Music of Catalonia

The music of Catalonia comprises one of the oldest documented musical traditions in Europe. In tandem with the rest of Western Europe, it has a long musical tradition, incorporating a number of different styles and genres over the past two thousand years..

Among the earliest references to music from Catalonia date to the Middle Ages, when Barcelona and the surrounding area were relatively prosperous, allowing both music and arts to be cultivated actively. Catalonia and adjacent areas were the home for several troubadours, the itinerant composer-musicians whose influence and aesthetics was decisive on the formation of late medieval secular music, and who traveled into Italy and Northern France after the destruction of Occitanian culture by the Albigensian Crusade in the early 13th century. The so-called Llibre Vermell de Montserrat ("Red Book of Montserrat") stands as an important source for 14th-century music.

Renaissance polyphony flourished in Catalonia, though local composers never attained the fame of either the Spanish composers to the South and West or the French composers to the North. Joan Pau Pujol wrote four books of polyphonic masses and motets in honor of the patron saint of Barcelona, St. George.

Performances of opera, mostly imported from Italy, began in the 18th century, but some native operas were written as well, including three by Isaac Albéniz and seven by Enrique Granados. The Barcelona opera house, Gran Teatre del Liceu, which opened in 1847, remains one of the most important in Spain; in addition, in the mid-19th century the first Barcelona Philharmonic Society was founded for the performance of orchestral music. Several symphonic orchestras exist in Catalonia today, including the Barcelona Orchestra.

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