Enrique Granados (1867-1916)
The composer Enrique Granados wrote very little for the public. The only non-musical piece of writing of his to be published in his lifetime is a treatise on pedalling, Método teórico prático para el uso de los pedals del piano. Three other studies on pedalling, and four on various aspects of piano technique, survive as manuscripts, typescripts, or printer’s proofs in the Fonds Enrique Granados of the Museu de la Mùsica de Barcelona (MMB) or at the Academia Granados-Marshall. These texts testify to the importance of teaching in his professional life. Granados taught the piano privately even as a youth, and it was this work that gave him financial independence, as he no doubt recalled when in 1900 he founded his own Academy, soon to become a cultural mainstay thanks to the courses, lectures, and concerts hosted there. After his death, his disciple Frank Marshall took over the direction of the Academy, which turned out important pianists such as Alicia de Larrocha and Rosa Sabater. The remainder of Granados’s writings belongs mainly to the private sphere; this includes his compendium of memoirs and his correspondence, written for his familial and professional circle. Most of these private writings are at the MMB and the Biblioteca de Catalunya (BC).
Only four of Granados’s letters were published in his lifetime (all of them with his permission): one in the newspaper La Vanguardia in 1909, concerning his final visit to his friend Isaac Albéniz; one to Auguste Mangeot, director of the journal Le Monde musical, in which Granados explains his work Liliana with reference to music examples (1911); and two others in the Paris newspaper Le Temps, addressed to Jacques Rouché, director of the Paris Opera, regarding the aborted premiere of his opera Goyescas in 1914. Of the remainder of Granados’s letters, 380 in all, most were addressed to family or close friends, including Pau Casals, Isaac Albéniz, and the American pianist Ernest Schelling, or, in smaller numbers, to musical, literary, and artistic personalities. The vast majority were published in the volume Correspondencia epistolar de Enrique Granados (1892-1916) (Barcelona: Boileau, 2016). Most are held in Catalan archives (MMB, BC, Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya, Centre de Documentació i Museu de les Arts Escèniques, Arxiu de la Ciutat de Barcelona), though some are in other Spanish institutions or private archives ((Biblioteca Valenciana, Museo Ignacio Zuloaga, Fundación Juan March, Fundación Caja Mediterráneo, Sociedad Filarmónica de Bilbao, Arxiu Municipal de Lleida, Patrimonio Nacional, etc.) and as far afield as the Bergen Public Library (Norway), Bibliothèque musicale Lagrange-Fleuret (Paris), and International Piano Archives at Maryland, including many addressed to Schelling.
In the private sphere, Granados wrote a volume of memoirs, currently housed at the MMB, and published in full only in 2019 (as Appendix V: El cuaderno rojo de Granados [Granados’s Red Notebook] in Granados: crónica y desenlace, Granada: Libargo, 2019), though it had been partially transcribed in the book Papeles íntimos de Enrique Granados (Barcelona: Amigos de Granados, 1966). Begun possibly in 1910, this text recounts in evocative and informal manner his childhood and youth up to the foundation of the Academy, mixing anecdotes and facts both discredited and confirmed in the biography by Walter A. Clark (2016), the collection of letters cited above (2016), and Granados: crónica y desenlace. The narrative jumps from 1900 or 1901 to 1910 and 1912, and includes commentaries and reflections on the composer’s work and artistic life. A few pages of the “red notebook” have been torn out; according to oral testimony confided his grandson Antoni Carreras y Granados, these may have alluded to his extramarital affairs.
The only non-musical publication by Granados in his lifetime is the treatise Método teórico prático para el uso de los pedals del piano, part I – the second part announced in its conclusion never appeared before the author’s death. It consists of a single chapter, divided into two sections. The first is a theoretical exposition subdivided according to three modes of applying the pedal (to figures, groups of figures, and melody in general); the second section demonstrates the application of this method in examples from the literature. The work was first published (1905) by Vidal, Llimona y Boceta, of Barcelona; it must have enjoyed a certain success, since a second, undated edition by the same publisher exists, as well as three others – one by Ildefonso Alier, probably made between 1908 and 1912 at Madrid (Alier had been a representative for Vidal y Llimona); another by the Sociedad Editorial de Música, also of Madrid (c. 1909); and a third by the Barcelona publisher Boileau, from 1909. Granados’s manual made an important contribution to the technique of the sustain pedal in Spain: it introduced, and systematised for the first time, the offbeat pedalling developed in central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was republished in 1954 by the Unión Musical Española, and in 2001 another edition was made for Boileau by Douglas Riva.
The promised second part of the Método teórico prático may well have been a text held at the MMB with the title ‘La pédale. Méthode théorique et pratique’, written in 1911, with the half title and address of the publisher Musicografía Wagner, and recently published by Boileau (Enrique Granados, Maestro del uso del pedal, 2018). However, the composer’s definitive version is thought to be the monograph Reglas para el uso de los pedales del piano, of which the printer’s proofs (1913) are at the MMB; Douglas Riva prepared an edition for Boileau in 2001, as volume 9 of the collection ‘Pedagógicas 2’. In this version Granados strove for concision and clarity; he reduced the modes of application of the pedal to two (to figures and to groups of figures), with the ‘free pedal’ now regarded as a consequence of the others. Additionally, two unpublished supplements have been found: Reglas para el uso de los pedales del piano. Nuevo método corregido y aumentado por Enrique Granados (at the MMB), a preliminary version of the 1913 text, published for the first time in 2018 by Curbelo; and a document conserved at the Academia de Granados-Marshall, entitled Breves consideraciones sobre el ligado : del pedal, edited by Douglas Riva in 2001.
Finally, manuscripts concerning the didactic aspect of piano technique have been found: El piano, a set of practical exercises for the five fingers; Dificultades especiales del piano, designed to loosen and strengthen the fourth and fifth fingers; a document concerned with ornamentation, entitled Ornamentos; and some exercises in thrids, Ejercicios de terceras. All were published by Boileau in 2001.
Miriam PERANDONES
23/07/2021
Trans. Tadhg Sauvey
[1] Granados, Enric, 1867-1916. Pedagógicas 2 [Música notada] / Enrique Granados ; [edición Urtext] dirigida por Alicia de Larrocha ; preparación y documentación Douglas Riva. Barcelona : Boileau, 2001. (NdT)
Further reading
CLARK, Walter A. Enrique Granados: Poeta del piano. Barcelona, Boileau, 2016; actualización y traducción de Enrique Granados. Poet of the piano, 2012 (2a ed.)
CURBELO, Oliver. Enrique Granados. Maestro del uso del pedal. Barcelona, Boileau, 2018.
PERANDONES, Miriam. Correspondencia epistolar de Enrique Granados (1892- 1916). Barcelona, Boileau, 2016.
REBÉS MOLINA, Josep M. Granados. Crónica y desenlace. Granada, Libargo, 2019.
RIVA, Douglas. “Pedagógicas 2”, Integral para Piano de Enrique Granados, Vol. 9. Barcelona, Boileau, 2001.
VILA-SAN JUAN, Pablo. Papeles íntimos de Enrique Granados. Barcelona, Amigos de Granados, 1966.
| firstname | Enrique |
|---|---|
| lastname | Granados |
| birth year | 1867 |
| death year | 1916 |
| same as | https://data.bnf.fr/13894655/enrique_granados/ |