Enrique Granados (1867-1916); ESP

Enrique Granados (1867–1916) was born in Lleida, Catalonia, and became one of Spain’s leading pianist-composers. He studied piano in Barcelona with Joan Baptista Pujol and composition with Felipe Pedrell, whose advocacy of a national Spanish school influenced Granados and his contemporaries. Further study in Paris brought him into contact with French musical life before he returned to Barcelona, where he built a distinguished career as pianist, teacher, and composer and founded a piano academy that later became the Academia Marshall. His life ended tragically during World War I when the passenger ferry Sussex, on which he and his wife were traveling across the English Channel, was torpedoed by a German submarine.

Granados’s music combines Romantic lyricism and sophisticated piano writing with an imaginative evocation of Spanish history and character. His masterpiece is the piano suite Goyescas, inspired by the paintings and world of Francisco Goya and notable for its elaborate textures, ornamental detail, and passionate atmosphere. Granados later transformed its material into the opera Goyescas, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1916. Other enduring works include the Danzas españolas and the piano piece Allegro de concierto. Together with Albéniz and Falla, Granados helped establish a modern Spanish concert tradition with an international reach.

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Granados (y Campina), Enrique (b Lérida, 1867; d at sea, 1916). Sp. composer and pianist. Début recital Barcelona 1890. Founded Soc. of Classical Concerts, Barcelona, 1900, and his own pf. sch., Academia Granados, 1901. Famous as brilliant pianist especially of his own comps. These pf. pieces are elegant and poetic; so are his songs, many of them in the style of 18th-cent. tonadillas. Best known of his orch. comps. is the Intermezzo from his opera Goyescas, based on the pf. suite of the same name which created a sensation in Paris in 1914. He and his wife were drowned when the liner Sussex was torpedoed by a Ger. U-boat in the Eng. Channel. Prin. works:

ZARZUELAS & OPERAS: Maria del Carmen (1898); Petrarca, Picarol (1901); Follet (1903); Gaziel (1906); Liliana (1911); Goyescas (1914-15).

ORCH.: suites: Elisenda (c.1910); Navidad; Suite Arabe; Suite Gallega; La Nit del mor; sym.-poem; Serenata; Tres danzas españolas (orch. de Grignon).

VOICE & PIANO: Colección de canciones amatorias; Colección de tonadillas, escritas en estilo antiguo, etc.

PIANO: 10 Sp. Dances (1892-1900); 6 Pieces on Sp. Popular Songs; Rapsodia Aragonesa; Escénas Romanticas; 7 valses poéticos; Bocetos; 6 Studies in Expression; Goyescas (1911).

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