Just Got the First Copy!
March 16, 2012
From the back of the book:
At the age of 24, already a rising star of Barcelona’s musical life, Xavier Montsalvatge’s composing was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War. When the war ended he quickly achieved critical and popular success in works that merged an attractive polytonality with rhythms and melodies derived from the Catalan experience in Cuba. But the spread of his music was seriously impeded by the policies of Francisco Franco’s decades-long dictatorship, which privileged a uniform cultural viewpoint throughout Spain. The regime persecuted representatives of Montsalvatge’s Catalan culture, forbidding many of its millennium-old manifestations and endeavoring to stamp out its very language. Despite this, Montsalvatge became one of Barcelona’s most influential cultural forces through his music and his music journalism. Now, a century after his birth and a decade after his death, as increasing worldwide attention is being focused on the large and attractive Montsalvatge catalogue, this first biography from outside Montsalvatge’s home circle introduces the man, his culture, and the breadth of his compositions to an international audience. It is a compelling story from one of the least-illuminated corners of 20th-century history.
If you should want a copy of your very own, they can be had here.
Mr. Evans,
I’ve been following your blog for more than a year now and the fidelity a US-American like yourself professes to the Catalan language and culture constantly amazes me, but this last post you have taken the effort to write on the biography of Xavier Montsalvatge’s biography surpasses everything I could have imagined and I really thank you for it, as Catalan was my late father’s mother tongue. On top of that the Table of Contents of your book contained a new reason for me to be amazed, in the Appendices: on page 125 you “dare” to raise the question of “the use of the term America and its derivatives in various languages,” as this use – which I consider imperial misuse – has been one of my longstanding linguistic obsessions in both my professional and activist trajectory as a writer and translator. I don’t know if Pendragon Press is considering the possibility of translating it into Spanish but if they are not, I would like to offer you a free translation in exchange for its open source Copyleft publication on the web.
I immediately wrote a detailed private reply to your e-mail address, but it was returned.