El cant dels ocells (Song of the Birds)

• This is a traditional Catalan Christmas carol, famously arranged for cello by Pablo Casals.¹
• In the lyrics to this carol, every kind of bird offers its own gentle lullaby to the Christ Child.²
• Casals composed this as “a song of exile,” to remember his homeland of Catalonia after its takeover (1939) by Francisco Franco. Casals played this often, for example as recital encore, for President Kennedy, for the U.N. ³

“These sounds may be like a gentle echo of the nostalgia we all feel for Catalonia. These sentiments must make us all work together … with the hope for a tomorrow of peace, when Catalonia will again be Catalonia.”

Casals on El cant des ocells, quoted in Richard E. Rodda, “Song of the Birds, Traditional Catalan Folk Song”

1. Gautier Capuçon, liner notes to Intuition, Gautier Capuçon, Erato 0190295715854, 2017.
2. Richard E. Rodda, “Song of the Birds, Traditional Catalan Folk Song,” The Kennedy Center, accessed July 11, 2019, http://www.kennedy-center.org/artist/composition/4643.
3. Ibid.