Music For All: Schools of Music

Miquel Tortell i Simó was an important nineteenth-century composer. He was born in Muro in 1802. Known for his choral compositions as well as those for the organ, he was a priest who taught music. One of the schools was that of Lluc Sanctuary.

Tortell's legacy is constantly remembered in Muro. There are concerts in his name, and the municipal school of music takes its name from him. There is also the municipal choir - the Miquel Tortell Choir. The school performed a concert on Tuesday, while the choir will sing at Friday's official opening of the summer fiestas for Sant Joan.

The school of music was established in 1986. An aspect of its role is to develop members of the municipal band of music. This isn't named after Tortell, but it could have been. In 1968 there was some form of local disagreement. The band, which went under the name of the Unión Artística Murense, was disbanded. The proposal was made for a new band to take the name of Tortell. In the end it didn't, and the Unío Artistica Murera (a very slight title adjustment) was eventually founded; it's still going.

Three years before the school's establishment, an official music trust was set up in Muro (Tortell's name was given to this). This trust was significant in that it cemented music firmly within the social and cultural fabric of the municipality. A mission for teaching and for performance placed Muro at the vanguard of a modern movement for music for all the citizens. The band of music and the choir were the public faces of this, but behind the scenes, it was the school which was the basis of this movement. The music - styles and instrumentation - itself diversified, and it continues to do so. Which is the case with schools of music across Majorca.

The history of the island's schools of music in Majorca is shorter than that of the bands of music. The oldest of these bands is the Porreres Filharmònica Porrerenca, which dates from 1858. Palma didn't acquire its first municipal band until 1879, though regimental bands had predated this (the current Palma Band of Music dates from 1966, when it was the Municipal Police Band).

The first school, which was truly a municipal enterprise, wasn't in Majorca. The Mahon Municipal School of Music in Minorca was founded before any band of music was in Majorca. This was in 1832. It would seem that Pollensa had the first genuine municipal school in Majorca - the Academia Musical was established in 1870. The Conservatory in Palma followed nine years later.

The subsequent progress wasn't particularly strong. Indeed, it wasn't until the 1950s that something like a vaguely coherent process was started. A delegation for youth musicians was set up in Palma in 1956. Coherent or not, it still took ten more years for similar delegations to be created in Pollensa and Soller.

It was a development away from Majorca and Spain that was to provide the real impetus. In 1973, the European Music School Union (EMU was formed and became an umbrella organisation for national music school associations in Europe. It can now boast having some four million students in 26 countries. This organisation was significant insofar as it exposed a failing in Spain. The Union of Schools of Music and Dance, the national organisation in Spain, didn't join the EMU until 1998.

The creation of the EMU inspired specific initiatives at municipal level so that there was momentum for Spain to become a part of this organisation. It was to take some time, but municipal schools of music, such as the Miquel Tortell school, were the ones which made it happen. In addition, there was Spanish educational legislation in 1990, which recognised schools of music, and which was followed up by a 1992 order regarding the operation of the schools.

The movement was not based solely on the educational value. The cultural enrichment of municipalities was recognised as being important, as was the principle of social cohesion. The schools of music came to admit all cultural backgrounds and people suffering with disadvantages. Fundamentally, the schools were and are accessible to everyone.

The diversity is now reflected in some of the collaborations that schools have. In Muro's neighbour Sa Pobla, there is one of the most notable of these. It involves the free jazz teaching of the Jimmy Weinstein Traveling School at the time of the annual jazz festival. Muro itself has fully embraced Brazilian percussion styles by backing the Carabassamba Festival. Musically removed this may be from Miquel Tortell and his nineteenth-century compositions, but one would like to think that he would have approved of this music for everyone.

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