Enrique Granados

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Enrique Granados y Campiña

Enrique Granados y Campiña ( cat. Enric Granados i Campiña ) (born July 27, 1867 in Lleida , Spain , † March 24, 1916 after the torpedoing of the Sussex canal ferry in the English Channel ) was a Spanish composer and pianist . Enrique Granados is considered to be the pioneer of a generation of pianists that is sometimes summarized under the term of the Catalan Pianist School .

Life

Sharon Isbin - Enrique Granados, Spanish Dance number 5 of 12, 1890.
Enrique Granados - danza espanola, op. 37, h. 142 - xii. arabesca

Enrique Granados was the son of the Cuban Calixto José de la Trinidad Granados y Armenteros and the Catalan Enriqueta Elvira Campiña. He studied piano with Ricardo Viñes and composition with Felipe Pedrell , the leading Spanish music theorist and composer of his time. This called for a renewal of Spanish music from the spirit of folklore . Granados is one of the great innovators of Spanish music , along with Pedrell's two other important students Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla .

Granados became an excellent and successful pianist. He mainly wrote songs and piano works. His operas , Zarzuelas and the symphonic poems stand behind the piano music in their meaning. Here the spirited Danzas españolas , the Valses Poeticos , and the poetic Goyescas (1911) take the dominant place. The Goyescas piano cycle , to which Granados was inspired by pictures by the painter Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) and which he dedicated to his wife, depicts popular life during the Goya period. The Goyescas are among Granados' most virtuoso piano compositions. The most famous piece is Quejas ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor (German lamentations or the beautiful girl and the nightingale ), on which the melody of the hit song Bésame mucho , later created by Consuelo Velázquez , is based.

On December 7, 1892, he married María de los Desamparados Gal y Lloveras (called Amparo ) from Valencia in the Monasterio de San Pedro de las Puellas church in Barcelona . The marriage had six children: Eduardo, Solita, Enrique, Victor, Francisco and Natalia. The eldest son, Eduardo Granados Gal (1894–1928), became a pianist, composer and conductor.

Many of his works have also been transcribed for guitar and are part of the standard repertoire of guitarists. There are some outstanding guitar recordings of his works. a. by Andrés Segovia , Narciso Yepes , Julian Bream , John Williams , Pepe Romero , Christopher Parkening , Manuel Barrueco or David Russell . In 1901 Granados founded the Academia Granados (later Academia Marshall ) in Barcelona , which he directed until his death.

The Paris Opera commissioned Granados to compose an opera. Then he began to rework the Goyescas piano cycle into an opera of the same name . However, after the outbreak of World War I , the Paris Opera had to withdraw its commission. The New York Metropolitan Opera , long interested in a piece by a Spanish composer, commissioned Granados to complete the opera. Granados, who had never liked to travel a lot in his life, drove with his wife together with the singing ensemble to the performance of the opera in New York . There he had a happy time, was celebrated and cheered. Among other things, Granados was invited by US President Woodrow Wilson to give a piano recital in the White House , which is why he was unable to return to Spain directly as originally planned; instead he took a later ship to England. On the last leg of the journey home, the French canal ferry Sussex was torpedoed and badly damaged by a German submarine while crossing the English Channel from Folkestone to Dieppe . Granados was able to be rescued at first, but when he saw his wife floating helplessly in the sea, in a desperate attempt at rescue, threw himself back into the floods in which both drowned.

literature

Web links

Commons : Enrique Granados  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Catalan musicians (19th Century AC - 20th Century AC). Generalitat de Catalunya - Culturcat, archived from the original on October 14, 2013 ; accessed on January 21, 2019 (English). There is a section on the Catalan Pianist School .
personal data
SURNAME Granados, Enrique
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Granados y Campiña, Enrique; Granados de la Campiña, Enrique; Granados i Campiña, Enric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Lleida , Catalonia
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1916
Place of death English Channel