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Jaume Pahissa (1880-1969), composer

Composer and Musicologist. Jaume Pahissa was born in Barcelona in 1880 and died in Buenos Aires in 1969. He studied composition with E.Morera, who presented a public concert of his work in 1905. Most critics have qualified Pahissa's compositions within the modernist style although philosopher Eugeni d'Ors considers him within the Noucentist movement. Pahissa went deeply into the creation of a new harmonic language. Suite Intertonal is an example of this kind of work. Pahissa also wrote other more traditional works based on catalan popular forms. During the Spanish Civil War he went into exile in Argentina where he worked the rest of his life. In this country he composed Nocturm dedicated for his friend violoncelist Pau Casals, exilied too, who performed the work at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in 1937.