Romantic Music and Romanesque Churches in French Catalonia.

Separated from Spanish Catalonia by the Pyreneans mountains, French Catalonia is known as Roussillon.  For decades, Spanish Catalonia has been seeking independence from Spain.  Roussillon, French from the mid 17^thcentury, is less keen on separating from France.  Unlike its Spanish counterpart, Roussillon is not a national economic powerhouse which may explain the feeble independence mood and hardly anyone speaks the Catalan language.  Perpignan is the main city of the region.  Roussillon is renowned for its beaches, medieval castles and Romanesque churches.

When in France I like to join cultural and musical tours.  Our groups are usually small by excursion standards, and they got even smaller due to Covid travel regulations.  We had to send a proof of vaccination beforehand.   All the concerts we attended and the visits we made, were subjected to the passe sanitaire, the French “green pass”.  Many participants, particularly the oldest ones, felt that their vaccine offered them total protection; annoyingly they recklessly and defiantly (for some) dropped their masks in the coach.  Our guide lost patience reminding them of the health rules. 

We attended three concerts as parts of the Pablo Casals Music Festival.  During the days, we visited many fascinating early Middle Age churches, abbeys and priories predominantly located in rugged and mountainous sites.  Consequently, at the end of the trip, I must admit (to my shame as a dedicated “culture vulture”) that it is the maneuvering skills of the drivers who handled the treacherous mountain roads, and not the maestria of the orchestra’s conductor that remain in my memory!

The 70-year-old music festival was born out of the famous violoncellist’s stubbornness!  In 1945, holed up in Prades a small town in Roussillon, grumpy Pablo Casals decided to stop playing in public as long as dictator General Franco remained in Spain.  He notably blamed the Allies for accommodating Franco.  Since he refused to move out of Prades, his virtuoso musician friends decided to come to play with him in Prades!  This is how the festival started in 1950, the bicentenary of J.S. Bach’s death!  The concerts mainly take place near Prades, in the beautiful Romanesque church of the abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa.  Well known soloists play and the program is increasingly eclectic in order to attract younger music lovers.  We successively heard a trio, a pianist solo (Schubert serenades) and a violinist (Bruch concerto) with an orchestra.  This being a church, we sat on wooden benches; I wished I had taken a cushion for the concerts!  All the spectators showed their green pass and wore masks.  There were no intermissions.

Roussillon’s Romanesque abbeys were predominantly built at a high altitude in very isolated regions.  Monks sought to be as close as possible to heaven.  They also aspired to recreating the desert ambiance of the early Christian hermits who practiced ascetism and devoted themselves to the vows of prayer, austerity and work: “ora et labora.” This Middle Age chosen isolation is now a challenge for the economic viability of the abbeys.  Twenty first century monks and abbots are turning to a very different subsistence model and economic revival depends on an easy and fast access via roads and Internet.  We found to our disbelief and alarm that Internet was more advanced than roads!

Take for example the visit to the remote Benedict abbey of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou built in 1009 near the present-day Spanish border.  After the 1789 revolution, like many religious buildings, it was sold, fell into disrepair and became a stone quarry.  The complex was shoddily rebuilt in the mid-1900s and is now occupied by the Community of the Beatitudes.  Its religious practices, which are inspired by Judaism, seek to rediscover the Jewish roots of Christianity.  Spiritual and faith-based tourism is increasingly popular in France and the community has opened a monastic guesthouse.  To reach the abbey, visitors have the choice between a strenuous 40-minute-long steep trek or a twenty-minute-bloodcurdling 4X4 Land Rover ride.   We choose the 4X4 ride and during both ascent and descent, my blood froze every time the driver maneuvered the 180-degrees hairpin bends.  I counted about eight of them, tightly stacked one on top of another.   Each time, the driver had to reverse to a few inches away from the ravine.  When we finally reached the abbey, I felt sick and anxious for the descent as facing the ravine was no less stressful! 

Riding the coach on this narrow mountain roads was just as awe-inspiring.  During the driving up and down to the Romanesque Serrabona Priory on the foothills of the Canigou mountain, I stopped looking sideways.  From the outside, the priory looks unassuming and austere, not much of a reward after such a scary drive.  However, as soon as we set foot inside, it was an enchantment.  Luckily, the priory didn’t suffer the disgrace and degradation of the St Martin Abbey.  It belonged to some bishop in Spain and church-hostile revolutionaries could not seize it and sell it as a national property.  The priory was padlocked and left to decay without human involvement.  It has been magnificently restored by the local government.

During the Revolution garage sale, abbeys were among the most coveted real estate and those with a cloister were sold at a premium.  Like everywhere in France, the churches, abbeys and priories of Roussillon became the private properties of local farmers and builders.  They converted the ecclesiastic buildings into farm sheds, stables, granaries or wine cellars without any awareness or care for their architectural value.  Some were purchased for the sole purpose of being demolished and their stones sold.  We visited eight Romanesque churches and abbeys and only two, Serrabona and Elne, escaped the revolution unscathed!  Cloisters suffered even more degradation than churches. 

The fate of the Romanesque cloisters of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa and of Saint-Genis des Fontaines is a national disgrace.  During the 19th century Gothic revival, rich people took a liking for Medieval columns, pillars and carved capitals.  They made vogueish garden adornments.  The ignorant owners happily sold pieces of their cloister for money.  It only got worse at the beginning of the 20^th century when a shrewd and mendacious Parisian antique dealer, Paul Gouvert, purchased for American and French art collector, parts of several cloisters, including that of St Michel and St Genis.  Since he could not satisfy the American and French demands, he decided to make 23 exact copies of pillars and capitals.   At the end, he sold two cloisters instead of one!  If the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City received original parts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art was cheated with the copies.  Undaunted, in 1941, Gouvert sold another cloister, but this time, he did not take the risk of making copies since the buyer was Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right hand!  Finally, all bits and pieces still in France were recovered and purchased back by the government and the missing parts were replaced by copies.  In 1994, the refurbished cloisters of St Michel and St Genis were opened to visitors.  

Roussillon has about twenty outstanding Romanesque abbeys on offer so to speak, we only visited eight and fortunately Monsieur Gouvert less so!

 

 

 1- Capital, St Michel-de-Cuxa. 

 2- St Genis now.

 3- Privately owned, early 20th century.