Composers
Souvenirs
Most of the composers on this CD are well known to classical
music listeners.
Here are a few you may not know.
R. Nathaniel Dett (1862-1943) was born in
Ontario and graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. He received
an honorary masters degree from the Eastman School of Music and studied
with Nadia Boulanger in France (1929). Director of music at the Hampton
Institute from 1913-1931, he advocated the use of Negro themes and combined
them in a neo-romantic style.
Enrique Granados (1867-1916) studied piano
at the Barcelona Conservatory, winning first prize in 1883. He studied
composition at the Madrid Conservatory from 1884-1887, supporting himself
for awhile by playing piano in restaurants and giving concerts. Granados
conducted a series of concerts in Barcelona and also established a music
school. He is is best known for his successful piano pieces, although
he also wrote several operas as well as symphonic works and chamber
and solo music. He attended a successful premiere of opera Goyescas
at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1916, and died on his return
trip to Europe, victim of a German submarine.
Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) was a child
prodigy and gave concerts with his sister, also a prodigy, at an early
age. In 1868 the family moved to Madrid, and Albéniz entered
the conservatory there. He ran away from home at the age of 13, traveling
to Spain, where he gave concerts. He then stowed away on a ship for
Puerto Rico and continued on to Cuba and the U.S., supporting himself
by playing concerts in private and in public. He returned to Spain in
1875, where he met a benefactor who provided support so that he could
study at the conservatories in Brussels and Leipzig. He settled in Paris
in 1893. Albéniz wrote in both large and small genres, and some
of his piano pieces have been transcribed for orchestra.