group interest this then, on the
brink of the Spanish Civil War, is probably as good enough a point to
leave off.  Like most piano roll manufacturers worldwide Victoria Music
Rolls was defunct by the 1930s and the detail of Blancafort's next 50
years I'll leave to those intrigued enough now to go and find out
themselves.

Blancafort went on creating music throughout his very long life (he
died in 1987) and left behind a large body of works among which are
fine string quartets and piano concertos.  The stunning and superb
Blancafort Spa is still very much open for business and umpteen
glorious photos of it can be seen at www.spablancafort.com.  On the
"Naxos" label are now available of a few CDs of his piano works which
make a refreshing break from the normal European pianistic schools of
composition one generally encounters.  In a way his early music is
perhaps a little cerebral (the "intimate and minimalist miniature"
school of music theory is not for everyone at first listening) but it's
never the unapproachably avant-garde atonalistic shrieks of Schoenberg
or Birtwhistle.

Do seek Blancafort out as for the £5 each that Naxos CDs generally cost
you may be very pleasantly surprised.  After all, if you find you like
it you can then go around telling everyone you "like music from the
Mompou-inspired minimalist school of Catalonian music" and (now you've
read this article) you'll even be able to convincingly back yourself up
with a half-dozen lines all about it!  Only the most Neanderthal could
fail to be impressed!

Adam Ramet
www.themodist.com