The Song of the Birds, Carol Drinkwater

 

                                                        Pablo Casals in 1917 at Carnegie Hall.

If you are reading this on the day I am publishing, it is Saint Stephen's Day (Boxing Day). In many Catholic countries, Saint Stephen's Day is a public holiday. In Ireland, certainly. As well in Catalonia. I single out Catalonia because below is a link to a very beautiful Christmas carol and lullaby from Catalonia. 

A song for peace. Its title is The Song of the Birds, or in the Catalan tongue,  El cant dels ocells. It was made famous outside Catalonia by the remarkable Catalan cellist, Pablo Casals. Or Pau Casals in his native tongue. Casals was born on 29th December 1876 in Tarragona, northern Spain, also Catalonia. His father was the organist in a local church. Although he was already playing several other instruments, Casals junior did not begin his studies for the cello until he was eleven years old, which is remarkable given that he is considered one of the modern masters of the instrument.

Here are two recordings of Casals playing this exquisite piece of music.  Do listen, they really are very moving. Casals described El Cant dels Ocells as 'The Soul of My Country: Catalonia'.

He played this music for Peace.

https://www.thestrad.com/video/pablo-casals-performs-the-song-of-the-birds/10365.article

This second recording was performed at the United Nations after forty year's of silence, of  Casals not playing in public.  His gesture of silence was his protest against war and fascism. This recording was made when he was in his mid-nineties.  He died a year later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T8DjwLt_c4&list=RD_T8DjwLt_c4&start_radio=1

When Casals was thirteen, in 1890, having already decided that he would dedicate his life to the cello, he was with his father in Barcelona. There,  in a second-hand music store, Pau made an extraordinary discovery. He found a tattered score copy of the Bach Cello Suites (composed between  1717 and 1723). The Suites were hardly known, infrequently performed, and might well have been lost forever had it not been for Casals. He spent eleven years practising the six suites before he felt ready to perform them in public in 1901. The music sheets he had unearthed had no phrase markings and, because this music was so rarely played, Casals had no references to fall back on or to help him discover how the music was intended to be interpreted.  He followed his own knowledge and instincts and the results are sublime.

Casals was the first cellist to record these suites, which he achieved in studios in Paris and London. In London at the Abbey Road studios, where decades later the Beatles recorded many of their timeless classics. Casals took three years from 1936 to 1939 to record all six of the Bach Cello suites.  It is entirely thanks to him that these instrumental pieces have been brought to the public's attention and are celebrated as part of Bach's immense legacy.

Here is a link to Casals playing the Cello Suites. (Beautifully remastered.)  I read that he practised at least one of these pieces every day throughout his long life.

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/podcasts/disques-de-legende/pablo-casals-joue-les-suites-pour-violoncelle-de-jean-sebastien-bach-2060270

Those three years, 1936 to 1939, were the years of the Spanish Civil War. 

During those three shockingly violent years, over one million Spanish lives were lost including one of my own favourite writers, the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca who was shot in the back, murdered by Nationalist militia on 19th August 1936, probably on the road between Viznar and Alfacar. Lorca's remains have never been officially found but some claim that his family - in the dead of night - opened a public grave where many slaughtered Spaniards had been abandoned and took Lorca's body to a private family grave.

During my researches for my travel book The Olive Tree, I visited the site where it is believed Lorca was murdered. I stood alongside the olive tree that was possibly the murder spot. I also visited the Federico Garcia Lorca Park in Alfacar, Granada, inaugurated in 1986.

In 1939, after the Republicans had been defeated by the Nationalists and Franco took control of the country,  Casals became an exile in southern France. He swore he would not set foot again on his native soil until democracy had been restored. He settled in Prades, a small town in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France, historically a Catalan region. Alas, Casals passed away on 22nd October 1973, two years before the end of Franco's's 36-year dictatorship. Franco died on 20th November 1975.

In that respect Casal's story is not dissimilar to another: the painter, titan of modern art, Pablo Picasso, who was originally from Malaga, down along the southern coast of Spain. Picasso vociferously denounced the Franco regime; he also had settled in France, spending his last years very close to where I live in Mougins. He died in Mougins at the age of 91  on 8th April 1973.

Franco outlived both these great artists. Tragically, neither Casals nor Picasso ever saw their mother country again.

Casals is remembered today not only as a consummate artist, for his extraordinary contribution to the world of music, but also for his voice as a pacifist, and his impassioned stand on human rights. He lived through two world wars as well as the Spanish Civil War. 

Should you ever find yourself in the small town of Prades, you might want to attend the Pablo Casals Festival. It was created by Casals in 1950 and is held annually from the end of July to mid-August. After the Spanish Civil War and the victory in Spain of fascism, Casals refused to play in public. It was his peace protest. In 1950, the bicentenary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, musicians from all over the world declared that if Casals would not play in public at concerts, they would come to him, to his village, his home. Thus was born the Festival pf Prades, now known as Festival Pablo Casals. It has drawn over the years the finest of the world's chamber musicians and audiences from everywhere.

I thought I would also mention, because for me it resonates after the preposterous renaming of the Kennedy Centre last week, that President John F Kennedy and his First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy invited Casals to play at the White House. He performed in the White House East Room on 13th November 1961.

I found this photo by Robert Knudsen on the internet. It was taken at the White House after Casal's concert. Thanks to the copyright owner.

I hope you have enjoyed a pleasant Christmas in the company of loved ones and that 2026 will bring peace to our deeply troubled world. I am writing this from Marseille where I am working on my next novel set predominantly during the Second World War. Marseille was a vital and vibrant hub for fugitives trying to escape Nazism. It was the last free port in France and became known as the Port of Exiles.

My most recent novel, (not a war story!), ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE, is available as an e-book or paperback and can be found in all good bookshops. Here is a link to the Kindle edition:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Summer-Provence-olives-Margolyes-ebook/dp/B0DQZS6ZCM/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

As well as offering the above links to the magnificent pieces of music played by Casals, I would like to include a quote from Lorca: 

"I will always be on the side of people who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace."

It rings very true for today, doesn't it? 

I pray that 2026 brings an end to the wars we are witnessing and that several western governments are supporting, and that we can find resolutions to the escalating world conflicts. Might I also dare to pray for the world to be blessed with leaders who have their people's health and welfare at the heart of their policies?

Art, the arts, artists and their voices for peace, are vital lifelines in times of conflict and dissension. It takes courage to take a stand. My huge respect for those who do.

Happy New Year to you all. Peace on Earth. 

www.caroldrinkwater.com

Scarlet Beauties as ancient as Olive Drupes by Carol Drinkwater

Flowering Pomegranate tree in our garden in the South of France

Various parts of a Pomegranate

Tangerines remind me of childhood Christmases. Can you recall that tangy aroma once you’d pierced the skin with your thumb, peeled it away and the juice began to spray out like an ignited sparkler? Dates were rare in my childhood home. Amber-coloured like big sad eyes, dry and sugary, they arrived in elongated oval boxes, shaped as though to contain school pencils. Each lid had a coloured illustration of a one-humped camel, head held high, clopping over sand.
“It’s a desert the camel is crossing,” explained my father who had spent his war with the RAF gang show entertaining the troops in Africa and the Middle East. He regularly recounted tales to me of Arabian nights, magic and mischief in hot climates and he frequently imitated haunting nocturnal sounds of the desert. His stories, true or exaggerated, gave me a hunger for travel, a desire to uncover the roots of where these exotic foods we ate on special occasions were originally sourced. I longed to hitch a ride with one of those caravans.

It is not surprising then that once I had settled in the south of France on our olive farm, I set off on a seventeen-month journey in search of the history of the olive tree and the early cultivation of its stoned fruit. It is also not surprising that during those months on the road, other flavours, foods, fruits began to excite my interest as well. One was the delectable pomegranate.

When I was in Malta, I stayed in the home of a fascinating couple who were singlehandedly at that stage attempting to ‘re-green’ their island, to reintroduce their neighbours to Malta’s once renowned olive culture by planting saplings grafted with cuttings from a tiny grove of giant Roman trees still flourishing in the twenty-first century on a southern tip of the island.



One morning when I went into breakfast, I spotted on their table a locally-fired pottery dish piled high with pomegranates. Such beautiful fruits, I remarked. Sammy, my host, immediately chose the ripest, skilfully opened up its leathery shell, allowing the juice to bleed on to his plate. He handed it across to me to enjoy. Its seeds and sweet, sweet juice clung to my chin.

I knew that, along with olives and grapes, it was a biblical crop and that it was a fruit much prized in antiquity. I had come across artifacts designed with it at the hauntingly beautiful Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit, on the Syrian coast near Latakia, but I had not known that camel trails traversing Africa invariably carried pomegranates. In arid climes, the fruit was an essential source of liquid; it was deemed to be a super-food (I doubt anyone back then used my host’s modern description!). Along with the olive, this unusual fruit’s complex history was drawing my attention. Like the olive, it has an honoured place in the religious beliefs of the three western monotheisms. It is mentioned in the Quran, the Torah, the Old Testament, Babylonian texts, Greek mythology, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and has been used many times as a Christian image of fertility and eternity (see Celia Rees’ HG post on the Madonna del Parto ). It also found its place in Egyptian mythology. Pomegranates were cultivated in Egypt before Moses was born. Look at this exquisite silver pomegranate vase from 1323 B.C found in the tomb of Tutankhamen.

There are some who believe that this may be the fruit that grew on the tree of life while other religious academics have claimed it was the pomegranate and not the humble apple that tempted Eve on the tree of knowledge.

Although one single fruit can produce anything up to 2,000 seeds, Jewish tradition teaches 613 seeds, one for each mitzvot or commandment in the Torah. Designs of the fruit were woven in blue and purple fabric into the hems of the High Priests’ robes. Brass pomegranates were also found as border designs on the capitols of two pillars of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is traditional to eat the fruit at Rosh Hashanah. It represents wisdom and knowledge to the Jews.

In The Odyssey, Homer describes them growing in Corfu, in the fertile gardens at King Alcinous’ palace (Alcinous was leader of the Phaeacians. His people settled in Scherie, modern Corfu, possibly arriving from Sicily).

Sicilian fruit

The Romans imported their pomegranates from Libya, which was also one of their most lucrative olive-producing regions.

Although not a symbol of peace, it is revered as a divine gift by Middle Eastern nations who today are fighting one other; its roots lie with the roots of so many of those divided peoples.

The pomegranate is, as was the olive tree originally, a small drought-resistant plant that botanists would more accurately describe as a large shrub. The difference is that the olive is not deciduous. In the Middle East, both of these fruit-bearing trees can be traced back to 4,000 BC.

Its name, Pomegranate originates from Medieval Latin, pomum granatum, meaning ‘seeded apple’. In Herbrew, it is rimmon.

Since millennia, it has been cultivated in Persia – modern-day Iran, as well as Iraq, Israel, Syria, Mesopotamia: the cradle of the Olive Route. It was traded by commercial travellers along the Silk Road and found its way to China. Today in Southeast Asia, it is a highly-prized fruit, a symbol of abundance.

I asked three Chinese students staying with us what the pomegranate meant to them. One, from the south, recounted a lovely story, perhaps a stanza from a Chinese poem? When a lover declares his affections to the woman of his dreams, if she in return is equally attracted, she wears a robe the colour of a pomegranate and allows her suitor to rest his head between her knees.
I suspect that the robes were the scarlet of the flowers rather than the more discreet red of the fruit’s thick skin.

fruit blossom

In Greece, the fruit played an important role in the nation’s classical mythology. It was the fruit of the dead, the underworld... The goddess Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and forced to live in his underworld. Her mother, Demeter, goddess of the harvests, mourned her daughter’s loss and caused all green things to cease to grow. Zeus stepped in and commanded Hades to return the girl, lest the earth grow arid and die. Hades, smart fellow that he was, knowing that no food was to be consumed in the underworld, tricked Persephone into consuming six pomegranate seeds (to quench her thirst from the hot fires perhaps?). The result was that she was condemned to spend six months of every year with Hades underground. Here was the ancient Greeks’ explanation of winter, of the change in the seasons.

Persephone  - Empress of Hades
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Today, in Greece, a porcelain fruit is frequently offered to those moving house. Sometimes, an actual fruit is thrown to the ground. As it splits open, the juice seeps out and blesses the new home and its inhabitants.

Granada, Spanish for pomegranate, named one of its most magnificent Andalucian cities after it. It is the symbol of the city. Every street sign has the fruit painted above it. Federico Garcia Lorca, poet, native of Granada, victim of the Spanish Civil War, executed beneath an olive tree, wrote of the pomegranate:
‘The fruit is hard and skull-like on the outside, but on the inside it contains the blood of the wounded earth.’

Coat of Arms of Granada

Pomegranates were possibly introduced to Spain by the Moors after their arrival in 711 AD. However, I like to fancy that it was earlier, that they were transported to the peninsula’s southern shores by the Phoenicians who sailed the knowledge of olive cultivation from the coast of what today is Lebanon, all around the Mediterranean. Then, passing beyond the Pillars of Hercules, they founded their trading post of Gadir along the way, (modern-day Cadiz), before pushing the learned world, its knowledge of botany, maps and exploration further, out into the Atlantic Sea. The Phoenicians were not conquerors; they were traders and they took their business to the coastal cities of Essaouira in Morocco and Portugal in the north. Some say they crossed the Atlantic waters and were the first discoverers of the Americas, but there is no solid evidence, so far, of that.
Whether the pomegranate first reached the Untied States earlier I do not know but it was certainly brought to the Americas by the Spanish Conquistadores. Trees growing wild were found as far afield as US Georgia in the eighteenth century...

I could go on. I haven’t touched upon the fruit’s medicinal or cosmetic properties. What excites me is nature’s role in our evolution, our human history, our diet. It is an interactive story. The seeds of history growing wild, nurtured initially by one or several tribes until the knowledge spreads, until we begin to trade, to battle for land to grow our produce, to cultivate, to protect our knowledge and our crops.
Who knows -  The Pomegranate Route could be my next travel book!

I will finish with a word from Shakespeare, spoken by the young Juliet...

Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

and these more erotic lines from the Song of Solomon:

'I would lead you and bring you into the house of my mother, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. I would give you spiced wine to drink, the juice of pomegranates.'

I have never tasted pomegranate wine, but I certainly intend to now.

Carol Drinkwater

www.caroldrinkwater.com