Concert: The music of the Miquelets in Olesa de Montserrat

The 18th edition of the Miquelets Festival will include a new activity this year: a concert entitled "The Music of the Miquelets. Dances and Marches of the 18th Century," by the Ministrers del Rec, which will take place on Friday, October 17, in front of the Renaissance Gate.

Ministrers del Rec is an early music group specializing in the performance of historical popular repertoire. The ensemble, made up of musicians combining experience and youth, was founded with the aim of recovering the Catalan musical heritage of the Ancien Régime and presenting it with arrangements that combine the aesthetics of the period with more contemporary harmonies.

The concert program will consist of dances and military marches taken from the manuscript CAT CEDOC 1.5.1 272, an exceptional source of Barcelona popular music from the year 1800. This repertoire connects simultaneously with the music of the Miquelets and with the Cancionero de Olesa (FBB.Manuscrit.12), an 18th-century document preserved in the parish archives of the Montserrat town. On the one hand, because many pieces directly allude to the Miquelets and other military bodies in their titles ("March of the Micalets", "Tyrant of the Navarrese Regime"...). On the other hand, because they feature melodies that coincide with those included in the Olesa songbook, such as "La Bratanya" or "La Mabla" ("the kind one").

A concert, in short, to delve into the tunes that the Miquelets of the 18th century listened to, danced to, and sang, which have survived to this day thanks to manuscripts and oral tradition, and which today the ministers return to the framework of festive processions.

See you there?