On Catholic feast days in Catalonia human pyramids, “castells”, are built. Ordinary women and men, the “castellers”, crowd tightly together in a circular base, then some climb from the center onto the shoulders of their comrades, and so it goes higher and higher and higher. The record is ten such human floors, the last time a girl or boy with a helmet climbs to the top, raises a hand and the human pyramid is dismantled again at a very unspectacular rate. This popular sport is not harmless, sometimes the Castell suddenly collapses, and there is always at least one ambulance standing next to it. The castells are interpreted as a symbol of Catalan toughness, as an expression of the pronounced common sense of the Catalans, their ability to produce visionary, pragmatic designs. But they are also a cold-blooded storming of the sky, an insane undertaking. “Seny i rauxa”, intoxication and prudence, the Catalan virtuoso duo, is realized here in its purest form.
The old art of castell building comes from western Catalonia, where the old town of Reus is also located. It is not only the stronghold of vermouth production, the national drink of the Catalans, the Art Nouveau architect Antoni Gaudí was born here in 1852, the most famous representative of modernism, which uses natural forms, glass and light. Gaudí, who died in 1926, knew the art of the Castellers very well. This is proven by his most daring and insane project (“seny i rauxa”!), The still incomplete, but since its consecration in 2010, Giant Youth Nouveau kitsch church Sagrada Família in Barcelona. Work is still going on on the central tower and the main facade. Here the towers and columns, which are overflowing with vegetation in the Baroque style, grow straight into the sky. Anyone who has ever experienced the construction of a Catalan “castell” in this infinitely high, but not so large and also brightly colored church interior has the inevitable feeling that Gaudí has set a memorial here above all to this favorite pastime of his compatriots.
Ansfelden is 1730 kilometers from Reus. Another star in the sky was born in Ansfelden, Anton Bruckner, the grandmaster of gigantic long symphonies, of which he finished eight and three quarters before he died in 1896, some in several versions. The fourth is one of the most popular, it lasts 80 minutes, and mostly the second version, which introduced Bruckner’s success as a composer, is played. Conductor Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic in Barcelona had them with them, along with a new piece by Samy Moussa entitled “Elysium”. Because the Viennese musicians absolutely wanted to know how it is when two Catholic heavenly climbers like Gaudí and Bruckner meet in person, both are only a generation apart in terms of age, both stand for a fundamental reorientation in their arts.
This fantasy church wraps the sound in cotton wool, hardly allowing any subtleties
So the Vienna Philharmonic did the inevitable, they played Bruckner’s Fourth in Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, which was conceived shortly after the premiere of Bruckner’s Fourth in 1881. That connects, even if the 1700 km distance can always be felt. The connection is that Gaudí and Bruckner, as this evening quickly makes clear, are both sun worshipers. Light, brightness, sparkle, rays, luminescence are categories that are central to the work of both artists. Even Dante managed the divine show in his “Comedia” with a huge amount of vocabulary, all of which revolve around the subject of light. Gaudí and Bruckner can also refer to Dante, the great poet of Christianity, on this point. For less religious people, however, these light metaphors also work, since light in its non-conceptuality enables a form of transcendence that is understandable for everyone.
The Sagrada Família has a monstrously long reverberation, much longer than permitted in a concert hall. This fantasy church wraps the sound in cotton wool, it allows almost no differentiation in subtleties and polyphony, it changes the characteristics of entire orchestral groups. The bass sounds concise and threatening like a hellish drum group. Woodwind passages are reminiscent of a harmonium. There are no breaks, only reverberation. The cellos sound like a hitherto not yet invented type of instrument. Sometimes the orchestra sounds like an organ unleashed. Increases that start quietly and creep up on fortissimo or forte fortissimo eruptions make a terrifying impression right from the start. Is there a comet approaching that is about to extinguish all earthly life? Will the walls of the Sagrada Família be able to cope with the sound storm or will they burst all of a sudden and bury the audience and the TV people with their cameras? Nothing like that happens. The Viennese just sound louder and more alienated and uninhibited than ever in their history.
But because this symphony sounds so completely unbounded, beyond any common concert experience, the fundamentals suddenly become clear.
The fact that Bruckner, the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, pointed out again and again that it does not belong in current music history, has nothing to do with Beethoven and Brahms, but is a foreign body, a meteorite that fell to earth. The foreign is always central to art, with Gaudí and Bruckner it comes as a maximum overwhelming, and that can be experienced in this grandiose competition between architecture and music.
Quality is just a conservative argument against the new, foreign and bold
In addition, the relationship between everyday life and art is negotiated in this experiment. Everything that is measurable, controllable, derivable, none of that has a place in art. Gaudí and Bruckner support this thesis with their work. The only thing that counts is overcoming, breaking with conventions and history, the boldness of thought, the coherence of the vision. Bruckner’s fourth, like Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, are prime examples of this aesthetic. The idea is more important to both artists than the question of execution, the vision beats the craft by a long way. The quality so often invoked is always only a conservative argument against the new and foreign, against the unfamiliar and bold.
But because the idea takes precedence over the craft, Bruckner’s symphony vision can emerge from this reverberation orgy in the Sagrada Família without prejudice to it. “Seny i rauxa”, Bruckner would have signed it without thinking. And Gaudí’s light-color-human-pyramid church, built for human eternity, helps Bruckner’s music with this peeling out, which aims at the essence of this sound art.
Big short cheers. Afterwards the listeners stand in the Sagrada Família for a long time and marvel at the colorful play of light in the windows and the insanely clear height of the room with its warm intimacy pushing towards the sky. The music faded away in time, it only reverberates in memory. Gaudí’s vision, however, has been cast in concrete and thus escaped from time. This exceptional performance also formulates an imperative for all artists: Be unrestrained!