Josep Palau i Fabre

Josep Palau i Fabre (Barcelona 1817-2008)

This notebook collects his poems from the homonymous book by Josep Palau i Fabre: Lullaby, Song of the girl who lives in the heart, Mirror, Words, Sweet wine and The most banal song.

I met Josep Palau i Fabre at the beginning of the 1970s. I spent the summers at the family home in Vilamaniscle, in the Alt Empordà, and we used to go to Grigeu beach in Llançà (Girona, Spain). There my parents met the poet who had a house on the seafront. They often had light conversations about the weather, the beach or, sometimes, about art and about Picasso, Palau i Fabre's great specialty. Around that time I acquired an edition, still censored, of his poetry collection and, encouraged by personal knowledge, I kept it as a bedside book. At the end of the same decade or in the early 80s I tried to compose a song, but it would not be until 1985 that I finished the first one, the Cançó de la noia que habita el cor. I continued with Lullaby and later the others appeared.

I had several meetings and conversations with Josep Palau. One of them was the private audition that we offered him at the Conservatory Superior Municipal de Música de Barcelona, ​​​​right in front of his apartment on Bruc-València Street. The baritone Miquel Peralta and the pianist Marina Rodríguez Brià performed four songs for him, after which he signed a kind dedication to me in a copy of his book. In one of the conversations he told me that his poetry especially sought musicality and that my versions fit perfectly into his conception. Whether it was a compliment or not, his opinion filled me with satisfaction.

Palau i Fabre was a complex personality, of great literary wisdom and with a very full life and personal experience, also with dark aspects. I quite agree with his statement about his own poems: “Poems of the Alchemist: that is, poetry understood not as an end in itself, but as a means of exploration, or of experimentation, as for others the microscope or music can be”. For me, composition also has this value. (Perhaps this is why I have not fought hard to make my work known).