As Ricardo Robles says, “it’s part of Sónar’s DNA to get into trouble”. But what the co-director of the advanced music festival, which starts this Wednesday in Barcelona, ??has in his hands is a rare privilege: to occupy Gaudí’s Palau Güell to carry out the first sound experience that takes place in Spain starring an expanded organ digitally. In this case, musical innovation unites digital technology, crafts, architecture and heritage.
The hyperorgan that makes it possible is the one built in 2011 by Albert Blancafort in the palace erected in 1890 on behalf of the industrialist, politician and patron Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi, who lived there with his family until the beginning of the 20th century. One hundred years later, it was necessary to replace the one that had been built at that time, when Gaudí was a young man and Count Güell, a great music lover, wanted the house to have an organ that his daughters, who had been learning at Versailles.
And precisely one of Gaudí’s innovative contributions in this early work -which experts say synthesizes all his subsequent work- was the dome, designed so that the sound would rain down on the inhabitants of the house, and be heard even from the upper terraces .
But restoring the original organ was impossible and Blancafort, the leading Catalan master organ builder, made the decision in the current century to build another looking to the future and not to the past. What he did was what in some parts of Europe (Amsterdam, Berlin, Dusseldorf…) and Australia is known as a hyperorgan.
Its peculiarity is that it has the necessary technology to be activated by a computer. Endless possibilities open up to the composer and the performer thanks to the intervention -via MIDI technology- of a traditional organ with digital software and hardware.
The project is the result of a co-creation between the master organ builder Blancafort, the technologist Santi Vilanova and the Berlin musicians gamut inc., responsible for the traveling festival Aggregate, who have composed a new experimental work designed to be performed in this space. It can be heard from June 15 to 19 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. The public will be able to stretch out on loungers to face the auditorium pavilions towards the ceiling and receive the rain of sound.
“Lately there has been talk of why Barcelona could not position itself as a hub for technology and digital innovation. And there the arts have to be fundamental -said Robles in the presentation of the project-. Our desire is to help make this possible. And if on top of that you can put Gaudí’s legacy in the hands of creative people, the future possibilities for the combination of art and technology are endless”.
