The Musical Aesthetics of Pau Casals. The Philosophical Influence of Henri Bergson on Pau Casals’s Musical Conception
Author: Magda Polo Pujadas
Format: digital
Number of pages: 74
Language: catalan
ISBN: 978-84-09-78387-8
Year of edition: 2026
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This research proposes an aesthetic reading of Pau Casals’s conception of music, focusing particularly on the influence of Henri Bergson’s vitalism, while also considering a phenomenological and hermeneutic perspective that, we believe, helps to illuminate the full scope of the musical dimension of the musician from El Vendrell. All of these philosophical currents exerted a significant influence on many of the artists who lived through the twentieth century. Beyond a merely technical approach to interpretation, Casals conceived of music as a lived, embodied, and spiritual experience. Drawing on the concepts of intuition, duration, and the élan vital, this study explores the convergence between these philosophical legacies and the aesthetic vision implicit in the Catalan cellist’s musical composition and performance.
Magda Polo Pujadas
She earned a PhD in Philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona (UB), graduating with the distinction of cum laude unanimously (1997). To complete her doctoral dissertation, she was awarded a Research Personnel Training Fellowship (FPU, 1989–1993).
Since then, she has pursued an extensive teaching career as a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Barcelona and at several Spanish and international universities. She has also served as Associate Professor at the Higher School of Music of Catalonia (ESMUC). She is currently Full Professor of Music and Aesthetics in the Department of Art History at the University of Barcelona.
She has published more than thirty books and over seventy articles in specialized academic journals. She has been awarded two Thought and Humanities Grants from the Department of Culture of the Government of Catalonia. Her research stays have taken her to Germany (Munich and Berlin), Italy (DAMS, University of Bologna), and the United States (Yale University and the City University of New York – CUNY).
She has served as President of UNE and of A-FAD. She currently contributes to the Opinion and Culture sections of the newspaper ARA and the magazine Núvol. She also hosts a radio segment entitled “Philosophy in the Key of G” on La barrera del sonido (The Sound Barrier), broadcast on Radio 4.
She is currently Coordinator of the Research Committee of SEyTA (Spanish Society for Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts) and President of APMUPE (Association of Music Professors of Spanish Public Universities).
