Read e-book online Enrique Granados: Poet of the Piano PDF

Enrique Granados (1867-1916) is without doubt one of the such a lot compelling figures of the late-Romantic interval in tune. in the course of his go back voyage to Spain after the optimal of his opera Goyescas at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1916, a German submarine torpedoed the send on which he and his spouse have been crusing, they usually perished within the waters of the English Channel. His dying used to be mourned on each side of the Atlantic as a gorgeous loss to the track international, for he had died on the top of his occupation, and his overdue works held the promise of larger issues to come.
Granados used to be one of the best pianists of his time, and his eloquence on the keyboard encouraged critics to dub him the "poet of the piano." In Enrique Granados: Poet of the Piano, Walter Aaron Clark deals the 1st important examine in English of this virtuoso pianist, composer, and song pedagogue. whereas offering targeted analyses of his significant works for voice, piano, and the degree, Clark argues that Granados's artwork represented a unifying presence at the cultural panorama of Spain in the course of a interval of imperial decline, political unrest, and fiscal transformation. Drawing on newly came upon files, Clark explores the cultural spheres within which Granados moved, rather of Castile and Catalonia. Granados's best-known song was once encouraged by means of the paintings of Francisco Goya, in particular the Goyescas suite for solo piano that grew to become the root for the opera. those items evoked the colourful and dramatic global that Goya inhabited and depicted in his artwork. Granados's fascination with Goya's Madrid set him except fellow nationalists Albéniz and Falla, who drew their imperative notion from Andalusia. even though he used to be resolutely apolitical, Granados's allure to Castile antagonized a few Catalan nationalists, who resented Castilian domination. but Granados additionally made vital contributions to Catalan musical theater and was once a fashionable determine within the modernist circulate in Barcelona.
Clark additionally explores the private pressures that formed Granados's track. His passionate affair with a prosperous socialite created family tensions, however it used to be additionally a resource of idea for Goyescas. chronic monetary problems compelled him to commit time to educating on the fee of composition, notwithstanding for that reason Granados made huge contributions to piano pedagogy and song schooling in Barcelona during the track academy he based there.
While Granados's tragic and early death casts a pall over his existence tale, Clark eventually unearths an artist of outstanding versatility and individuality and sheds new mild on his enduring significance.