Quick Facts
Biography
José María Ventura Casas (Alcalá la Real, 1817 - Figueres, 1875), popularly known as Pep Ventura, was a Spanish musician and composer who consolidated the long sardana and reformed the cobla, adding instruments to give it its current formation.
Life
Ventura's family came from the Catalan region of Empordà. He was born in Andalucia, where his father, a native of Roses, was stationed with the military. Two years later, the family returned to Empordà. The boy was soon left an orphan and went to live with his paternal grandfather. He learned the office of tailor and notions of solfège from his future father-in-law, Joan Llandrich, director of the cobla that bore his name. Around 1848, Ventura inherited the direction of the Llanrich cobla.
Ventura considered the sardana form too limited, always 98 measures and hardly two minutes in length, emerging as an important figure in the period of innovation of the sardana with an unlimited number of measures (long sardanes) in opposition to the traditional, short sardana.
He altered the composition of the cobla, which he likewise considered too limited, transforming the archaic cobla de tres quartans (bagpipes, shawm, flabiol and tambori) into a formation that was initially composed of five or seven musicians but which progressively incorporated brass instruments. He organized the woodwind and brass instruments into two rows, headed by a double bass. Other cobles adopted this model, which has endured with only small changes.
Ventura died in 1875 in Figueres, leaving his mark on Catalan musical culture.
His melodies, arranged by masters like Pujo, Nicolau, and Lluís Albert, have made Pep Ventura immortal. He left 312 long sardanes, many of them untitled, and many short sardanes and choral compositions. His opus of 550 pieces is conserved, in Ventura's originally handwriting, in the archives of the Orfeó Català.