Over the last few years
the music of the Catalan composer Joaquim
Homs has become somewhat better known
and appreciated. This is thanks to the
three discs of his piano music released
by Marco Polo (8.225099 Volume 1; 8.225236
Piano Music Volume
2; 8.225294 Piano Music Volume
3). They are played by Jordi Masó
who writes the insert notes here.
Homs was the late Roberto
Gerhard’s only pupil and his life-long
friend. Although he graduated in engineering
and spent his entire professional career
as an engineer, music never was a mere
pastime or a hobby, as his substantial
output clearly testifies (www.joaquimhoms.org).
While reviewing some of the Marco Polo
discs, I became deeply convinced that
Homs was an important composer whose
music deserves to be better known. The
present disc, apparently the first volume
devoted to his orchestral music, rather
confirms that impression.
The four works here
span some forty years of his compositional
life, so that his stylistic progress
may be assessed in a fairly comprehensive
way. That said, three of these works
were originally composed for piano.
The orchestral versions were made either
almost simultaneously or some time later
(in the case of the Variations). The
Variacions sobre un tema popular
català were composed
for piano in 1943 and orchestrated in
1948. The orchestral version was in
fact Homs’ first orchestral work. The
tune is that of a lullaby drawn from
Pedrell’s Songbook ("Cancionero").
It may be noted that Pedrell was Gerhard’s
first teacher and that Gerhard composed
a very fine work for voice and piano
or orchestra titled Cancionero
de Pedrell (1941/2) as well
as a symphony Homenaje a Pedrell
(1942), of which the Finale was ‘rescued’
under the title of Pedrelliana.
Homs’ handling of the tune is quite
personal and the finished work far from
the folksy romp that one might have
expected. For all its variety, the music
is nevertheless mostly on the slow side.
It explores a wide range of techniques,
including polytonality as well as some
touches of Impressionism; but it already
proves entirely personal in spite of
its apparent, superficial eclecticism.
Presències
is a suite of seven short studies that
make up a tombeau composed in
memory of Homs’ wife, the painter Pietat
Fornesa who died in May 1967. Originally
written for piano (on Marco Polo 8.225294),
the piece also exists in the orchestral
version heard here. However, the orchestral
version more than once betrays its pianistic
origins, in that the scoring includes
a fairly important piano part. This
set of concise, lapidary epigrams sometimes
brings Stravinsky’s Movements
for piano and orchestra to mind. Brevity
and austerity, however, never exclude
real feelings and emotions; they rather
enhance them. One never doubts the deeply
felt sincerity that this music exudes.
In whatever version, Presències
is a major work by a major composer.
The death of his wife
was a permanent blow for Homs, who again
reflected on it, as well as on Gerhard’s
death in 1970, when composing Dos
Soliloquis. This diptych, too,
was originally composed for piano and
later transcribed for various instrumental
groups and finally for orchestra. Like
Presències and
several late works (Tres Evocacions
and Remembrances, both
for piano), this piece has something
to do with memory and is yet another
tombeau. The music is again austere,
sparse and desolate in much the same
way as in Presències.
The most recent work
here is Biofonia completed
in 1982. Homs’ last orchestral works
(Biofonia – 1982, Memoràlia
– 1989 and Derivacions
– 1990) all deal with different aspects
of memory. To a certain extent, Biofonia
may be considered as a biography in
sound. This is further reinforced by
the number of quotes from some of his
earlier works woven into the musical
discourse, although a close familiarity
with these works is of course necessary
in order to ‘read’ this subliminal programme.
What comes clearly through is the strength
of the music and this more than ever
places Homs in the wake of his mentor
and friend Roberto Gerhard. The music
is often austere, astringent, dissonant
and uncompromising in its abstraction.
Biofonia is a massive,
compact monolith of great expressive
strength, and a great piece of music
in its own right; definitely a tough
nut to crack, but well worth the effort.
Although he was deeply
influenced by Gerhard, Homs managed
to find his own way out of any all-too-strict
dodecaphony, which he clearly adapted
to suit his own needs. His music is
firmly atonal, at times serial but never
dogmatically so. He painstakingly devised
his own brand of twelve-tone writing
but this is never at the expense of
expression though Homs is not one to
wear his heart on his sleeve.
These four works from
various periods of his creative life
show both the breadth of his vision
and his resourceful formal and orchestral
mastery. I am eagerly awaiting the forthcoming
volume 2 that includes several major
orchestral works.
These performances
and recordings are very fine indeed,
and certainly give Homs’ consistently
fine music its long-deserved due.
Hubert Culot
see
also Volume 2
for
details
Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona
i Nacional de Catalunya/Juan José
Olives 
