Song of the White Bird

Song of the White Bird is an oral biography by the Spanish cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (1876–1973), written with the author Albert E. Kahn and based on Casals's spoken recollections and Kahn's interviews in his later years; it appeared in English in 1970 as Joys and Sorrows. The book is narrated in the first person and begins with a childhood in the Catalonian countryside: his father was the organist of the village church, and the local landscape and songs, together with the music of the church, first shaped his ear. As a boy, in an old bookshop in Barcelona, he happened upon the score of Bach's six Suites for Solo Cello; after twelve years of study he brought these works, neglected for nearly two hundred years, back to the stage, and in doing so changed the place of the instrument in music history. There follow the court and salons of Madrid, tours of Europe and America, friendships with musicians of his time, and the tumult around the First World War. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Casals publicly took the anti-fascist side; after the Franco regime was established he went into self-imposed exile, living quietly in the small French border town of Prades and refusing to perform in any country that recognized Franco's government. During the Second World War he used his cello and his baton as weapons, raising funds for civilians caught in the fighting. The title comes from a Catalonian folk song of his homeland, "El cant dels ocells" ("The Song of the Birds"); it became the encore of every concert he gave and stands in his writing for freedom and his native land. In his later years he founded the Bach music festival, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1958, and in 1971 received the United Nations Peace Medal. The tone throughout is plain, like an old man telling his story calmly across nearly a century.