Mont Juic (suite)
| Mont Juic | |
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| by | |
Montjuïc, Barcelona (1929)
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| Genre | Suite |
| Composed | 1937 |
| Premiere | |
| Date | 27 June 1938, BBC Symphony Orchestra |
Mont Juic, suite of Catalan dances for orchestra (Catalan pronunciation: [muɲʒuˈik]), was written jointly by Lennox Berkeley and Benjamin Britten in 1937. Named for Montjuïc, it was published as Berkeley's Op. 9 and Britten's Op. 12.
Berkeley and Britten both attended the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival in Barcelona, Spain in 1936. Berkeley had been living abroad for some years and had never previously met Britten. They soon became close friends. Another friend of Berkeley's, Peter Burra, was also present, and he also became a friend of Britten's.
At the Festival, Britten accompanied the violinist Antonio Brosa in the first performance of his Suite for violin and piano, Op. 6. The highlight of the Festival, which Britten, Berkeley and Burra all attended, was the posthumous world premiere of Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, "To the memory of an angel", which was performed on Sunday 19 April, with the soloist Louis Krasner, under the conductor Hermann Scherchen.
The next day, the trio visited Montjuïc, the hill that dominates the Barcelona landscape. On the Wednesday, 22 April, they attended a Festival of Folk Dance on the Exposition Grounds on Montjuïc, where they heard various Catalan folk tunes. Later that day Berkeley and Britten jotted down some of the melodies in a Barcelona café.
The following year, back in England, they decided to jointly write an orchestral suite based on some of the dance melodies they had heard on Montjuïc. They named it simply Mont Juic, and dedicated it "In memory of Peter Burra", who was killed in an aircraft crash in April 1937. The work was written between 6 April and 12 December 1937.
The instrumentation consists of: two flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets in B-flat, alto saxophone (ad lib.), tenor saxophone (ad lib.), two bassoons (one doubling double bassoon), four horns, two trumpets in B-flat, three trombones, tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, xylophone, cymbals, bass drum, tenor drum, side drum, triangle, tambourine, tam-tam, harp, and strings.
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