Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados was born in Lérida, Spain, on July 27, 1867. After completing his music study at Conservatories in Barcelona and Madrid, and privately with Charles de Bériot in Paris, he earned his living playing the piano in Spanish restaurants. In 1898, his first opera was produced in Madrid, Maria del Carmen. The national identity of this music was to characterize all of Granados’ subsequent works and place him among the most significant of Spanish national composers. His most famous composition is Goyescas, a remarkable series of piano pieces inspired by the paintings of Goya; the composer later adapted this music for an opera, also called Goyescas, which received its world première in New York at the Metropolitan Opera on January 28, 1918. Granados came to the United States to attend this performance, after which he visited Washington, D.C. to play the piano for President Wilson at the White House. He was aboard the ship Folkstone, sailing from Folkstone to Dieppe, when it was torpedoed by a German U-Boat during World War I on March 24, 1916, bringing him to his death.
In their rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary, Granados’ best music is unmistakably Spanish. Perhaps his most famous single piece of music is an orchestral “Intermezzo” from the opera Goyescas. He wrote it after he had fully completed his score to the opera because the directors of the Metropolitan Opera filled the need of an instrumental interlude. This sensual Spanish melody is as famous in various transcriptions (including one for cello and piano by Gaspar Cassadó) as it is in its original orchestral version.
Twelve Spanish Dances, for piano, op. 37 (1893) are also popular. The most frequently performed of these is the fifth in E minor named Andaluza (or Playera). Fritz Kreisler transcribed it for violin and piano, one of numerous adaptations. The sixth in D major is also familiar—Rondalla Aragonesa, a jota, transcribed for violin and piano by Jacques Thibaud.