Richard Scott Cohen, an american invited to the I Congress of Music Llum, he dedicated the first doctoral thesis, of 800 pages, 25 years ago
-Poudem ferh the entruevista in valencià, if your vols.
Who makes the offering is Richard Scott Cohen, director of orchestra, trombonist, composer -“but not much”, he says-, researcher and author of a doctoral thesis of 800 pages on the bands of music in the Valencian Community. It is also of Illinois. That help to explain the accent of a valencian is most commonly practised in the third city with more population of the united States.
These days he has been seen by the I Congress of Music Llum, offered a presentation on how they see the bands of music in the valencian abroad. That is to say, what are these formations, what value they have, when the feeling of self interposes him an ocean away.
“just a quarter of a century that I started to get interested by the music bands and Spain, since I loved”. A few years before, had spent a season in Barcelona and was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship to do her doctoral thesis in musical composition for band. If the first trip pulled out a substantial study; the second led him to Bétera and pulled out a wedding: “With a Danish girl I met on a train,” explains. If the stay was expected it was for a few months, the adventure lasted five years, until they culminated the that would be the first study of the music bands. Not the first one of yours -clarifies-but “the world”.
At that moment, the passion for a phenomenon that has no replica in any other part of the world will beat like the waves against the breakwaters. One, another, another… and Even dared with the music and the lyrics of a pasodoble to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Failure Azcàrraga. “They explained to Me the elements of the party who was not aware of and I transformed a melody that I came up with. I went a little paso doble and a little up american”.
“What fascinates me about the bands music is the social integration; the band is the people and the village band is the band, with their participation in a multitude of parties and events. However, the valencian society is theirs, not stretching too much, even though the new generations of directors and composers of the earth are reversing this trend, achieves the recognition in other countries for their works of highest quality or your excellent work.”
The accumulation of formations in this particular point in the Mediterranean has a lot of enigma. Between the late NINETEENTH and early TWENTIETH century, in Spain there were two cultural centres that began to unravel new types of grouping: sets of musical of a civil nature, in Galicia and the Valencian Community, and the corals, in the Basque Country and Catalonia.
Although Valencia was not one of the first capitals of the province to have a municipal band -Malaga are presented in society in 1859, while the capital of the Turia had to wait until 1903; Alicante until 1912 and Castellón still little more than a decade, until 1925-, itself connected in a special way with the fans. The constant support of the fans is what has become the Band Contest of the July Fair of Valencia in the more long-lived.
But in that context, why was the Valencian Community and the exporting of a model of organization that, in the absence of alternatives, was a meeting point in which to relate? Richard Scott Cohen, as an expert, also doubt.
“it Would have to investigate it thoroughly, because all we know are conjectures: that if it is something from the time of Napoleon, who wanted to make accessible the culture… there are several theories. What we do have clear is that the figure of the musician as a professional training civil, paid for it, only exists in Spain”, you think as you build up commitments to continue his work. In these 25 years, Richard Scott Cohen has seen how the world band excerpts sank and came back up. The way things are eternal. A day begin and continue, for pure pleasure. By instinct.
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