- Born November 22, 1901, in Sagunto, Spain
- Died July 6, 1999, in Madrid
- Composed in 1951
- Duration: 5 minutes

Like many of the musicians on this program, Joaquín Rodrigo moved to Paris from Spain while in his twenties to study composition and to work with Paul Dukas. Rodrigo lost his sight at the age of three, and so he wrote all of his scores first in braille form, and then he dictated them to copyists note-for-note. He dabbled with Modernist trends when he was young, but through his years in Paris and once he returned to Spain at the end of the 1930s, he settled on a musical language that was “neocasticista,” as he described it, broadly neoclassical and rooted in traditional music. 

He wrote many major large-scale works for the guitar, which helped to shape that instrument’s role in 20th-century music. His writing for the guitar in smaller pieces, like these Three Spanish Songs, short numbers based on folk tunes, is likewise highly effective. The first is in the form of a bolero, with the guitar playing the characteristic rhythms on cascading, pointy arpeggios, while the singer presents a witty text in which a miller’s wife deflects the advances of the lecherous town justice. In Delia, the expressive guitar introduction, with rolling arpeggios leading to a repeated high C-sharp harmonic, provides the emotional weight for the simple story of a girl who dies for love. In the final number, a flirtatious courting song, the guitar’s syncopated accompaniment suggests the fluttering nerves of admitting to someone that you love them.