Pujol, Juan (EN)

Pujol Juan Pablo, baptised 18 June 1570 Matarò (near Barcelona), †17 May 1626, Barcelona, Spanish composer and organist. Following his music studies in Barcelona, in March 1593 he became assistant maestro di capilla at the cathedral there, in the autumn of that year he became maestro di capilla at the cathedral in Tarragona, and from 1596 to 1612 he held this position at the church of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza. In 1600, he was ordained a priest, and from 1612 until the end of his life, he was maestro di capilla of the Barcelona Cathedral. 

Pujol, gifted with great compositional ease, is one of the most outstanding Spanish composers of the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. Most of his works date from his time as maestro di capilla at Barcelona Cathedral. The main focus of Pujol’s work is sacred music; he was one of the first Spanish composers to use the polyphonic technique on a large scale, but he did not use basso continuo. His two-choir masses are among his most outstanding works, combining full-sounding harmony in chordal passages with rich counterpoint in polyphonic sections; despite the conservative yet sophisticated counterpoint, the lively rhythms give these works energy and vigour. Pujol clearly sought to dramatise the musical flow, and the liturgical text is rendered with less reverence than in the works of other Spanish composers of the period, which led to his work being disparaged by some Spanish musicologists. In all his sacred compositions, Pujol used choral cantus firmi – either as the basis for the entire composition or only for fragments of it. The psalms for four voices are characterised by a rich inventiveness in the variation of the psalm cantus firmus. Pujol’s secular work is limited to songs with Spanish and Catalan lyrics and is a typical example of the repertoire that was created at the beginning of the 17th century.

Literature: J. Pavía and Simó Nuevos datos para la biografía de Juan Pujol, “Anuario musical” XXVIII/XXIX, 1973/74; M. Lambea Castro La obra musical de Juan Pablo Pujol sobre textos en castellano, “Anuario musical” XLIV, 1989; F. Bonastre and Bertran, F. Costa, F. Cortès and Mir  Joan Pau Pujol: La música d’una época, Barcelona 1994; J.M. Gregori Música y símbolo en la obra litúrgica de Juan Pujol (1570–1626), “Cuadernos de Arte de la Universidad de Granada” XXVI, 1995; M. Lambea Castro Los villancicos de Joan Pau Pujol (1570–1626): Contribución al estudio del villancico en Cataluña, en el primer tercio del siglo XVII, “Revista de musicologia” XXII, 1999; M. Lambea Castro Los villancicos de Joan Pau Pujol (1570–1626): Contribución al estudio del villancico en Cataluña, “Revista catalana de musicologia” I, 2001; C. Álvarez Escandell El cantoral E-Zac, C-3 Ms 18 de Zaragoza, con obras de Morales, Guerrero, Victoria, Pujol y Berges: Nuevas aportaciones a la vida y obra de Joan Pujol, “Cuadernos de investigación musical” XIV, 2022.