Enrique Granados (1867 - 1916) Spanish

        Enrique Granados  (Wikipedia article)

        A List of Granados' Compositions


Who was Granados?

           Enrique Granados Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music.  Granados 

      wrote piano music, chamber music (a piano quintet, a piano trio, music for violin and piano), songs, 

      zarzuelas, and an orchestral tone poem based on Dante's Divine Comedy.  Granados was a significant 
      influence on at least two other famous Spanish composers and musicians, Manuel de Falla and 
      Pablo Casals.

               Granados was born in 1867, his father was an officer in the Spanish army.  As a young man 

      he studied piano in Barcelona.  In 1887 he went to Paris to study.  He was unable to become a student 

      at the Paris Conservatoire, but he was able to take private lessons with a conservatoire professor,  

      Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot and with Felip Pedrell.  He returned to Barcelona in 1889. His first 

      successes were at the end of the 1890s, with the opera María del Carmen, which attracted the 

      attention of King Alfonso XIII.  

            Today Granados is mostly remembered for his 1911 piano suite Goyescas which became his 

      most famous work.  It is a set of six pieces based on paintings of Francisco Goya.  Such was the 

      success of this work that he was encouraged to expand it.  He wrote an opera based on the subject 

      in 1914, but the outbreak of World War I forced the European premiere to be canceled. It was 

      performed for the first time in New York City on 28 January 1916 and was very well received.

             Returning to Spain from New York via England, Granados, age 48, and his wife died when 

      the ferry on which they were crossing the English Channel was torpedoed by a German U-Boat.  

     Granados' music can be divided into basically three styles or periods:

      1)   A romantic style including such pieces as Escenas Románticas and Escenas Poeticas.

      2)   A more typically nationalist, Spanish style including such pieces as Danzas Españolas (Spanish Dances), 

            6 Piezas sobre cantos populares españoles (Six Pieces based on popular Spanish songs).

      3)   The Goya (Goyesca) period, which includes the piano suite Goyescas, the opera Goyescas, 

            various Tonadillas for voice and piano, and other works.


Selected Piano Works:

        Goyescas, Op. 11, subtitled Los majos enamorados  (The Gallants in Love)  (1911)

                                     (From paintings by Francisco Goya)


                     Los requiebros  (The Compliments)

                     Coloquio en la reja  (Conversation at the Window)

                     El fandango de candil  (Fandango by Candlelight)

                     Quejas, o La Maja y el ruiseñor  (Complaint, or the Girl and the Nightingale)

                     El Amor y la muerte (Balada)  (Ballad of Love and Death)

                               Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez based her 1940 song Bésame Mucho on this melody.

                     Epilogo: Serenata del espectro  (Epilogue: Serenade to a Spectre)

                     El pelele: Escena Goyesca  (The Puppet: Goya Scene)

        Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 49  (1895)

                       Emmanuele Baldini & Davi Graton, violins, Peter Pas, Viola, 
                       Rodrigo Silveira Andrade, Cello, Luiz Guilherme Pozzi, piano