Josep Maria Ruera i Pinart (1900-1988)

Contents

Two events marked the musical career of the composer Josep Maria Ruera: the first performance of his work 'Tres moviments simfònics' (Three symphonic movements) during the opening concert of the Fifteenth Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, held in Barcelona in 1936, and the first performance and subsequent recording of his four symphonic poems in 1977, the works being grouped together under the title Empúries (a city in ancient times on the coast of Catalonia).
His work, which can be divided into two stages (before and after the Spanish Civil War), reveals a composer with a style of his own, stemming from his love of Catalan folk music, and with marked nationalistic features, in the context of the tonal tradition.
On the one hand this book seeks to show the human and artistic figure of Ruera, and on the other it aims to bear witness to the importance of composers like Ruera, whose output was small in quantity but very high in quality.