Pau Casals: Musician, Activist, Humanist

Who was Pau Casals? There are auditoriums, festivals, grants, music schools—even a highway—named after him, yet depending on who you ask, they’ll talk to you more about his music or about his politics. 

On one hand, he is generally considered to be one of the most talented cellists of all time, and arguably the top player of the instrument of the 20th century. He was even posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989, in spite of having hardly performed in the decades preceding his death.

If you search for the name “Pau Casals” on the internet, Google will serve up the following: 

“Pablo Casals, Catalan Pau Casals, (born December 29, 1876, Vendrell, Catalonia, Spain—died October 22, 1973, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico), Spanish-born cellist and conductor, known for his virtuosic technique, skilled interpretation and consummate musicianship.”

However, he was equally internationally recognized for his political action in support of world peace. Casals was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1958, and received the United Nations Peace Medal, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, among other awards and recognitions. He was known for denouncing injustice regardless of where it occurred, both at home and abroad.

The Music

Casals’ father was a church organist and choirmaster in his hometown El Vendrell, and it was on the town’s church organ that the young musician first began to experiment. By the age of four, Pau could play piano, flute and violin. His first cello wouldn’t come until later, and according to popular legend, that instrument was a broom handle strung as a cello with a dried-out gourd as a soundbox. He eventually moved on to the real thing, displaying prodigious talent that was fortified both by the boy’s love of his instrument, and his father’s insistence on strict practice. Casals’ mother, Catalan by descent but born in Puerto Rico, later had Pau enrolled in the Municipal Music School of Barcelona, from which he would graduate with honors at the age of 19.

It was while at the school that he discovered his passion for the work of J.S. Bach; arguably, Casals’ best-known works were the recordings of Bach’s Cello Suites that he would make between 1936 and 1939. 

Long before that, in 1893, Casals was playing in a trio in a café with fellow music students when he was “discovered” by a Spanish composer named Isaac Albéniz, who wrote the young cellist an introduction to the Queen Regent of Spain. Casals was then invited to play private concerts at the Royal Palace and was offered a stipend to continue his musical studies at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. He later earned his living playing in Paris, until he returned to Barcelona to teach at the same school where he was once a student. He also became the principal cellist at the Liceu opera house.

From there, Casals’ fame would spread, and his professional star would continue to rise. He would go on to tour in Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and eventually to the United States and South America. He played at Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Crystal Palace in London; for Queen Victoria and for President Theodore Roosevelt, and later, John F. Kennedy.

The multifaceted man would become as internationally beloved as a composer, conductor, and teacher as for his unusual bowing and fingering techniques and his interpretive skill as a musician. His recordings represented both his original works, such as his emblematic Song of the Birds, and a rediscovery of some of the most beautiful material ever written for the cello.

He founded the Pau Casals Orchestra in Barcelona in 1919, which was famously interrupted during a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Casals’ final performance in Spain was reportedly at the Liceu in 1938. He vowed never to return to Spain until democracy was restored—but the world-famous musician never lived to see that day.

The Politics

By all accounts, including and most importantly his own, Casals didn’t see his professional interests as separate from his personal ideology. He was an outspoken opponent of dictatorship in any form. He helped Catalan and Spanish refugees during the Spanish Civil War, using his name and connections by writing thousands of letters appealing for help and financial support for them.

Even before the Civil War, he surprised the music world by refusing invitations to play in Soviet Russia in 1917 and Nazi Germany in 1933. Later, after World War II ended, he went as far as to refuse to play in the Allied countries because they declined to denounce the Franco regime. 

This decision in the 1940s would mark a period of long absence from the world stage, with the exception of occasional benefit concerts. His voluntary silence was his method of protest. He would move to Puerto Rico and begin playing extensively in Mexico and Latin America in the 1950s.

It was at this time that he became increasingly concerned with the Cold War between the world’s two largest superpowers, and his vocal support of a manifesto calling for a stop to all nuclear arms research in the United States and Russia resulted in his first invitation to perform at the United Nations headquarters in New York City in the year 1958. The cellist considered the UN to be politically neutral ground, so he accepted the invitation. This would be the first time he had performed in the United States in approximately three decades.

Aware that the performance would be televised by the CBS network and broadcast by over 70 radio stations on multiple continents, Casals took the opportunity to speak out against the danger that fanaticism, dogmatic nationalism and violence posed to the human race, and to underscore his hope that the UN and the governments of the world would lead the way towards peace.

This event marked the beginning of a long relationship with the UN, where Casals would both perform and speak a total of three times.

In 1962, Casals announced a world tour called the Peace Crusade, performing his oratorio El Pessebre (“The Manger”)—which had been premiered in Mexico two years earlier to thank that country for its assistance to Spanish Civil War exiles—to help raise money for a fund created to promote the causes of human dignity, brotherhood and peace. 

Casals said: “Music, that wonderful universal language, should be a source of communication among men… With this objective in mind, I consider it my duty to offer my humble contribution in the form of a personal crusade. Let each of us contribute as one can until this ideal is attained in all its glory; and let us unify our fervent prayers that in the near future all humanity may be joined in a spiritual embrace.”

His final performance at the United Nations was in 1971, where he premiered the piece the UN had commissioned him to write: the Hymn to the United Nations, with words by the poet W.H. Auden. Casals was awarded the UN Peace Medal on that visit, in recognition of his great contribution to the fight for democracy and liberty around the world. The speech he gave in thanks for the Medal paid homage to the things that were important to him: to his mother and all she taught him, to the healing power of music, to the ideal of peace among men and to the love that he had for his homeland.

In 1977, the UN installed a bronze bust of Casals in the headquarters of their General Assembly in New York, where it remains to this day.

The Legacy

From 1938 onward, Casals spent his life in exile in France and in Puerto Rico. He left his mark on both places—particularly on Puerto Rico, where he founded the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico.

In France, Puerto Rico, and around the world, festivals and museums, tribute concerts and exhibitions continue to remember Casals’s musical and humanitarian legacy. Nowhere is prouder to celebrate and commemorate his legacy than Casals’ native Catalunya. Barcelona declared him its official “adopted son” in 2016, and declared that Pau Casals Day would be celebrated each June 16th with concerts by high-profile international artists. The Generalitat de Catalunya also created a Pau Casals Award for the international promotion of Catalan culture.

The Pau Casals Foundation is a nonprofit organization that was created by the man himself and his second wife, Marta, in 1972. Its stated mission is to preserve the musician’s legacy by promoting the values that he defended throughout his life, and by disseminating knowledge both of his music in particular and classical music in general. It collaborates on cross-disciplinary education and performance initiatives, such as the project Pau Casals Educa (“Pau Casals Educates”), and works to keep Casals’ memory alive for future generations. As of the writing of this article, over fifty young musicians have benefited from the Foundation’s financial support through the Pau Casals International Award for Young Cellists. 

The Pau Casals Collection, including press clippings, photos, sound recordings and more, is a body of information included in the National Archive of Catalunya’s permanent records in Sant Cugat. The Pau Casals Museum in El Vendrell contains perhaps the most complete collection of Casals’ personal records in existence, including letters, photographs, instruments, artwork, hats, pipes and even leftover cakes of resin that the great musician used on his bow. The Museum is located in the house that Casals lived in before he went into exile at the start of the Spanish Civil War.