Next Thursday, October 21th will happen the public presentation of the Sor Society of Barcelona (SSB), an association for music research and dissemination. The event will take place at the Music Museum of Barcelona, located in L'Auditori, thanks to the collaboration that has the museum with the Catalan Society of Musicology, a subsidiary of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, and which has also established a partnership agreement with this new society, devoted to research and claim the figure of the famous composer and guitarist Ferran (Fernando) Sor (Barcelona 1778 - Paris 1839). Besides his pioneering and definitive great contribution on the field of concert music for guitar, yet few people know that ...

• The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow ballet opened with a ballet by Sor.
• At 19, he premiered an opera in the Teatre de la Santa Creu of Barcelona.
• He composed symphonies, concertos and quartets.
• He composed works for napoleonic marshalls in the Peninsular War, but also patriotic songs for the resistants to invasion.
• He was knighted by the Pope of Rome, but Ferdinand the VIIth not allowed him to return to Spain for havin been friend of the Frenhc.
• In the concert and recording field is definitely one of the best represented Catalan composers, along with Granados and Albéniz.

A group of performers, historians and musicologists with a common interest in guitar and his personality have created the SSB in order to fill a long gap, as was the lack of an institution devoted to this musician in the city where he was born and where developed the first part of his career. The members of the SSB believe in the music of Sor and think that, apart from the merit of having been the best guitar composer of his time, has also been one of the leading composers of Spanish Classicism and early Romanticism, both in vocal and symphonic fields. Moreover, the SSB also would cover the research and dissemination of music and musicians of his time and his environment, as well as their contemporaries (Dionisio Aguado, François de Fossa, etc.),precursors (Federico Moretti, Fernando Ferandiere...) and followers (Josep Brocà, Josep Viñas, Julián Arcas, etc.) The SSB is planning to organise public events (concerts, recitals, conferences, round tables...), but also to materialise publications (scores, cds, website...) focusing on new or unknown works by this composer, as well as a definitive catalogue of all his music and related bibliography. Address: Thursday, 21th october 2010, at 19:00, in the Museu de la Música de Barcelona L’Auditori. C/ Lepant, 150. Barcelona (Spain)