Joan Lamote de Grignon

Lamote de Grignon i Bocquet was born in Barcelona of French parents, his family soon moved to Tortosa, where he began his studies with the Tortosa maestro José Abarcat Sebastià. At the end of the 1880s, he entered the Conservatori del Liceu, where he studied composition with Antoni Nicolau, violin with Gabriel Balart and piano with Pere Tintorer.

 Shortly afterwards, he became a teacher at the aforementioned center, where he ended up as director, while also teaching at the recently created Municipal School of Music of Barcelona, where he taught Superior Solfeggio, Harmony and Instrumental Ensemble.

In 1902 he began his activity as orchestra conductor at the head of the Asociación Musical de Barcelona, which since 1888 had been trying to stabilize the symphonic and chamber concerts in the Sociedad Musical Barcelonesa. He presented himself as a conductor in April 1902, conducting Beethoven's Violin Concerto. In 1910, he obtained by competitive examination the position of major musician of the Municipal Band of Barcelona, a position equivalent to that of conductor. However, his advanced musical orientation led him to be rejected by the consistory and he was not able to become the director of the organization until a few years later.

That same year he founded the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (1910-1925). In 1913, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert of his own works and, having achieved great prestige as a conductor, in 1914 the Barcelona City Council confirmed him at the helm of the Municipal Band, which he took to the highest heights of its prestige by converting it into a Symphonic Orchestra of Wind Instruments and enriching its repertoire. Such was its prestige that Richard Strauss himself offered to conduct it in 1925. With this group, Lamote also tried the popular music cycles, the so-called Popular Symphonic Concerts, which from 1929 until the end of the war obtained great popular favor.

At the end of the Civil War, he was removed from his post as conductor and exiled to Valencia with his son; he contributed decisively to the creation of the Municipal Orchestra of the capital of the Turia, consolidated as one of the great Spanish symphony orchestras.

In 1947 he returned to Barcelona; he took part in the first course of instrumentation for cobla organized by the Institución Musical Julio Garreta in 1948, as a first step towards the recovery of Catalan culture in the post-war period, and died a few months later.