Roberto Gerhard: Re-Appraising a Musical Visionary in Exile

Re-Appraising a Musical Visionary in Exile marks the 125th anniversary of Roberto Gerhard’s birth in 1896. As one of the most prominent Spanish composers of the 20th Century, Gerhard’s life and oeuvre is viewed through the lens of the Spanish Civil War, exile, and cultural translation. To understand how the wider political and cultural events taking place in Spain during the 1930s and the subsequent Franco Regime shaped Gerhard’s thinking, work, and compositional aesthetic, the book contains a number of chapters that discuss the experiences and legacies of exiled cultural producers from Spain during this period as well as the notions of national identity that arose both within Spain and those exiled. Although Gerhard was not overtly political, several his works from his exile in England from 1939 are explored in terms of suggested hidden narratives that are both autobiographical and explicative of his Republican sympathies against the Franco regime. Such narratives are often revealed through the use of Catalan and Spanish folk song. How such narratives are reconciled within Gerhard’s increasingly Modernist aesthetic are explored alongside the composer’s work with the BBC and other cultural organisations, situating these in a post-war geopolitical perspective. Through these different threads, a new and more nuanced understanding of Gerhard and the political and cultural milieu that influenced his work is put forward.