Enrique Granados

Born in Lérida, Catalonia, on July 27, 1867, Enrique Granados owes his posterity to his Goyescas and Danses espagnoles for piano. Full name Pantaleón Enrique Joaquín Granados y Campiña, son of an infantry colonel, he grew up in the Canary Islands, where his father had been appointed military governor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, before moving to Barcelona in 1874, where his musical career took shape. He showed a precocious aptitude for the piano from his first lessons with a family friend, and underwent formal training with Francisco Javier Jumet from 1878 to 1882, then with the pedagogue Juan Bautista Pujol, a pupil of Sigismond Thalberg in Paris and the founder of a Catalan piano school that included Isaac Albéniz. His teaching bore fruit as early as May 1883, when he won a prize in an academic competition whose jurors included the musicologist Felipe Pedrell, known for his research into Spanish music, with whom he forged a friendly relationship. In 1886, Granados began playing at the Café des Délices and giving lessons, occasionally appearing at Barcelona's Ataneo with Ricardo Viñes. Unable to continue his studies, he left for Paris in the hope of entering the Conservatoire, but contracted typhoid fever and reached the age limit when he recovered. He took lessons from Charles Wilfrid de Bériot, whose pupils included Ravel and Viñes, and whose insights into interpretation and improvisation were to stand him in good stead as a composer. He rubbed shoulders with the musical elite of the time, from Fauré to Stravinsky, including Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, d'Indy and Saint-Saëns, and reunited with his compatriot Albéniz, as well as the painter Francesc Miralles, a source of inspiration. The composition for piano ensemble En la aldea, long unpublished, dates from this period. Returning to Barcelona in 1889, Granados published Danses espagnoles, a series of twelve pieces inspired by folklore, which won him success and the admiration of his peers. He gave recitals of his compositions and other Romantic works, and in 1892 married Amparo Gal y Lloberas, who bore him six children, including the eldest, Eduardo, who in turn became a composer. The family moved to Madrid, but once again illness prevented Granados from taking up a teaching post at the Conservatoire. He divided his time between composing and giving concerts on his return to Catalonia, performing with the Belgian violinist Mathieu Crickboom, who had founded the Societat Filarmónica, and a promising cellist by the name of Pablo Casals. His catalog expanded to include Valses poéticos for piano, premiered in 1895, and Piezas sobre cantos populares españoles (for piano) and Suite sobre cantos gallegos (for orchestra), which were to wait for their premiere until 1899. Little known for his chamber music, he created a Quintet with piano (op. 49) and a Trio for violin, cello and piano (op. 50), the same year as his first incidental music, an intermezzo for mezzo, Miel de la Alcarria (op. 54), followed by the lyrical playlet Ovillejos (1898). Above all, Granados tackled a three-act opera, María del Carmen, based on José Feliú y Codina's play of the same name, which premiered successfully in Madrid on November 12, 1898, before a stormy Barcelona premiere due to the action taking place in Murcia rather than Catalonia. Performed only once outside Spain, in Wexford, Ireland, where it was recorded in 2003, the opera has fallen somewhat into oblivion. In 1900, Granados founded his own concert society, the Society of Classical Concertos, and a piano academy in his name, which he ran until his departure for America, when it was taken over by his pupil Frank Marshall. The Granados Academy trained Paquita Madriguera, Alicia de Larrocha, Rosa Sabater and Conchita Badia, who premiered several of the composer's works. Although his other operas were not as well received - Blancaflor (1899), Picarol (1901), Petrarca (1900), which was not premiered, and Follet (1903), reserved for private performance - Granados consoled himself with the prize he received from the Madrid Conservatory for his Allegro de concierto (1904), in a romantic vein like the Hispanic homage to Chopin in Escenas románticas. 1908 saw the premiere of the symphonic poem Dante, for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, at the Palau de la Música Catalana, which he helped found, emanating from the Orfeón Catalán, a choir for which he composed tornadillas, Elegía eterna and Cant de les estrelles. The following year, he abandoned a single Concerto for orchestra, the manuscript of which was found in 2009 and was used for its premiere in October 2010 in Lviv, Ukraine, in favor of the Goyescas for piano, a major work born of his passion for the painter Francisco de Goya, of which he gave the first performance on March 11, 1911, and the second in April 1914. A piece rejected from the collection, El pelele, is often added or played independently. Its French premiere at the Salle Pleyel in 1914 earned him the Légion d'honneur, and the Paris Opera commissioned a one-act opera of the same name, which premiered at New York's Metropolitan Opera on January 28, 1916. Invited to attend the premiere, Enrique Granados and his wife set sail from the port of Barcelona in November 1915 on the Montevideo, arriving in New York on December 15. Particularly feted and in demand, he recorded pieces on a pianola for the Aeolian company and attended rehearsals with conductor Casals. The five performances are a triumph, despite dubious reviews, and Granados is invited by President Woodrow Wilson to the White House. This unforeseen event delays the couple's return to England, before they cross the English Channel aboard the SS Sussex, torpedoed by a German submarine that cuts the ship in two. In an attempt to save his wife from drowning, he and eighty other passengers disappeared into the sea on March 24, 1916. In their luggage was found the original manuscript of the opera María del Carmen.

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