The Chair Papers Collection publishes two new research projects on Pau Casals and music for peace

Created in 2025, the Chair Papers collection is an initiative of the Pau Casals UNESCO Chair, dedicated to knowledge transfer and to the international projection of Pau Casals’s legacy.

The collection presents the results of research projects and enables both their access and international dissemination. Until now, the website provided access to the research projects of the grant winners from the 2023 edition. This information has now been expanded with the inclusion of the works of the 2024 grant winners.

Paper 3, “The musical aesthetics of Pau Casals. The philosophical influence of Henri Bergson on Pau Casals’s musical conception” presented by Magda Polo Pujadas, Professor of Music and Aesthetics in the Department of Art History at the University of Barcelona. The research proposes an aesthetic reading of Pau Casals’s conception of music through the influence of Henri Bergson’s vitalism, also considering a phenomenological and hermeneutic perspective that helps to understand the musical dimension of his work. Beyond a merely technical interpretation, Casals conceived music as a lived, embodied, and spiritual experience. The study explores the convergence between philosophical legacies and the aesthetic dimension implicit in Pau Casals’s musical composition and performance.

Paper 4, “Nations in Harmony: the roles and functions of music in United Nations Peacebuilding” presented by John Gledhill, Associate Professor of Global Governance in the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. His project addresses three questions: who (within the UN system) uses music in support of peacebuilding; what forms these activities take; and how they aim to contribute to the consolidation of positive peace. These questions are explored through the reading and analysis of hundreds of documents and reports on music-based peacebuilding initiatives developed over recent decades across the United Nations system. The study concludes by calling for the development of impact assessments that can determine the extent to which these actions succeed in contributing to peacebuilding.

The 2025 research projects are currently being implemented and will be incorporated into the collection in due course.

This project, led by the Pau Casals Foundation and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), is supported by the Sociedad de Gestión de Artistas Intérpretes o Ejecutantes de España (AIE).