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1 Design Discourse Vol.III No.3 April 2008 The Palau de la Música Catalana: Its Musical Symbols and Felip Pedrell Mutsumi FUKUSHIMA University of Barcelona, SPAIN fukushimamutsumi@hotmail.com The Palau de la Música Catalana is a concert hall that has a wide range of material, which is significant for its architectural, religious and folk aspects, and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1997. Although the decoration of the Palau de la Música Catalana is often a clear reference to the owner, the Orfeó Català, and to Lluís Millet, its director, it also exhibits the influence of Felip Pedrell. This study aims to analyze iconographic musical scenes from throughout the building and tries to justify the influence of Pedrell in them. Keywords: Musical iconography, Spain, Catalonia, Modernism Introduction The artistic movement that emerged throughout Europe in the late nineteenth century has several names depending on the country in which it is situated. In the case of Spain it is called Modernism. Broadly stated, in Spain, however, the most active production of artistic expression was not in the capital Madrid but in Catalonia, the capital of which is Barcelona. Catalonia, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the east and by France to the north, grew its own culture during its long history and folk struggle. Modernism specifically indicates the time between 1888, the year of the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, and 1920, after the end of the First World War. By then, notable artists were Santiago Rusiñol (1861-1931), Ramon Casas (1866-1932) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), as also were Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) and Enrique Granados (1867-1916) famous as a composer and a performer, respectively. In the world of literature stood Joan Maragall (1860-1911) and Víctor Català (1869-1966). It is known that the artists were usually found at the cafeteria Els quatre gats (The Four Cats) that is still open in Barcelona today. However, nowadays, the word Modernism is tied deeply to architecture. The most representative architects are Lluís Domènech i Montaner (1850-1923), Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) and Josep Puig i Cadafalch (1867-1956) among others. After the demolition of the old walls in 1854, in the Eixample district of Barcelona, a project which was implemented by the urban planning of Ildefons Cerdà (1815-1876), these architects built a range of very original works. Thanks to the progressive growth of the industry, the economy in Barcelona experienced a golden age where construction commissioned by the bourgeois class produced one building after another. In the buildings of that period we find naturalism and geometric shapes, whose characteristics match finial styles based on the figures of flowers and plants, namely the taste that was disseminated throughout Europe of the last century.