(Born July 27, 1867, in Lérida, Spain; died March 24, 1916, at sea)

Granados was the son of a Spanish army officer, educated as a musician in Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris, and, like Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, and Dvorák, he absorbed the idiom of the music of his people and used it as the vehicle of expression of his art. He was Catalan by birth and lived most of his adult life in the Catalonian capital of Barcelona, but he was always aware of the varied styles of other Spanish places and times, and he was especially devoted to the Madrid of Goya (1746-1828), which he pictured in his piano suite and opera called Goyescas.

Granados came to New York for the first production of Goyescas at the Metropolitan Opera House in January 1916. At President Wilson's request, he then journeyed to Washington to give a recital at the White House, which caused him to miss his ship to Spain. He later took a ship to England, and in Liverpool, boarded another ship bound for Dieppe. A German submarine torpedoed that ship, and, n an attempt to save his drowning wife, Granados also drowned.

After his death, the direction of the music school that he had established in Barcelona was taken over by his disciple, Frank Marshall, the teacher of Alicia de Larrocha, who, in her turn, became the school's third head.

When he was about twenty, Granados composed a set of waltzes for piano to which he gave the title Cartas de amor (Love Letters). Sometime later, he extracted seven of the best of the set, added an introduction and coda, and presented the whole as a new and more mature collection of Valses poéticos. It is a delightful chain of dances, historically somewhat more than halfway between the similar works of Schubert and Ravel. Granados dedicated it to the fine Catalan pianist, Joaquin Malats.

The music opens with a fast introduction, Vivace molto, and a melodic waltz, after which come in quick succession, a “noble” waltz, a slow waltz, a humorous Allegro, an elegant Allegretto, a rather freely written “sentimental” waltz (which is to say one that is full of feeling), then a short, lively one, and finally, a very fast coda based on the melodic first waltz.

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Some maintain that the Danzas españolas (Spanish Dances) date from Granados' time in Paris, where he spent his formative years studying piano. On his return to Spain, his Dances were published one by one until 1890. With them, Granados won international recognition; but it has not been possible to establish the date of composition of the Danzas españolas absolutely. Granados claimed to have written it in 1883, which would make it a work of his extreme youth. A possibility is that he edited them in Paris in 1888, or at least that there they took on their definitive form, since Granados performed the premiere in Barcelona in 1890.

The Danzas represent the most obviously nationalist music of Granados, but the popular inspiration appears in the Romantic musical language. In this work, he fuses elements of Romanticism with Spanish nationalism. His dances are evocations of folk dance, drawing inspiration and actual material from popular sources of the Spanish dance song as it was sung in the countryside as well as on the streets of large cities, or as it appeared in popular music played in the cafes. It emphasizes the melodic and is in triple time, shifting freely between major and minor modes with a three-part A-B-A structure.

Dance No. 5, in E minor is a famous composition, the most well-known piece from the Danzas españolas, Op. 37. In ABA ternary form, Andaluza ( Playera) is notable for its ostinato rhythmic accompaniment and the rubato that give it its form. It is a great favorite among classical guitarists because it sounds so much like a guitar. Guitarists Miguel Llobet, Andrés Segovia, and Julian Bream all made guitar arrangements of it.