2022 – RHYTHM

With 2022 marking the centenary of the death of the Tortosa-born musician and composer, Felip Pedrell, the theme of the ninth edition of the A Cel Obert festival is Rhythm.
The spectrum that the concept of rhythm encompasses is as concrete in its meaning as it is plural in its aspects: rhythm of life, circadian rhythm, biological rhythm, respiratory rhythm, or sinus rhythm. But also musical rhythm and compositional rhythm. In addition, rhythm of reading, poetic rhythm, visual rhythm, rhythm of light or natural rhythm.

Human evolution has been linked, probably intuitively and unconsciously, to understanding what it is and how the rhythm of things works. Rhythm is an internal structure that temporarily defines everything that happens and everything that happens to us: it is who regulates the content of things and also the continent of them. Without rhythm, there would be no order and nothing could be organised. Chaos would reign continuously, and nothing would be possible except for those moments where chance and coincidence will it.

1 [Comm.] Proportion of time between various movements, sounds, phenomena, or repeated acts.

1 [Comm.] In a succession of sounds, syllables, beats, etc., a way of succeeding and alternating strong and weak, long and short, especially that which occurs periodically in a musical phrase, in a verse, in a beat, etc.

2 [Zool.] Succession, at regular intervals, of contractions of the muscles of the heart.

Source: Institute for Catalan Studies, Dictionary of the Catalan Language.

1. Regular order in the succession of things.

2. Perceptual sensation produced by the combination and regular succession of syllables, accents and pauses in, especially poetic, speech.

3. Proportion maintained between accents, pauses and repetitions of various durations in a musical composition.

Source: Royal Spanish Academy, Dictionary of the Spanish Language.