Maria Canals and Barcelona by Barcelona llibres

Maria Canals and Barcelona

9 788498 506457

Maria Canals and Barcelona

Publisher Ajuntament de Barcelona Editorial and Publishing Board of the Barcelona City Council Jaume Ciurana i Llevadot, Jordi Martí i Galbis, Marc Puig i Guàrdia, Albert Ortas i Serrano, Miquel Guiot i Rocamora, Jordi Joly i Lena, Vicente Guallart i Furió, Àngel Miret i Serra, Marta Clari i Padrós, Josep Lluís Alay i Rodríguez, José Pérez i Freijo, Pilar Roca i Viola Director of Communications and Citizen Service Marc Puig Director of Image and Publishing Services José Pérez Freijo Editor Oriol Guiu Editorial Coordination María Birulés Text Ana María Dávila English Translation Nova Language Services Archivists and Photographers Archive of the Maria Canals Competition; Barcelona Municipal History Archive (AHCB); Carulla Font Family Collection; Cendrós Jorba Family Collection; Orfeó Català Documentation Centre (CEDOC): Canals and PMC Programme Collections; Vivancos Family Archive: Canals Collection Pau Audouard, Pau Barceló, Brangulí (photographers), Antoni Capella, Francesc Català-Roca, J. M. Domínguez, Ernest Fotografia, Antoni Esplugas, Antonio y Emilio F. dits Napoleon, Pep Herrero, Antonio Lajusticia (Barcelona City Council), Rogelio López, Curt Meyer, Moliné i Albareda, Orzaez, Pérez de Rozas, Postius, Publifoto, Guillermina Puig, J. Salvador, Montserrat Segarra, Jaume Soler, Jordi Vidal, Wassermann Design Isabel Solé López-Pinto and Matt Berry Alan Bates Design Image Processing Xavi Parejo Production Maribel Baños Editing and Production Direcció d’Imatge i Serveis Editorials Ajuntament de Barcelona Passeig de la Zona Franca, 66 08038 Barcelona Tel.: 934 023 131 www.bcn.cat/barcelonallibres Barcelona, February 2015 © publication: Barcelona City Council © texts and images: authors cited ISBN: 978-84-9850-645-7 DL: B-4.379-2015 Printed on recycled paper We would be grateful to know the owner or photographer of uncredited photos

Previous page: Portrait of the young Maria Canals. Author unknown / CEDOC: Canals Collection.

Maria Canals and Barcelona Ana María Dávila

In collaboration with

MCB

Concurs Internacional de Música Maria Canals

Association of the International Music Competition Maria Canals of Barcelona President Mariona Carulla i Font Vice President Victòria Quintana i Trias Secretary Ildefonso Sánchez Prat Treasurer Antonio Delgado i Infante Members Félix Alcaraz Vellisca, Josep Maria Busquets i Galera, Carlos Cebro, Laura Cendrós i Jorba, Josep Cuscó i Garcia, Pilar Figueras i Bellot, Maria Font de Carulla, Elvira Gaspar Farreras, Alejandro Jiménez Marconi, Maria Rosa Jorba de Cendrós, Cecília Julià de Capmany, Ivana Klimek, Elisabeth Martínez i Guarro, Raquel Millàs i Vendrell, Pere Quintana i Colomer, Joan-Artur Roura i Comas, Anna Sagarra i Trias, Oriol Vidal i Arderiu, Jordi Vivancos i Farràs General Manager Jordi Vivancos i Farràs Secretary Montse Roig Losantos Documentary and Photographic Archive Orfeó Català Documentation Centre (CEDOC) (Marta Grassot Radresa and Laura Espert Moreno) Maria Canals Competition collection Vivancos family collection Cendrós family collection Sound Archive Josep Maria Vivancos Enrich

Association of the International Music Competition Maria Canals of Barcelona Palau de la Música Catalana, C/ del Palau de la Música, 4-6 08003 Barcelona 932 957 251 / info@mariacanals.cat

Orfeó Català Documentation Centre (CEDOC) Palau de la Música Catalana, C/ del Palau de la Música, 4-6 (5a planta) 08003 Barcelona 932 957 252 / centredocumentacio@palaumusica.cat

Contents

Presentation

p. 11

Chapter 1 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

p. 14

Chapter 2 The girl and her piano

p. 36

Chapter 3 The dream of Ars Nova

p. 92

Chapter 4 A competition for Barcelona

p. 126

Bibliography

p. 171

Maria Canals and Barcelona 10

Presentation Xavier Trias Mayor of Barcelona

Barcelona City Council is pleased to contribute to the commemorations for Maria Canals’ birth centenary with the publication of this book, in whose pages we remember, vindicate and pay homage to her person and her important contribution to the musical heritage of our city and country.

Maria Canals made such a contribution in many ways: as a citizen who was committed to young people, art and culture; as a concert performer and founder of the Maria Canals International Music Competition, for which she gained the support of our civil society; and as a teacher, through the creation of the Ars Nova music academy. Thanks to her enthusiasm and perseverance, as well as the efforts of those who have kept her legacy alive, for more than six decades the Maria Canals Competition has been turning Barcelona into the piano world capital for a few days each year, with a successful formula which forms the basis of the competition. It combines excellence and divulgation in perfect harmony, helping future professional pianists and promoting access to and training in music among the general public. The publication of Maria Canals and Barcelona represents a further step in recovering and preserving the city’s heritage and paying homage to those people who have helped to make Barcelona a world-famous city of culture, knowledge, creativity, innovation and well-being

11 Maria Canals and Barcelona

Barcelona is a shared project, one that grows day by day through the contributions of all. There are, however, some people – such as Maria Canals – who have brought excellence and ambition to this project and played a decisive role in making our city an international benchmark in a number of very diverse fields.

Maria Canals and Barcelona 12

Acknowledgements Ana María Dávila

This book would not have been possible had Josep Maria Vivancos, Maria Canals’ friend and personal secretary during the final phase of her long life, not begun the necessary task of recording the memories of a life dedicated to music. His work was the seed and true starting point of this project.

Jordi Codina receives a special mention for his infinite patience when it came to unravelling the mysteries of music, as do Miguel Villalba and Raül Benavides for their priceless knowledge. I would also like to thank Narcís Bonet, M. Lluïsa Ibáñez and Lluís Millet, as well as my friends from Teià, Jordi Jané and Jordi Balada, for helping me to shed light on different stages in the life of Maria Canals. The same goes for Isabel Lipthay, for her translation from German, as well as the entire documentation and publishing staff for their patience and the care with which they have worked on this project. And thanks to my three men – Jep, Pol and Pau Suñé – for putting up with so many hours of my absence.

13 Maria Canals and Barcelona

Of course, my most sincere gratitude goes to the Maria Canals Competition for making this project a reality and to all the people who shared their memories of Maria Canals with me: Roser Puigoriol, Pere Quintana, Maria Font, Mariona Carulla, the Espinal sisters, Elvira Gaspar Farreras, Carlos Cebro, Raquel Millás, Carme Vinaixa, Carme Urgell, Liliana Maffiotte, Leonora Milà, Bernat Deltell, Jordi Vivancos, Montse Roig and, most especially, to Elisabeth Martínez Guarro for her collaborative energy.

Chapter 1 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

Maria Canals and Barcelona

Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona The story of a family

Some lives seem to be marked by an inescapable destiny. Lives in which everything conspires to ensure that a seemingly predetermined and unavoidable path is taken. The life of Maria Canals could well be considered one such example. The daughter of pianists who had made teaching their vocation, music coloured her life even before she was born. The piano marked the rhythm of her first steps and the sounds threshed out by the stream of students who passed through her home each afternoon mixed unrepentantly with her first words. It came as no surprise, therefore, that this young girl with large and curious eyes would begin to show a deep passion for music far before she knew anything else of life. This powerful feeling would never leave her and became the beacon that would guide her entire life.

Maria Canals and Barcelona

Previous page: Photograph of AgnĂ¨s CendrĂłs and Joaquim Canals at Vallvidrera, where they were married in 1910. Photographer unknown / CEDOC: Canals Collection.

For Maria Canals, music was her mother tongue, her childhood playmate and the bridge that joined her to a world she could hardly imagine, beyond the windows of that third floor apartment in the street that was then named simply Carrer Cortes. With a fine but solitary education, she grew up far from the company of other children,

FaĂ§ade of No. 2 Baixada de Santa EulĂ lia, where Joaquim Canals i Matavacas, father of Maria Canals, was born. Antonio Lajusticia / Barcelona City Council.

The girl and the clerk Everything began in that walled Barcelona of the midnineteenth century. A city of 187,000 inhabitants, with narrow, winding streets and clusters of dark buildings barely

17 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

overprotected by a father who was none too generous with his praise or displays of enthusiasm. A man who, although he loved his daughter, held a firm belief that praise could only lead to arrogance and vanity. Such an austere character was undoubtedly the result of the unusual life he had led. He had also been a talented but solitary child, brought up far away from his country and family, a young orphan who was suddenly forced to grow up just as he was entering his teenage years. For all these reasons, the life of Maria Canals began its unique path far before she was born into the world on 12 March 1914. At that time, her father was already fifty-six years old and had a son from a previous marriage who was practically the same age as the young woman he had taken as a wife four years previously. He also had a past that could have been taken from the pages of a novel.

penetrated by the light of day. A city without infrastructures or sanitation, where people reached old age at forty. A city, however, where everything was about to change just as soon as “those merciless stones that held in all the misery”1 fell. Thus it was that in the very heart of that Barcelona which was about to burst out of its walls, on the third floor of the building at Baixada de Santa Eulàlia number 2, just on the corner with Carrer dels Banys Nous, on 10 May 1859 Joaquim Canals i Matavacas was born. He was the first child of Josep Maria Canals i Boada,2 thirty-five years of age, and Raymunda Matavacas i Fiol,3 the only child of a wealthy family of Barcelona merchants. Raymunda was fourteen years old and, precisely twelve months earlier (on 6 May of the previous year), she had been married in the Church of Sants Just i Pastor to the chief clerk of the family business.

Maria Canals and Barcelona

“My great-grandparents owned a large furniture-makers. And because there was no heir to run the business, and undoubtedly thinking about its future survival, they decided to marry their daughter to one of their employees, a very hard-working and worthy young man. The problem was that the daughter had no liking whatsoever for that young man, twenty years her senior. My grandmother must have been a very strong-willed woman, because on the day of the wedding, when the priest asked the girl if she would take that man as her husband, she replied: ‘If her parents so wish.’ The priest repeated the question three times and received the same answer, until, tired of asking, he blessed the marriage.” Raymunda gave birth to a strong, healthy baby, who three days later was baptised in the neighbouring Church of El Pi with the name Joaquim Josep Maria Modest, and with his maternal grandparents as godparents. However, as could be expected, the marriage was neither happy nor long lived. One day in 1860, Josep Maria Canals decided to place an ocean between himself and his family. Having emigrated to the Americas, no more was ever heard from that fugacious grandfather Canals who could have never imagined how his surname would be immortalised in the century to come. “Seeing that their plans had been laid to waste, my greatgrandparents became very angry with their daughter and blamed her for what had happened. That is when they decided

to disinherit her and leave all their money to the grandson. At the age of just fifteen and with a young child to look after, Raymunda went to seek help from a relative, a wealthy elderly widow with no children, who took her in and adopted her.”

“[My grandmother] had a great intelligence, entrepreneurial spirit and willpower which no one could crush when she believed herself to be in the right. She was quite a character. She also felt a great sympathy for the needy. Especially for those who had once been well off and lost it, and were forced to cover up the fact. With these kinds of problems in mind, she set up a sort of association together with some lady friends. They would meet up in the shop after work to organise their visits to the poor and share out the costs of the food and clothes they took to them.”4 Some of this spirit was undoubtedly passed down to her granddaughter, in another century and another Barcelona, who many years later would also create her own project to provide support for what she saw as a need of society and the educational system of the time – the promotion of young talent.

19 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

Raymunda Matavacas and the young Joaquim thus began a new life in the home of Aunt Zacarias, an apartment located on what was then known as Baixada de la Presó (Prison Street), a name with airs of incarceration that has since been changed to the more honourable Baixada de la Llibreteria (Bookshop Street). Far from letting the circumstances crush her, and with initiative that was unusual for a young woman of the time, Raymunda began working on a number of different projects. Her first endeavour was to learn languages. She began with French, receiving lessons “from a distant relative, born in Paris, who had been living in Barcelona for a few years”, followed by German. All this would allow her some short time later, and with initial financial help from her aunt Zacarias, to open her own business in Barcelona – a shop selling the wares of an important Viennese furniture-makers. The business, located near Barcelona City Hall, quickly prospered and, with time, also began to sell mirrors and paintings. In her memoirs, Maria Canals paints a vivid picture of this extraordinary woman.

A prodigious student Even though his father was absent, the young Joaquim grew up surrounded by the love of his mother and the elderly aunt. When he was five years old, his mother took notice of his keen interest in music and sought out an organist to give him lessons. “My father had an enormous degree of natural talent and straight away he made extraordinary progress, so much so that after a few months, when he had just turned six, the teacher told the boy’s mother that he was a prodigy and there was not much more he could teach him. And that the best thing to do would be to take him abroad. My grandmother, who also had a marked artistic temperament (I understand that her true vocation was painting and that she had even received advice from the painter Marià Fortuny, who was a distant relation) immediately took stock of the situation and decided to follow the teacher’s advice. And that is how they took my father to Paris, placed him in a boarding school and arranged for him to take classes with the best classical music teacher in the city: Monsieur Marmontel.”

Maria Canals and Barcelona

When the young Canals arrived in the French capital, possibly around 1867, the pianist, composer and musicographer Antoine-François Marmontel (Clarmont d’Alvèrnia, 1816 – Paris, 1898) was one of France’s most prestigious music teachers and Professor of Piano since 1848 at the Paris Conservatory, the epicentre of French musical culture at the time. As he was still too young to be accepted into that prestigious centre, it seems that Joaquim Canals began his studies under the guidance of one of Marmontel’s assistants, in preparation for being accepted in the class of that renowned teacher, whose acolytes included Georges Bizet, Vincent d’Indy and Claude Debussy. And it was not unlikely that the young Catalan boy would have one day brushed shoulders with the latter two by the piano of a teacher who used to organise weekly music sessions for his students. Very soon, however, life would serve the lad a very hard and merciless blow. It happened in 1873, when Canals, then a reedy adolescent of fourteen who was spending a few days on holiday in Barcelona, fell victim to one of those grave illnesses that periodically swept through the city: the

fearsome smallpox. With few means to combat the disease, the family doctor gave just one desperate piece of advice – the boy should try to sweat it out. His mother heated up the room using every means available. Then, after covering the bed with blankets and seeing that the boy did not react, she resorted to a last, desperate measure – warming him up with her own body heat. The solution saved the life of Joaquim Canals, but Raymunda Matavacas contracted the disease and died five days later, at five o’clock in the morning on 11 November. She was just twenty-nine years old. “My father was forced to close down the business immediately. There was no one able to carry it on. In the space of eight years, my grandmother had built up a business that, once it had been sold off, allowed her son to return to Paris and continue his studies [...]. There he led a life free from financial worries. He worked a few hours each day and had enough free time to nourish his soul with good books. He also had many friends.”5

Paris was a party

Born in Pertuis, France on 18 October 1849, Bautistine Alfredine Baró i Cayol was the first child of José Baró de Roig and María Emilia Cayol, a wealthy Spanish couple who had made their fortune in the hotel trade. Baró was a retired army colonel and commander of the Spanish Order of Charles III, although his origins were in fact much more humble. According to a family letter, Baró arrived in Marseilles in 1848 with some money he had

21 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

We know very little about the movements and artistic life of Joaquim Canals in Paris, even though, as Maria Canals recounts in her memoirs, somewhere around 1880 “my father began to make a living as a teacher and pianist”. It was the same year that César Franck premiered his Piano Quintet in Paris featuring Saint-Saëns, and also the year in which Offenbach would die before he could see his opera The Tales of Hoffmann debut on stage at the OpéraComique. A few months later, towards the end of 1881, the teacher Joaquim Canals married the beautiful Alfredine, sister of his friend and former fellow student Lorenzo Baró i Cayol (Marseilles, 1859 – Saint-Jean-de-Luz, 1937), who would go on to become a renowned ophthalmologist and, from 1901, doctor of the Spanish Royal Family.

Joaquim Canals i Matavacas, father of Maria Canals, at the age of twenty-two. Audouard / CEDOC: Canals Collection.

Maria Canals and Barcelona

Photograph of Alfredine Baró i Cayol, the first wife of Joaquim Canals, in Barcelona c. 1881. Moliné i Albareda / CEDOC: Canals Collection.

earned through smuggling in Gibraltar and Oran (Algeria). After three years, then married with children, he purchased the hostel in which he worked and turned it into the Hôtel Espagne et Amérique. He also built a hotel on the outskirts of Marseilles, Les Martegaux. Around 1859, the Baró family moved to Paris. There they purchased another hotel, which they named the Grand Hôtel de la Bourse et les Ambassadeurs. According to family documents, both this hotel and the one in Marseilles were frequented by the leaders of the Spanish Revolution of September 1868, including Francisco Serrano y Domínguez, Duke of la Torre; General Joan Prim i Prats and Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, so that after the triumph that brought an end to the reign of Isabella II, Baró retuned to Spain and settled in Barcelona, where he enjoyed the protection of Serrano. Deprived of his position when Alfonso XII retuned to Spain, he later profited from Barcelona’s urban expansion.

“My father said that in the beginning he tried not to be carried away by his feelings, because the girl belonged to a very rich family. Anyhow, love won the day and they eventually married each other.”6 Once they were married, the twenty-two year old Joaquim Canals and his thirty-two year old wife continued to live in Barcelona for at least two more years. It is worth mentioning the close relationship that the musician had during this period with the pianist and composer Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909), just one year his junior. At that time Albéniz was living in the Catalan capital, where he received lessons in composition from Felip Pedrell and where he gave a number of concerts. Also in Barcelona, Albéniz met Rosina Jordana i Lagarriga, whom he married

23 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

This is the family that Joaquim Canals married into on 26 November 1881 at the Church of La Concepció in Barcelona. The witnesses were the Duke of la Torre (represented in the ceremony by the civil governor of Barcelona, Francisco Moreu i Sánchez) and Josep Picó i Llorens. Alfredine Baró, an exceptional beauty who had received a fine and broad education, was ten years older than the groom, a fact which does not seem to have presented an obstacle for the couple. The setbacks were of another order.

on 23 June 1883 in the Church of La Mercè. The autograph score of a chaconne dedicated by the composer to “my friend J. Canals” on 2 May of that same year, a couple of photographs and the records inherited by Maria Canals bear historical witness to this friendship. “A clear illustration of the friendship between Albéniz and my father is the fact that Albéniz asked my father to go and ask for the hand of his sweetheart, Rosina, on his behalf. [...] There was a time during which [Albéniz] used to go to my father’s house to work; he would call each morning at seven o’clock! He would go into the piano lounge and begin to compose. The piano was the same Erard that we still have today...”7

Maria Canals and Barcelona

Shortly afterwards however, Canals and his wife decided to return to Paris, where they took an apartment at number 84 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, just opposite the Palau de l’Elisi. In addition, they also had a second country residence in Fontainebleau. The couple had two children, a daughter, who died during birth, and Alfred, born on 26 October 1884 in the family home. During these years they lived an easy, pleasant life, receiving into their home the corps d’elite of the Parisian music world.

Signature score by Isaac Albéniz, dedicated to Joaquim Canals. Vivancos Family Archive: Canals Collection.

“[My father was] friends with several eminent musicians and composers – Francis Planté, Emil von Sauer, Antonin Marmontel, Isaac Albéniz. It is no surprise then that his parties and get-togethers held a great appeal. They were frequented by people from high society, artists and men of science. The famous Dr Germansé 8 (sic) was one of his close friends.”9 During this period Joaquim Canals also met a very young Catalan pianist who had arrived in Paris on 13 October 1887 to continue his studies under the tutelage of CharlesWilfrid de Bériot. This teenager was Ricard Viñes i Roda (1875-1943), who more than half a century later would, in turn, become the piano teacher of the daughter who arrived in the last period of his life.

Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

Portrait dedicated by Isaac Albéniz to his “dear friend Canals” in 1895. Antoni Esplugas / Vivancos Family Archive: Canals Collection.

After a decade in Paris, however, that peaceful and pleasant existence came to an end upon the loss of the family fortune for reasons that are not completely clear. Faced with having to lead a lifestyle to which she was not at all accustomed, Alfredine decided that she could not bear the social shame. She asked her husband if they could leave Paris to go and live in Barcelona.

Alfred Canals i Baró, son of Joaquim Canals from his first marriage. Photographer unknown / CEDOC: Canals Collection.

Maria Canals and Barcelona

“After the family was ruined, which I understand was a consequence of the Panama disaster,10 [she] could not bear to live in her own city anymore. For my father, it was a terrible blow. He did not believe the change in their financial situation to be of such great importance, and considered that they could continue living in Paris perfectly well with the money they had left. However, Alfredine told him: ‘If I am obliged to give French or English classes, I will do so in Barcelona. Not in Paris.’ It was a great sacrifice for my father to leave his close friends and that Paris where he had been educated and brought up, and which he loved so dearly! […] Finally my father gave in, and they left. And I clearly remember my father confessing to me that the first tears he had shed since the death of his mother were when he had to come and live in Barcelona.”

The piano teacher Canals, his wife and his son Alfred – then a young boy of six years of age – arrived in Barcelona around 1890. They moved into the second floor apartment at number 72 Passeig de Gràcia, that elegant avenue which, in the late 19th century, stood as the proud axis of the growing Eixample district, which was already defining the new outer limits of the city of Barcelona. Joaquim Canals got straight

As regards the number of performances, the young Joaquín Bonnin is among his most noteworthy students, as is the

Programme and press cutting for one of the concerts that Joaquim Canals organised at his home for his students. CEDOC: Canals Collection.

27 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

to work exercising his talent as a music teacher. Still young at the age of thirty-one, the new piano teacher very soon gained a group of enthusiastic acolytes, drawn by the musician’s prestigious Parisian career and his fi ne quality teaching. But Canals did not merely content himself with teaching his students the best techniques. Straight away, he also wanted them to face the great challenge that all musicians must take on: performing before an audience. His musical soirees thus became a constant feature in the lounges of his home. The local press took an interest in this fact, as shown by this extract of an article that can be read in the 31 January 1893 issue of La Vanguardia newspaper: “The great care which Señor Canals takes to educate his disciples in good taste is worthy of applause[...], as with their manner of phrasing and the dynamics with which they perform classical piano pieces, more than beginners they could be classed as true artists”. Another article asserts that the fine performance of the students is down to “the good method of teaching used. At the same time as honing their technique, he takes care to develop their good taste, thereby creating not only fine pianists but also excellent performers”.

Uruguayan Teresa Brasó, who, on returning to her own country in 1902, was welcomed with a level of interest that only a great artist can arouse. In unison the local press spread word of her studies in Europe “under the guidance of the renowned teacher Don Joaquín Canals”.

Maria Canals and Barcelona

During this period, Joaquim Canals may also have played an active role in the city’s musical life, even if it were in the form of private recitals. This seems to be borne out by a photograph which a young cellist dedicated “To Señor Canals, from your friend and fellow trio member; Barcelona, October 1901.” and signed: Pablo Casals. In any case, the high regard and prestige that Canals enjoyed are made clearly evident in the letter dated January 1900 which was written to him by the composer Joaquim Nin i Castellanos (1879-1949), father of the writer Anaïs Nin and the composer Joaquim Nin-Culmell, who fifty years later would become closely involved in a music competition founded by Canals’ daughter. “Distinguished Maestro”, wrote the young Nin i Castellanos, who had not yet made his début as a composer, “I would be grateful if you could read the first two notebooks of my modest work. If you

Portrait dedicated by Pau Casals in 1901 to his friend and “fellow trio member”, Joaquim Canals. Vivancos Family Archive: Canals Collection.

believe it to be worthy, please give it your protection, however little that may be; I will be truly grateful.” The work referred to in the letter is not a musical score, but rather a “General Treatise on Music and its History” (“Tractat general de la música i sa història”), which Nin planned to publish in weekly instalments for a monthly subscription fee of one peseta.

“After the death of Alfredine my father was attracted to one of his most brilliant students – a sweet, innocent, blonde-haired and blue-eyed girl twenty-six years his junior.” Far removed from the wealthy and sophisticated beginnings of Alfredine Baró, Agnès Cendrós i Salvadó had been born in 1885 to a family of shopkeepers in Barcelona’s El Born district. Her father, Rafael Cendrós, born in Tàrrega, and her mother, Margarida Salvadó, from Montfalcó, had a workshop (which had grown to become quite large) for manufacturing paper bags, as well as a dried fruit and nuts business, located at number 42 on the small Carrer de Flassaders, just a few feet away from Passeig del Born and the Church of Santa Maria del Mar.

29 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

On the cusp of the new century, Canals received an offer he could not refuse: to fill the position left vacant by the death of Joan Baptista Pujol (1835-1898) as a teacher of advanced piano at the Municipal School of Music, which was to become the Municipal Conservatory of Music of Barcelona. It was then directed by Antoni Nicolau (1858-1933), an old friend who he had known since his time in Paris. Joaquim Canals signed his contract on 18 January 1899 for a yearly salary of 1,500 pesetas. Shortly afterwards the family decided to move to a third floor apartment at number 303 Carrer de les Cortes, which would one day be renamed Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. During this period, the couple’s only child, Alfred Canals, a particularly gifted student of mathematics, began his studies at the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering. Alfred graduated with honours in 1909, the year of Catalonia’s Tragic Week. Shortly before this, on 22 April, a stroke brought the life of his mother, Alfredine Baró, to a sudden and unexpected end. Widowed at the age of fifty, Joaquim Canals did not wish to face the remaining years of his life alone, and he soon began to search for a new wife.

Rafael Cendrós and Margarida Salvadó, the maternal grandparents of Maria Canals. Rogelio López / CEDOC: Canals Collection.

Maria Canals and Barcelona

“Rafael was the most honourable and hard-working man you could ever imagine. With a placid and cheerful temperament [...], he had a great liking for good music, and as his youngest daughter, Agnès, was a gifted and enthusiastic musician, he cut no corners in giving her all the means needed to take her as far as possible in her musical career [...]. My grandfather never complained when it came to paying for his children’s education. He was a man who held the higher qualities of intelligence and spirit in great regard.”11 Thus, after receiving a few private classes, the young girl began her studies at the Municipal School of Music as a piano student of Canals. At that time she was fifteen years old and the youngest of the three Cendrós siblings. Josep, the heir, died relatively young and without having become what was then considered a successful man. Antònia, the eldest, had the terrible misfortune of seeing her fiancée die two months before their wedding, a shock which affected her so greatly that she remained a spinster for the rest of her life. But fate had something different in store for Agnès. It was not easy for the couple to obtain the family’s consent, especially due to the fierce opposition mounted by the mother and sister, who saw the huge age gap as an insurmountable obstacle for the couple. Finally, however, Rafael Cendrós gave his consent and the couple were wed on 3 September 1910 in the Church of Vallvidrera. Canals’ personal accounts book shows that the ceremony, together with their holidays that year, cost a total of 1,415 pesetas.

Agnès Cendrós i Salvadó, mother of Maria Canals, c. 1910. Photographer unknown / CEDOC: Canals Collection.

Once they were married, the newlyweds settled into an apartment in the district of Les Corts, together with Canals’ son, Alfred, who was one year older than this father’s new wife. From that moment on, Agnès Cendrós became a kind of extension of the maestro, who she began to assist in his teaching tasks, giving classes herself in the family home, in a small room set aside for this purpose. Later, she would also become assistant piano teacher in the classes Canals taught at the Municipal School of Music. “My father was of the opinion that the main duty of a wife was to attend to her husband and, to the extent possible, assist him in his professional matters, because there were servants to take care of the housework. Somebody explained to me that when they got married he told her she could dedicate her career to giving concerts if she so wished, instead of teaching, but she said no. My mother was happy to go along with anything my father said.”

Maria Canals and Barcelona

Over time, however, Agnès Cendrós would also earn an impressive reputation as a teacher, especially of younger students, not only because of her fine teaching, but also thanks to her gentle nature.

A birth and an illness Almost four years after their marriage, on 12 March 1914, the couple had a daughter. Just a few months later, Europe would see the outbreak of the bloody First World War. Barcelona, a city in the full swing of economic, urban and demographic growth, shaken by workers’ movements and the defence of catalanism, was about to join the federation of Catalan provinces known as the Catalan Commonwealth (Mancomunitat Catalana). As was customary at that time, the child was born at the family home. The birth was assisted by just a single midwife, Doña Consuelo García, a neighbour from Carrer Pau Claris who was undoubtedly good at her work as she had been recommended to the family by Doctor Farriols. There was widespread surprise when, instead of the boy that the doctor had predicted, a daughter was announced. “One of my mother’s friends, a woman who lived opposite us, was present during the birth. And when they asked my father

what they would call me, as he hadn’t thought of any girls’ names, he said that the name he liked most was Maria. ‘But Maria what?’ the neighbour asked him. And my father said ‘Well, like you.’ And that was how I got the name of Maria del Remei.” Shortly after, on 23 March 1914, Maria del Remedio Margarita Ramona Canals i Cendrós was baptised in the Parish Church of Santa Anna. Her godparents were her stepbrother Alfred – who she would always refer to as el padrinet (the little godfather) – and her maternal grandmother. Everything seemed to point towards the most perfect family bliss, as the child had been born strong and healthy and the mother was able to nurse her without any difficulties. However, a new misfortune was about to beset the Canals family.

“[Alfred] hovered between life and death for twenty-one days. They were not able to find a nun to come and look after him, so my mother, who was in strong health, threw herself into the task of caring for her stepson night and day. She didn’t sleep in her bed at all during the first fourteen days of his illness, and she also looked after me. It was a miracle that no harm came to her, or to me.”

33 Barcelona-Paris-Barcelona

In that autumn of 1914 a deadly enemy was preparing to rage through the bustling city of Barcelona: typhus. From September to November, the Catalan capital succumbed to one of the cruellest epidemics it had ever seen: a vehement scourge that tore through all social classes alike in a city where hygiene was still poor and the water supply chaotic. The first water source to be infected was the Montcada canal in Sant Andreu, after which typhus spread rapidly. The obituaries filled the pages of the newspapers and places where large numbers of people normally gathered together, such as the Liceu opera house, were deserted. Tetracycline would not appear for another thirty years, and the medicine of the time had few means with which to combat the disease. The epidemic was only brought to a halt when the City Council decided to cut off the Montcada water supply, two months later. At that point however, almost 2,000 of the city’s residents had died from the disease, with a total of 25,000 cases of infection. Alfred Canals was one of the latter.

The fever finally started to subside, and with it the delirium. Alfred Canals survived the illness, but his mind had been permanently affected. “The young man didn’t recognise anyone, not even his father. He had a constant vague, uncertain stare, and would repeatedly ask the same questions. He lived in a world of confusion [...]. Eminent doctors came to treat him and, after a two-year struggle, Alfred started to return to a kind of normality, even though he was left with some obsessions which he would never be able to shake off, such as dressing like a poor man and never wanting to change his clothes. [...] Little by little, however, his memory started coming back to him and his family were able to procure him a teaching post in an arts and crafts school, even though it was quite insignificant compared to what he could have achieved. In any case, he was a happy man. He knew that he had been ill with typhus, but he was never aware of his life’s tragedy.”12

Maria Canals and Barcelona

Her brother’s illness would also have an indirect but decisive effect on the young Maria as her father, obsessed with the possibility of contracting any type of infection, firmly refused to let her go to school. He hardly even allowed her to walk in the street. And thus it was that Maria Canals would spend the better part of her childhood years alone.

1. H ugues , Robert. Barcelona. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1992, p. 365. 2. Barcelona, ca. 1823-death unknown. Son of Miquel Canals, born in Banyoles, and Teresa Boada, born in the town now called Les Planes d’Hostoles [?]. 3. Barcelona, ca. 1844-1873. Daughter of Joaquim Matavacas i Pradier (Barcelona, birth unknown-1888) and Raymunda Fiol (Barcelona, birth unknown-1875). 4. Canals , Maria. Una vida dins la música (UVDLM), p. 13-14. 5. UVDLM, p. 15. 6. UVDLM, p. 15. 7. UVDLM, p. 152. 8. She refers in fact to the French doctor Germain Sée (1818-1896), famed for his research in the field of clinical medicine and one of the doctors who attended Victor Hugo at his deathbed. 9. UVDLM, p. 16. 10. The cause may have been the failure of Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama to build the Panama Canal. Founded by the Count de Lesseps in 1874, the company went into receivership on 4 February 1889 with multi-million franc losses for its investors. 11. Idem p. 20-21. 12. UVDLM, p. 24-25.

Maria Canals and her mother, Agnès Cendrós, c. 1915. Ernest Fotografia / CEDOC: Canals Collection.