"La Maja
de Goya" is a "Tonadilla" written for Voice
and Piano.
Enrique Granados was born in Lleida, Catalonia the 27th of
July of 1867.
He studied piano in Barcelona with Joan Baptista Pujol.
Pujol had studied with the Mallorcan pianist and student
of Franz Liszt Pere Tintorer.
At the age of fifteen, Granados gave his first concert in
public.
With Felipe Pedrell he studied harmony and composition and
through Pedrell he discovered popular music. This inspired
Granados to compose 'Doce danzas españolas', written
in 1883.
In 1887, at the age of twenty, Granados moved to Paris to
study with Charles de Bériot, a professor at the Conservatory
of Paris.
 In
1892 he held his first great recital in the Teatre Líric
of Barcelona and in 1892 he performed the 'Concert for piano
and orchestra in A minor' by Edvard Grieg for the first time
in Spain.
His work 'Allegro de Concierto' won first prize in the composition
competition of the Conservatory in Madrid in 1904. In 1912
the Sala Granados was opened in Barcelona where many of his
works were presented.
In 1911 he performed his 'Goyescas' or 'Los Majos Enamorados',
for the first time. This piano suite is based on the paintings
of Goya.
Granados made an opera version, which was performed for the
first time in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in 1916.
On the way back from his journey to the United States, having
attended the opening night of 'Goyescas', Enrique Granados
and his wife drowned when a German submarine in the English
Channel torpedoed the ship ‘Sussex’.
The Tonadilla is a short, Spanish, popular comic opera. The
origins of the tonadilla were short scenic interludes performed
between the acts of a play or serious opera, but it later
became an independent piece. It flourished from about the
middle of the 18th to the early 19th centuries.
The Tonadillas written by Granados are short pieces for Voice
and Piano inspired on the style and spirit of the Tonadilla
as a short opera.
Classical Guitar Music
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