Pau Casals i Defilló

Sculpture of Pau Casals located near the house where he was born in El Vendrell

Pau Casals i Defilló (December 29, 1876 – October 22, 1973), best known in his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Catalonian cellist of world reknown..

Casals was an ardent supporter of the Spanish Republican government. After its defeat in 1939, Casals vowed not to return to Spain until democracy had been restored, although he did not live to see the end of the Franco dictatorial regime.

Casals was born in El Vendrell, Catalonia. His father, Carles Casals i Ribes (1852-1908), was a parish organist and choirmaster. He gave Casals instruction in piano, violin, and organ. At age four Casals could play the violin, piano and flute. When Casals was eleven, he first heard the cello performed by a group of traveling musicians and formed an instant creative connection with the instrument.

Casals often spoke and wrote of his mother as the person to whom he owed his entire musical career. In 1888 his mother, Pilar Defilló de Casals, who was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico of Catalonian parents, took him to Barcelona despite her husband’s pessimistic lack of support for their son’s future as a musician, where he enrolled in the Escola Municipal de Música. There he studied cello, theory, and piano. He made prodigious progress as a cellist; on February 23, 1891 he gave a solo recital in Barcelona at the age of fourteen. He graduated from the Escola with honors two years later.