Not so famous in the world of art song as the Tonadillas al estilo antiguo but in some ways more truly representative of their composer's craft, the seven songs of Enrique Granados' Canciones amatorias for voice and piano, H. 24—settings of a series of Spanish folk love poems—cannot (like many other works by Granados) be dated reliably. They were probably composed sometime during the first decade of the twentieth century. Whereas the Tonadillas are by definition compact songs (the word tonadilla basically means little song) in a traditional style, the seven Canciones amatorias are longer and more flexibly built songs, spun from imaginative, wandering melodies and silk-textured piano lines that dip from time to time into the trove of Spanish/Latin American folk idioms that inform, at a basic level, every aspect of Granados' highly personal language.

The songs are: 1. "Descúbrase el pensamiento de mi secreto cuidado," 2. "Mañanica era," 3. "Llorad, corazón, que tenéis razón," 4. "Mira que soy niña, ¡amor, déjame!" 5. "No lloréis ojuelos," 6. "Iban al pinar," and 7. "Gracia mía."

© All Music Guide