Josep Rafael

Josep Rafael Carreras Bulbena

Barcelona , 23 March 1860
Barcelona , 2 January 1931

Musicologist

Musicologist and composer

Highly educated, he started studying cello at twenty-one years of age with Antoni Lupresti. He soon became interested in music history and acquainted Hugo Riemann and Hans Richter, who made him aware of the need to recover the music of the past. Departing from a positivist and philological perspective, he studied the Iberian oratorio (El oratorio musical, 1906) and other historical topics such as the first operas performed in Barcelona. Together with Domènec Mas, as a members of the Junta d'Obra of Sant Pere de les Pueles, he encouraged the creation of a chapel to newly perform polyphonic music of the Golden Age. In collaboration with Lupresti, he composed the oratorio Saliendo de Egipto with text by Jacint Verdaguer.