By: Ferran Garcés 

Gaudí was born in June, on the 25th of 1852, and died in the same month, on the 10th of 1926. In other words, the Mediterranean architect was born and died halfway between the summer solstice, the day with the most light of the year. It is, therefore, a good moment to remember the importance of light in Gaudí’s work. 

However, it is not just any light. He himself made sure to specify which kind on various occasions. The list of quotes is long, but they can all be summed up in one word: Mediterranean. To illustrate this, today we’ll comment on a joke by Gaudí that is impossible to understand without considering the importance of Mediterranean light for him. 

Clarity vs. Fog… 

Mediterranean light must have been a recurring topic in conversations with Gaudí, as different sources mention it (see: The Light, the Light of the Mediterranean). As Joan Bergós, a biographer of Gaudí who knew him personally, recalls: “He liked to contrast the clarity of Mediterranean philosophers with the fog of the northerners.” (1) As an example: 

“Descartes’ fundamental statement loses clarity as it moves northward; the syllogism I doubt, therefore I exist is the most illogical one can conceive; the logical one is I doubt, therefore I am ignorant. Mediterranean philosophers only say I, because that alone already indicates existence. This darkness reaches its peak with Kant (who was from Königsberg, near Russia) and is the same darkness of the nihilists and Bolsheviks.” 

Isidre Puig-Boada, another biographer and contemporary of Gaudí, recalls these other phrases: 

“Virtue lies in the middle point; Mediterranean means in the middle of the earth. On its shores of medium light and at 45 degrees, which is the light that best defines bodies and reveals their form, is where the great artistic cultures have flourished, due to this balance of light: neither too much nor too little.” (2)

“Art, then, is not from the North; science is theirs. Architecture is Mediterranean.” (3)

Brief Musical Context 

To understand the joke—or anecdote—we must also briefly mention Lluís Millet, the person who tells it. He was one of Gaudí’s closest friends and a major public figure in the music scene of Barcelona (see: Music II). Due to his role as founder and director of the Orfeó Català and the Palau de la Música Catalana, he organized visits to Barcelona by major European musical personalities. Gaudí was always invited to those concerts, and the joke we refer to today took place during one of those invitations. The person mentioned in the anecdote is Albert Schweitzer, theologian, doctor, and musician, born in Alsace, then part of the German Empire. 

In the modernist era, almost everyone had a great passion for Germanic music, especially that of Wagner. However, Gaudí seemed to prefer Catalan folk music and Gregorian chant, the other musical pillars of his time (see: Music III). At least, that’s what the following anecdote, collected by Lluís Millet in 1926 shortly after Gaudí’s burial, seems to express. (4)

Gaudí’s Joke 

“When we first performed Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at the Orfeó Català, I took Dr. Schweitzer to the Sagrada Família, and he was amazed by the work, showing great interest in the author, a man so small in stature and of such prodigious genius.
Schweitzer, this also extraordinary personality, great apostle of the sublime Cantor of Leipzig, wanted to know Gaudí’s opinion on the St. Matthew Passion.
—Have you heard it? —he asked—. What did you think?
Gaudí was momentarily surprised and then replied:
—I didn’t think I’d like it so much… but —he added with a sly smile— I think these guys —pointing at me— have fixed it up a bit.
[…]
Bach’s Passion had moved him with its deep devotion and commanding power, but it was Germanic art, and he saw it as distant from Mediterranean light. He sought to defend his creed through the interpretation given by the local element, born under the luminous sea that surrounds us. Needless to say, his paradoxical response made us laugh.” 

Notes 

(1) Bergós i Massó, Joan (2011). Gaudí. L’home i l’obra. Lunwerg, Barcelona, p. 30.  

(2) Puig-Boada, Isidre (1980). El pensament de Gaudí. Compilació de textos i comentaris. Barcelona: Publicacions del Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, p. 98.  

(3) Ibidem, pp. 118–120.  

(4) Casasús, Josep Maria (10/06/2016). “Antoni Gaudí”. Diari Ara.
https://www.ara.cat/opinio/antoni-gaudi1291619534.html