page_title: Barcelona Municipal Band
section_title: The Period of Renown: Lamote de Grignon’s band
hierarchical_section_title: Barcelona Municipal Band / History / The Period of Renown: Lamote de Grignon’s band
caption_attribution_description: Català: La Banda Municipal de Barcelona participa de la proclamació de la II República a la Plaça de Sant Jaume de Barcelona el 14 d’abril de 1931.
context_page_description: Founded in 1886 by Barcelona City Council, the Barcelona Municipal Band is a musical institution going back a long way. Since 2007, it has been the resident band at the Barcelona Auditorium, where it offers a fixed season of concerts and where it develops projects in partnership with artists and groups forming part of the international scene as well as those from the local sphere. The resident conductor since 2008 has been the Catalan composer and conductor Salvador Brotons.
context_section_description: At the start of the 20th century it became a well-known institution everywhere. At that time it was directed by Joan Lamote de Grignon, who in 1951 managed to make the band independent from the city's Music School (today's Municipal Conservatory of Barcelona). It was during this time that it was visited –and even conducted– by great names in music such as Richard Strauss and others.
  After the days of Rodoreda's baton as the Band's first conductor, other names came and went, such as Antoni Nicolau (1896 -1897), Celestí Sadurní i Gurguí (1897-1910) and Cristòfol Casanyé (1910 -1914). But it was under Joan Lamote de Grignon that substantial improvements were put forward in the way the institution was organised and structured (such as changes in venues, rehearsal rooms of its own, independence from the Music School, better working conditions for the musicians and a larger and better balanced line-up, measures that were soon reflected in the institution's artistic quality.
  Contemporary accounts speak of a resurgence, of excellence and of the public's pride in its Municipal Band. One event that speaks for the great artistic moment the institution was experiencing was the concert given by the composer and conductor Richard Strauss in Plaça Sant Jaume on 19 March 1925. Strauss, who was in the city on a visit, heard the band at a concert in Plaça del Rei and was struck by the high quality of the group. The German composer asked if he could conduct the band at a public concert and invited the institution to take part in the International Music Exhibition in Frankfurt in 1927, where it gave eight concerts and was a notable success with the critics.
  Under Lamote de Grignon, the band began what were called the People's Symphonic Concerts (Conciertos Sinfónicos Populares), with two performances by the group at the Barcelona International Exposition in 1929. People's Symphonic Concerts was the title of a series of Sunday concerts given at the Palace of Fine Arts, built for the Barcelona Universal Exhibition of 1888, where the band also appeared regularly. Out of the series of these annual concerts, one or two were usually given over to the young music students at the municipal schools and should be seen as a pioneering pedagogic and educational initiative in the city. The famous Catalan pianist Alicia de Larrocha played as a soloist with the Barcelona Municipal Band in 1934, when she was only twelve, at the 80th People's Symphonic Concert.
  Joan Lamote de Grignon headed the band for 24 years, during which time it reached exceptional technical and artistic heights and put down firm institutional and social roots. In spite of this, on 29 January 1939, three days after Franco's troops entered the new nationalist Barcelona, a field mass in Plaça Catalunya marked the start of the period of purges the band suffered as a public body. In June, Joan Lamote de Grignon was sacked from his post –the same as Ricard Lamote de Grignon, who was the assistant conductor– and a gloomy period of austerity began for the band
caption: The Barcelona Municipal Band playing in Plaça Sant Jaume during the Proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic (Photo: Josep Maria Sagarra, 1931).
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