Lockdown diary

We’ll always have music

Lockdown diary

The collective scores of Mestres Quadreny

Born in Manresa, Mestres Quadreny is one of our country’s greatest innovators of contemporary musical language. In the 1950s, he was one of the first to introduce random music and scores composed by computer. Also at this time, his friendship with Joan Miró encouraged him to introduce the element of chance into his creative methods, as had happened with Joan Brossa and his concept of visual poetry. Some of Mestres Quadreny’s more recent compositions have only been possible thanks to the participation of the public, such as Self service, a strange conjuration that takes the visual format of the city streets and interprets it as music.

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Fonds #05: Josep Maria Mestres Quadreny | Self Service

‘Self-Service’ (1973) consists of four large urban maps with traffic directions that act as the musical score for a varied repertoire of wind instruments and percussion. Its duration is indefinite, having no beginning or end. It does not require professional musicians, as it is designed to be performed by the public. With this piece Quadreny Mestres took another step on the way to the reinvention of musical languages and processes.