The first collection covering the entire life of Pau Casals, this correspondence is of inestimable value. This enormous epistolary exchange with his numerous contacts—including composers, instrumentalists, poets, politicians, intellectuals of the twentieth century—reveals Casals’ personality and what he understood as the inextricable relationship between life and art. As a privileged observer of events and phenomena of his times that were branded onto the contemporary world, among them the First World War, the Second World War, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and Vichy France, he presents in the letters collected in these pages not only the ideas, concerns, and beliefs of a great cellist, meticulous teacher, composer, and conductor, but also a committed artist who became a symbol of peace around the world.

Pau Casals (El Vendrell, 1876 – San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1973) cellist, composer, and conductor, was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century. After triumphing in Paris where he embarked on his soloist career with the conductor Charles Lamoureux, he played in the world’s greatest concert halls. In 1919 he founded the Pau Casals Orchestra in Barcelona and was its conductor until 1936. After Franco’s victory in the Civil War in 1939, he went into exile and France and, in 1965, to Puerto Rico where he continued his personal struggle for peace until his death.