Editorial de Música BOILEAU - Since 1913

GRANADOS, Enric

Lleida 1867 - Canal de la Mancha 1916

He started studying music at a very young age. He studied piano in Barcelona with Joan Baptista Pujol. Pujol had studied with the Majorcan pianist and Liszt's apprentice, Pere Tintorer. Pujol also created what can be called the first Catalan piano tradition. Among his many pupils were Albéniz, Malats (professor of Mompou) and Ricard Viñes. In 1887, Granados, traveled to Paris to study with Charles de Beriot. In Paris, while maintaining his friendship with Albéniz, Nin and Viñes, he began to maintain direct contact with the most important French composers of the time, Faure, Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, d'Indy, establishing a close relationship with Camille Saint-Saens. In 1889 he returned to Barcelona to begin his career as a virtuoso performer and composer. In 1892 he made his first interpretation of Piano Concerto de Grieg, in Spain. During this time, he performed many chamber music concerts with close friends such as Pau Casals, Mathieu Crickboom, Jacques Thibaud, Emil von Sauer and Camille Saint-Saëns. Between 1895 and 1898 he made the premiere of several of his plays, Miel de Alcarria, María del Carmen, along with several chamber works and piano pieces.

In 1901 he founded the Granados Academy, which became the hallmark of the teaching of the art of interpreting the piano, as Granados understood it. Granados and his wife Amparo drowned when the Sussex, the ship they were traveling from London to Barcelona (the last leg of the return trip since the premiere of the successful Goyescas opera in New York) was torpedoed while crossing the English Channel. Granados directed the Academy until the day of his death, assuming command thereafter his pupil and friend Frank Marshall. To avoid problems of inheritance after the sudden death of Granados, Marshall and the professor of the Academy Felipe Pedrell decided to change the name of the Academy to Marshall Academy, which made Marshall the sole owner. Along with Albéniz and Falla, Granados is often recognized as a nationalist composer. Currently, the term neo-romantic would be the best to describe how he developed his personal romantic style, hitherto unknown in Spain. An expressive style influenced by Chopin, Schumann, Schubert and Grieg and the Majas de Goya of the 18th century. It represents the romantic and poetic piano of the 19th century in Spain.