Josep Serra i Bonal: Volume VI Completes the Most Comprehensive Collection of his Sardanas for Cobla

The Músics per la Cobla Association closes, with this extra Volume VI, the CD presentation of the most exhaustive collection ever recorded of nearly 90 of the more than 250 sardanas for cobla by the composer who serves as the key bridge between the “Empordanese” style of writing and orchestrating sardanas for cobla and what could be called the Barcelonan style: Josep SERRA i BONAL (Peralada, 1874 – Barcelona, 1939).

The musicologist and composer Concepció Ramió i Diumenge was invited to write, drawing on her extensive knowledge of Josep Serra and his family, the outstanding work that follows the preamble and rigorously and thoroughly justifies the Anthology. The justification is also reinforced by the fact that our Archive holds the donation made by the BOVER-SERRA FAMILY (the direct great-grandchildren of Josep Serra) of the entire documentary collection, and especially the scores relating both to the work of Josep Serra and that of his son Joaquim Serra i Corominas. With this collection in our Archive, we are now carrying out one of the dissemination efforts that the musical significance of this material deserves.

This phonographic project is the result of a “choral” effort by a team of nearly eighty musicians and technicians (conductors, performers, sound engineers, music producers…) who made it possible to achieve an objective conceived almost eight years ago and overseen by the beloved and always remembered maestro Jesús Ventura i Barnet, who passed away three years ago, and by Josep Maria Serracant i Clermont.

The project was carried out by the Músics per la Cobla team and includes everything from selecting the sardanas to record, preparing the performance materials digitally from the composer’s autograph manuscripts, choosing the conductors and performers for each of the six volumes, scheduling the recordings, and conducting the sessions at the ESPAI MONTSERRAT CAMPS at our headquarters in Sabadell, with David Casamitjana as sound engineer for all sessions and Lluís Gual i Gasull as artistic producer. The recordings featured a selection of instrumentalists gathered under the name Cobla de Cambra de Catalunya and, for the six volumes, required six musical directors and 68 cobla instrumentalists (the booklet texts include the names of all participants and the volumes in which they performed). The team also handled sound post-production at ESTUDI SONOR MONTOLIU, CD presentation design, and final dissemination through the PICAP record label and the Internet.

To complete this background on the recordings of Josep Serra’s sardanas, it should be noted that in 2004, under the initiative and musical direction of maestro Jordi Leon, the Músics per la Cobla Association produced a CD recording within the ALTRES COBLES collection, which Maestro Leon titled Josep Serra,

Sardanes retrobades, including 15 sardanas that were later selected for this Anthology. At the time, it was a kind of premonition of what has materialized more than ten years later in this project. These sardanas were performed by the Cobla Sant Jordi–Ciutat de Barcelonaunder the direction of Jordi Leon. Their titles are: La congesta, La font de les rondalles, Plany, Entre el brancatge, Complanta, Flordeneu, Esclats, Vidamor, Romiage, Lluminosa, La vall encantada, Clarors, Xiroia, De la gresca, and Cordialitat. These 15 sardanas, together with the 87 in the present project, bring the total number of recorded sardanas by Josep SERRA i BONAL under our label to 102.