Barcelona’s Sagrada Família will host 600 choristers on 10 June, when Pope Leo XIV presides over a mass marking 100 years since Antoni Gaudí’s death. The singers will be placed in the basilica’s choir lofts, 15 and 20 metres high, as Gaudí designed.
The ceremony echoes a similar event in 2010, when hundreds of choristers sang during the temple’s dedication with Pope Benedict XVI. Juan de la Rubia, the Sagrada Família’s head organist, described the effect as “a shower of sound, which reaches you little by little and fills you.”
De la Rubia and choir director Pere Lluís Biosca are working on a repertoire meant to make an impact on those attending and to draw international attention, as happened in 2010. Choirs from across Catalonia, including the Orfeó Català, will take part.
Esteve Camps, president of the Sagrada Família Construction Board, told the Betevé programme Objectiu Sagrada Família that the 2010 event showed Gaudí’s architectural vision, saying that “a sound system was not needed.” Theologian Francesc Torralba, also on the programme, said Gaudí wanted music to lift people towards God and thought carefully about the spaces from which singers could do that.
Gaudí also planned where different voice types would stand. Children’s voices were to be above the altar, women’s choirs on the left side of the nave, looking at the altar, and men’s choirs on the right, following the inner outline of the side nave façades. The choir of blessings was to be above the main door, known as the Jubé.
Galdric Santana, director of the Gaudí Chair, said Gaudí was clear that choirs had to be placed high up because he imagined distant romantic voices, where the source of the sound is not obvious. Santana added that Gaudí carried out an empirical test at the Sagrada Família in 1921, despite the unfinished acoustics, to see the effect of a large mass choir.
