Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados y Campiña ( cat. Enric Granados i Campiña ) ( born July 27, 1867 in Lleida, Spain, † March 24, 1916 after the torpedoing of the channel ferry Sussex in the English Channel ) was a Spanish composer and pianist.
Life
Enrique Granados was the son of Cuban José Calixto de la Trinidad Granados y Armenteros and the Catalan Enriqueta Elvira Campiña. He studied piano with Ricardo Viñas and composition with Felipe Pedrellian, the leading Spanish music theorists and composers of his time. This called for a renewal of Spanish music in the spirit of folklore. Granados heard next Pedrell two other major students Isaac Albéniz and Manuel de Falla to the great innovators of Spanish music.
Granados was an excellent and successful pianist. He wrote his most popular songs and piano works. His opera, zarzuela and the symphonic poems are in their meaning behind the piano music. Here take the spirited Danzas españolas, the Valses Poeticos, as well as the poetic Goyescas (1911 ) the supreme place a. The piano cycle Goyescas to the Granados by paintings by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) was inspired and dedicated to his wife, portrays the life of the people of Goya time. The Goyescas are among the most virtuosic piano works of Granados. The most famous piece is Quejas ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor ( German Lamentations or the beautiful girl and the Nightingale ), on which is based the melody of the later created by Consuelo Velázquez Bésame Mucho Schlager.
On December 7, 1892, he married in the church Monasterio de San Pedro de las puellas in Barcelona from Valencia coming María de los Desamparados Gal y Ljoveras ( called Amparo ). The marriage produced six children: Eduardo, Solita, Enrique, Victor, Francisco and Natalia. The eldest son, Eduardo Granados Gal (1894-1928), was a pianist, composer and conductor.
Many of his works were also transcribed for classical guitar and belong to the standard repertoire of guitarists. Outstanding guitar recordings of his works there are, inter alia, Andrés Segovia, Narciso Yepes, Julian Bream, John Williams, Pepe Romero, Christopher Parkening, Manuel Barrueco and David Russell. 1901 founded the Academia Granados Granados in Barcelona (later Academia Marshall), which he headed until his death.
The Paris Opera was Granados the commission to compose an opera. Then he started the piano cycle Goyescas to fashion. After the outbreak of the First World War, however, the Paris Opera was forced to withdraw its mission. The New York Metropolitan Opera, has long been interested in a piece of Spanish composers Granados then commissioned to complete the opera. Granados, who had never traveled in his life happy and much, went with his wife along with the vocal ensemble for performance of the opera in New York. There he lived a happy time, was celebrated and cheered. Among other things, Granados was invited by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to give the White House a piano recital, which is why he could not go back as originally planned directly to Spain; Instead, he took a ship to England later. On the last leg of the journey home, the French channel ferry Sussex was torpedoed in the English Channel when translating from Folkestone to Dieppe by a German submarine and severely damaged. Although Granados could first be saved, but plunged when he saw his wife helplessly drifting in the sea, in a desperate attempt to save back into the water, where both were drowned.