Enrique Granados

Though he enjoyed considerable fame in his native Barcelona, within Spain as a whole his music was less well known than his enduring reputation as the composer of ‘La maja y el ruiseñor’ from Goyescas might suggest. Apart from Goyescas (in its original version for piano), only his Danzas españolas and his first opera María del Carmen brought him significant national acclaim, and relatively few of his 140-odd works were published or performed regularly in his lifetime. A comprehensive view of his work has been hampered by the prevailing but misconceived tendency to divide his music into three compositional periods – known, misleadingly, as the ‘Nationalistic’, the ‘Romantic’ and the ‘Goyesque’ – with a disproportionate emphasis on his Goyescas. Sadly, the greater part of his diverse and extensive output remains obscure and unpublished and, as yet, no detailed study has been made of his life.