The bare facts of the life of Joaquim Homs, the performance of his music internationally, notably at the ISCM Festivals in Paris, Warsaw and Stockholm in the 1930s and the subsequent honours he has received in his native Barcelona, and from the Spanish Government, are of less importance than the music on which his distinction truly rests. It is through works such as Cementiri de Sinera, the second wind quintet in memory of Roberto Gerhard, the setting of Rabindranath Tagore in Ocells Perdts, his eight string quartets, the Two Soliloquies and, indeed, any one of more than two hundred works that we shall find the real Joaquim Homs, his suffering, his joy, his whole life, expressed through his music.
