![]() Then at about that time, my mother who sensed my despair, proposed me to go to Madrid, take Albeniz’s advice and use his letter of introduction to the count of Morphy.” It is difficult to say what brought me out of the abyss. I was in a pit of darkness, and I thought that perhaps the only way I could put an end to my torment, was to put an end to my life. I walked the streets of Barcelona feeling sick and full of apprehension. The thought that I was the cause of this tension pained me greatly. I was intensely troubled by the continuing differences between my parents about my carreer. “I was in my teens when the first major crisis in my life took place. Although my mother refused his offer, Albeniz sent a letter of recommendation to the count of Morphy.” Now Albeniz was so moved to hear a child playing the cello, well, he wanted me to go with him to London where he lived. Then a respected trio in Spain came to Barcelona and heard about that boy who played in a Café, and they went to the café (Albeniz was in the trio). “Later I was offered a job at a café, and we used to play all the live music with a rather good pianist and strings. ![]() I didn’t play a Bach suite in public for 15 years of study.” There I discovered the Bach suites, and I was so astonished that Bach had written six suites for the cello alone. He was my teacher at the Municipal School. “So we went to Barcelona and I enter in the class of the man (Jose Garcia) who came to El Vendrell and played cello. She saw in me the gift of music, and she insisted: “Pablo must be a musician.”” He spoke to a friend who offered me a job as an apprentice carpenter. The sound was so profound, so human, and I said to my father: “I want to play the cello.” My father was a very modest man, and he thought that a man can’t make a living being a musician. I had never seen a cello, and it was so wonderful to me. “Sometime later, three good musicians came for the first time to the village. I loved that sound, and so my father made me a one string instrument out of a gourd, and with it I played the Ava Marie and it was lovely.” One of them had a instrument which I loved. “One summer, some travelling clowns came to my little town. It was a wonderful organ from the time of Bach.” Such a wonderful thing to be able to touch those registers. Oh I said to my father: “I can touch the pedals!” and he said: “now you can play”. At seven, I began to play the violin.” “My father didn’t allow me to touch the organ till my feet could reach the pedals, and this moment arrived at nine. “I began piano at four, and entered into the choir at five as a second soprano. But even so, he played beautifully piano, and his compositions have grace and meaning.” My father was a real musician, but he didn’t have a real musical education. “From the beginning of my life, I lived in music. Go away, and leave the country.” She was an independent thinker and an enormous influence on me.” When one of my brothers was called to serve in the Spanish army, my mother told him: “You do not have to kill anybody, and nobody has to kill you. She taught me early on that the highest love possible was mans own conscience. My mother was born in Puorto Rico and came to El Vendrell when she was 18. ![]() My father, like his father before him, was a Republican and a free mason, a fraternity that only strengthened his convictions on the rights of the working man. “I was born in December 1876 in El Vendrell, a villiage in Catalonia, about 70km from Barcelona. ![]() I present it to you with my deep respect and admiration.” - U Thant Secretary-General You embody the ideals symbolised by this United Nations peace medal. “Don Pablo, you have devoted your life to truth, to beauty and to peace, both as a man and as a artist. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries.” Casals My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. ![]()
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