Gaspar Cassadó

Cellist, Composer and Transcriber

Gabrielle Kaufman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317130956
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Barcelonian Gaspar Cassadó (1897-1966) was one of the greatest cello virtuosi of the twentieth century and a notable composer and arranger, leaving a vast and heterogeneous legacy. In this book, Gabrielle Kaufman provides the first full-length scholarly work dedicated to Cassadó, containing the results of seven years of research into his life and legacy, after following the cellist's steps through Spain, France, Italy and Japan. The study presents in-depth descriptions of the three main parts of Cassadó's creative output: composition, transcription and performance, especially focusing on Cassadó's plural and multi-facetted creativity, which is examined from both cultural and historical perspectives.

Cassadó's role within the evolution of twentieth-century cello performance is thoroughly examined, including a discussion regarding the musical and technical aspects of performing Cassadó's works, aimed directly at performers. The study presents the first attempt at a comprehensive catalogue of Cassadó's works, both original and transcribed, as well as his recordings, using a number of new archival sources and testimonies. In addition, the composer's significance within Spanish twentieth-century music is treated in detail through a number of case studies, sustained by examples from recovered score manuscripts.

Illuminated by extraordinary source material Gaspar Cassadó: Cellist, Composer and Transcriber expands and deepens our knowledge of this complex figure, and will be of crucial importance to students and scholars in the fields of Performance Practice and Spanish Music, as well as to professional cellists and advanced cello students.

1
A biographical introduction to Gaspar Cassadó

Childhood in Barcelona

Gaspar Cassadó Moreu was born into a musical and culturally cultivated Barcelonian family in 1897 as the third of four children; Augustí and Montserrat were the eldest, while Josep was the youngest sibling. His parents, Augustina and Joaquim Cassadó, both came from cultured and catholic Catalan families based in the city of Mataró and they shared a passion for music. Joaquim, born into a family of artisans, entered the seminary at the age of fourteen to become a priest, where he received a well-rounded musical education at a considerable level (Macclure, 2012, n.p.). Rafael Soler, a relative of the Cassadó family, explains in a chronicle that Joaquim met Augustina Moreu at her family home, where he spent time during the summers playing the piano. Apparently, the young pianist soon decided to leave the seminary set on marrying Augustina, a decision which was so disappointing to his family that they swore of all contact and left him penniless (Soler i Fonrodona, 2003, p. 15). The couple eventually made a life for themselves in Barcelona, where Joaquim became the organist and choir leader of the church of La Mercé and Augustina opened the piano store Pianos Cassadó i Moreu, in a modernist building at Passeig de Gràcia, selling their own brands of pianos from 1906 onwards (Piquer Saclamente, 2012). Gaspar’s brother Josep, piano tuner by profession, continued the family buisness until its final closure in 1974. During the summers the Cassadó family spent their holidays in Agell, where they met and played together with musician friends such as Enric Granados, Frank Marshall and Joan Massià.

Joaquim was without a doubt the most crucial influence for the development of Cassadó’s musicality. Joaquim Cassadó was not only an organist of the La Mercé church in Barcelona, the founder of the choir Capella Catalana and a conductor at the prestigious Teatre de Liceu, but one of the most renowned Catalan composers of his generation. Although initially dedicated to sacral music, he developed into a versatile and prom inent composer that produced numerous chamber music works, as well as symphonies and operas. The archive at Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya dedicated o his legacy contains no less than 150 religious works, many shorter hymns or prayers for his services at the La Mercé church, as well as 55 instrumental works and 19 zarzuelas and small operas. Joaquim’s perhaps most well-known work was the opera Lo Monjo Negre, which was staged several times at the Teatre de Liceu in Barcelona from 1920 onwards and appears to have received certain acclaim. Similarly his Simfonía Dramàtica was, according to an annotation in the score by Joaquim himself, premiered ‘with great success’ in Nurnberg in 1901 (Cassadó, c.1901). Melani Mestre, in the foreword to a new edition of the work Plus Ultra for cello and piano, assures that Joaquim ‘could be considered as the first great Catalan symph onist of the 19th century and one of the first precursors of Nationalism of our country’ (Mestre, 2013, p. 2).

Joaquim was influential in shaping Gaspar’s broad-minded attitude to music making and his strong Catholic faith, both of which would accompany him throughout life, and he provided him with an extensive and thorough musical education. According to Rogelio Villar, Gaspar studied solfeo from age four, musical theory and composition, choir singing and possibly piano or organ playing, while cello lessons were arranged with local cellist Dionisio March from 1904 onwards (Villar, c.1929, p. 189; Fernández-Cid, 1999, p. 316). The cello was Gaspar’s own instrumental choice and seems to have resonated with him from early on: in an interview with Villar, Cassadó recounts how he placed himself close to the cello section and the percussionists when listening to his father’s orchestral concerts as a small child, being especially fascinated by these two groups of instruments (Villar, c.1929, p. 190). During Gaspar’s childhood and adolescence, father and son also performed together in a piano trio with Cassadó’s older brother Augustí on the violin under the name of Trio Cassadó. Joaquim wrote several works for Cassadó, including shorter works for cello and piano such as Plus Ultra (1907) and El títol, flaviol i l’escarbat (1913), as well as a cello concerto, named Concierto Español, and his string quartet, El alcázar de las perlas (1917). Joaquim’s works were among the first that Gaspar performed in Barcelona’s prestigious Palau de la Música: in 1915 he performed Joaquim’s El títol, flaviol i l’escarbat for cello and piano, alongside Madrigal by Granados and Grieg’s Cello Sonata, and Joaquim’s Cello Concerto was performed by the young cellist during the first Symphonic Cycle of Iberian Composers in Palau in 1921 with Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona.¹

Studies in Paris

The most crucial decision taken by Joaquim regarding Gaspar’s musical education was undoubtedly the decision to move to Paris around 1907–08 with Gaspar and his brother Augustí so they could study their respective instruments (cello and violin) with Pau Casals and Jacques Thibaud, funded by a scholarship from the city of Barcelona.² Legend has it that Casals was uninterested in taking on new pupils at the time but changed his mind immediately after hearing the young Gaspar play (Pagès, 2000, p. 21). Although this account cannot be corroborated, it is certainly true that Casals, in his thirties at the time, was at the very height of his per formance career and taught very sparingly. According to Guillhermina Suggia’s biographer Mercier, during the ‘Paris years’ Casals gave ‘between 150 and 200 concerts each year’ (Mercier, 2008, p. 24). Widely sought as a soloist, Casals toured Europe and South America, as well as the USA in 1901, 1904 – playing for Theodore Roosevelt – and in 1911. Additionally, the acclaimed piano trio he formed together with Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot had its premiere in 1906 in Lille (Baldock, 1992, p. 68). As a matter of fact, only two other students are known to have studied with Casals during Cassadó’s time in Paris: Guillhermina Suggia and Charles Kiesgin (Baldock, 1992, p. 74). To study with Casals at such a young age and for such a lengthy period (at least five and a half years, maybe seven) made a deep mark on Cassadó personally as well as musically, and the relationship between the two Catalans appears to have resembled that of a father and son. Cassadó tellingly spoke of Casals as his ‘spiritual father’ and various comments indicate Casals’ belief in Cassadó as not only his disciple, but his heir (Ginsburg, 1983, p. 233). As an example, Lluis Claret reports Casals as once being asked who the world’s number-one cellist was, to which Casals’ reply was: ‘Number two is Cassadó’ (Claret, 2011).

As for technical matters, Cassadó was in the best possible hands. Casals had identified several deficiencies in standard cello technique already as a young student and, by the end of the century, he was among several cellists to implement various new elements regarding posture and the technique of both hands. The most fundamental change concerned the bowing arm, which Casals used in a flexible manner that freed the upper arm, traditionally kept passive alongside the body. Related to this new use of the upper arm was Casals’ idea of making the bow stroke from the scapula. Casals expressed his bow stroke as coming from the centre of the body instead of each extremity, which translated as mainly using the back muscles and shifting the weight of the body depending on the stroke, signifying greater and more relaxed strength in the bow strokes (Alexanian, 1922, p. 15; Baldock, 1992, p. 30). Two equally important technical amendments were connected with the left hand. At a time when most cellists still changed positions frequently through slides, Casals stretched his hand within positions and consequently almost eliminated the technical reason for portamento, or glissandi. Casals was also among one of the first cellists to use a prominent and frequent vibrato, later to be known as ‘continuous vibrato’. Unlike on the violin, where Kreisler is often considered to have introduced continuous vibrato, on the cello there is no clear starting point. Casals, however, is one of the earliest proponents of continuous vibrato in recordings, as observed by Tully Potter regarding Casals’ early trio recordings (Potter, 2002, online). Cassadó’s adoption of these new technical features, that were to be an integral part of modern cello technique, explains in part the famous virtuosity that gained him the consideration of one of the most influential cellists of the century. Laurence Lesser, who studied with Cassadó in the 1950s, comments on Cassadó’s strong hands, which according to Lesser were ‘shaped something like Casals’, though they were bigger. He used an extraordinarily strong and clear articulation in the left hand, which he achieved by hammering the string, like Casals did’ (Janof, 2001, online).

According to Cassadó himself, the musical legacy he received from Casals was without doubt the most important:

Expressive balance, absence of unnecessary portamentos, perfection when changing position, a rich palette of dynamics, timbre relations, a diverse vibrato, relaxation and freedom in the bow both in forte and in piano playing, gave him exceptional power and flexibility. Casals’ way of playing produced an inerasable impression from a musical point of view. The study of every piece meant a methodical work reaching the point of wanting to recreate the character of the music being studied. This on its own made him an unsurpassable cellist.

Ginsburg, 1983, p. 164

We know very little regarding the repertoire Cassadó studied with Casals during the Paris years, but the Bach Suites were without doubt a cornerstone in their lessons. Even forty years later the influence of Casals’ phrasings and fingerings is clearly audible in Cassadó’s recording of the Suites. His impression of a performance by Casals of Bach’s Suite No. 5 is explained in a long, interesting letter to Lev Ginsburg:

This unsurpassed interpretation had such a great impact on me that I rushed to him to congratulate him and say: ‘Maestro, the time has come when you must publish this suite in your edition’. ‘Do you really think’, he said with sorrow, ‘that if I could I wouldn’t have done it long ago?’ At the time I could not grasp the essence of his reply. But now, when I became much older I understand my tutor well. Many essential moments of the interpretation cannot be fixed once and for ever, though a player must imagine them in his mind. But in the process of a performer’s interpretation there appears a new factor: inspiration, enthusiasm born of a moment. It is possible to assert that a great performer is an improviser at the same time. He never performs the same composition twice in the same way.

Ginsburg, 1983, p. 164

The pre-war years in Paris involved many musical inspirations for the teenaged Cassadó in addition to Casals, the most obvious being the large circle of Spanish musicians that had left a culturally and economically depressed Spain in hope of better professional opportunities abroad. De Falla and Turina from southern Spain and the Catalans Granados, Albéniz and Mompou were among those living in Paris during the first decade of the century. Like most Spanish musicians, Cassadó came in contact with Spanish as well as French composers including Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Satie and Debussy through the pianist Ricard Viñes, a close friend of Ravel. Rogelio Villar assures that Cassadó’s first concert in Paris was in the home of Ricard Viñes, in front of some fellow musicians, and that the young cellist performed with Viñes on several occasions (Villar, c.1929, p.192). There is a note in the Spanish Newspaper La Vanguardia in April 1909 that mentions positive reviews in Le Figaro and other French newspapers for ‘the young musicians Tin and Gaspar Cassadó, sons of the famous Catalan composer’ after concerts at different Parisian concert venues, which seems to indicate that the boys were rather well established in the French capital by then (Anon., 1909, p. 10).³

Nevertheless, although we know that Cassadó made long-lasting friends during his stay, including Frederic Mompou, Alfredo Casella and Joaquín Turina, there are few records of the Cassadó family’s time in Paris. Perhaps the Cassadó’s were invited to the soirées at Cipa and Ida Godebski, where many of these musicians met. Falla-biographer Nancy Lee Harper writes that the Godebskis hosted a group with ‘a wider cross-section of musicians, writers and artists’ than in earlier soirées, where Ravel and Ricard Viñes had met their colleagues, and adds that ‘Stravinskij recalled that it was at Godebskis that he first met Falla, and other visitors included Casella, Satie, Vaughan-Williams and Gabriel Grovlez’ (Lee-Harper, 2005, p. 252). Of the musicians mentioned, Casella was a particularly close friend of Cassadó and the cellist performed works by both him and Vaughan-Williams early on in his career. Cassadó recalls their time together in Paris in an obituary to Casella 1947, giving the impression of being well integrated into the group:

I still remember when we organised a Hommage to Falla after the premiere of La vida breve. At that occasion Ravel, Casella, Viñes and many others gathered to celebrate the great success with Falla. Falla, with his amicable simplicity, said: ‘I have had to wait 7 years to premiere La vida breve in La Opera Comique of Paris’. And the comedian Viñes said: ‘And they talk about la vida breve [how life is short] . . .’

Casadó, 1947, p. 3⁴

In the same letter Cassadó singles out Casella and Ricard Viñes as ‘the two main propagators of modern music in Paris’ (Cassadó, 1947, p. 3).⁵ It has often been repeated that Cassadó studied composition with De Falla and Ravel, but there is no actual record of this. Marçal Cervera, as well as other students, believes that Cassadó studied with Ravel, but admits that he has no source regarding this information (Cervera, 2012). It seems certain, considering Cassadó’s previous compositional studies, interest and accomplished compositional technique as an adult, that he would have continued his music-theoretical education in Paris, but whether it consisted of occasional advice from one or several composers in Paris, or more formal study, is not known. Whatever the case, what is indisputable is that the influence of the French contemporary composers, as well as the Parisian musical climate in general, on Cassadó’s compositional idiom was the most significant of his entire career. These were the last exciting years of the belle epoque, with the premieres of Stravinsky’s The Firebird and The Rite of Spring, of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and the latter’s string quartet, and these and many more musical events impacted the style and structure of the young composer and cellist. As later discussions in this book will argue, Ravel was the clearest role model among the composers in Paris and thi...