The Palau de la Música Catalana [antikvár]

Lluís Domenech i Montaner Lluís Doménech i Montaner's story is quite an extraordinary one, and we can only hope to give a bare oudine here. In a sense it stands on three legs like a tripod. The first leg is die career of a creative architea, who began life in 1850; the second is the happy chance meeting of two musicians in 1891, and the third is the creation of a work of architecture where the three destinies come together in a perfect, seamless whole. Urn's Domenech i Montaner, was born on the 21 December 1850 in Barcelona. His fether was a prominent book-binder and publisher, and his mother was an heiress, eldest daughter of the Montaner femily of Canet de Mar. Architecture, fine arts and culture in general, research, history and politics, Domenech i Montaner was brilliandy successfiil in them all. "He was of modest stature" wrote Josep M^ Roca, "but of distinguished and slim appearance. He was a man of few words, and spoke in a shy, reserved way even to social inferiors or uneducated people. Occasionally brusque, sometimes irritable despite his shy temperament, he was, deep down, a heart that would become indignant over injustice and fill with tenderness towards the good." He qualified as an architect in Madrid and then toured Europe: in France he studied the architecmre and theories of the French architect VioUet-le-Duc, and in Germany the architecture of that time, during the early days of Bismark's Reich. In Italy he went to Venice to study the ancient architecture of the city. Soon after finishing his university career (1873) he won the chair for projects at the School of Architecture in Barcelona where he eventually became director. His book "In search of a national architecture", published in 1878, is of seminal importance in the position it takes against the eclectic mix of styles currendy in vogue, and in its will to find an alternative, a new style more in key with the industrial and cultural demands of the time. Other studies brought him feme as a researcher of Catalan architecture, particularly the romanesque style. "He was a tireless worker, and was much more at home quiedy and pauendy working in museixms, archives and libraries or on journeys and excursions, than in the tough, demanding atmosphere of the building sites with their workers, contractors, meetings and owners." He founded or contributed to publications like "RLnai^n9a", "la Veu de Catalunya", and "Pöble Catala"; he was president of the Barcelona Athenaeum, promoter and president of the Joes Florals, or poetry contests, and member of the Academia de Bones Uetres. He soon became a prominent figure in active politics; He became president of the Catalonian League and the Catalanist Union, and one of the organisers of the assembly that approved the Bases de Manresa - the basis for a new constitution for Catalonia. He was also member of the Catalan National Centre and of the Nationalist Le^e. He retired during the First World War, disillusioned with politics, and died in 1923. All this vras combined with his career as an architea: he launched modernist architecture and art with the Montaner i Simón building, and even more clearly with the Castell dels tres Dragons in the Pare de la Ciutadella, and the Hotel Internacional. Together widi the architea Gallissa, he set up a workshop in the Castell dels tres Dragons building specialising in decorative arts applied to architecture. His great creative period, however, was in the years on either side of the turn of the century. During this period he produced the very finest of his work, including the Institut Pere Mata, the Thomas, Navás and Lleó Morera buildings, the Hospital de Sant Pau, and culminating in the Palau de la Música Catalana. Of all these, die Palau is die boldest and most incredibly original - it is here that the new, specifically Catalan style which Doménech i Montaner was seeking finally triiunphs. The Palau won the architea an award from the Barcelona City Council in 1909. It is the synthesis of Lluís Doménech i Montaner s great architectural work