Folk-Songs and Music of Cataluna

THE folk-songs, music, dances, musical instruments, floral and other festivals, the customs, the Catalan dialect, -all confirm what history records, that Catalufia, Provence, Languedoc, and other districts, at one time formed one people. It may be interesting to the members of the American Folk-Lore Society to learn something of the splendid work a sister folk-lore society is doing in Spain. Centre Excursionista de Catalunya has for its object collecting and preserving everything connected with the history, art, language, traditions, customs, folk-songs, music, dancing, and people of Catalufia, and also making mountain excursions in the Pyrenees. It is a most flourishing society, which publishes a monthly journal, handsome in appearance, and with fine photographs of church porches, costumes, dances, etc. One branch of this club is called The FolkLore Section, the work of which is illustrated by the fact that it has already collected five thousand folk-songs with variants, and three hundred folk-dances. Many of these have already been published with the music, and the remainder will soon appear in print. Smithsonian Institution has recently arranged for an exchange of publications with this society. Two articles by myself in this Journal and Oriental Music (January-March, 1907, p. 16) and Gypsy and Oriental Musical Instruments (April-September, 1908, p. 205) led the Secretary of the Catalufia Society, Mr. M. S. Gatuellas, to correspond with me on these subjects. result has be'n the acquisition of many facts which are new and interesting, especially about musical instruments. During the winter and spring of 19o09, Sefior Gatuellas delivered a course of lectures before their Folk-Lore Society on Music, in which he also treated somewhat all Spanish music. lectures were illustrated by songs interpreted by the best artists of the Orphe6 Catald and Barcelona. This musical society (Orphe6 CatalA) has-a

Art · Art history · Dance · Flourishing · Folk dance · Folk music · Folklore · Literature · Musical · Object (grammar) · Section (typography) · Visual arts · History · Spanish Culture and Identity · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies