Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga

Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola (January 27, 1806 – January 17, 1826) was a Spanish Basque composer. He was nicknamed the "Spanish Mozart" after he died, because, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was also a child prodigy and an exceptionally gifted composer who died at a young age.

Life

Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga was born in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain on what would have been Mozart's fiftieth birthday. His father and older brother first taught him music. He then studied the violin under Pierre Baillot, and counterpoint and harmony under François-Joseph Fétis at the Paris Conservatoire. He was so talented that he soon became a teaching assistant in Fétis's class. He died in Paris at the age of nineteen, of a lung ailment, or exhaustion, perhaps both.

Music

The amount of music by Arriaga which has survived to the present day is quite small, reflecting his early death. It includes:

* Opera: Arriaga wrote an opera, "Los esclavos felices" ("The Happy Slaves"), in 1820 when he was thirteen. It was successfully produced in Bilbao. Unfortunately, only the overture and some fragments survive.
* Symphony: Arriaga composed a "Symphony in D"—which uses D major and D minor so equally as to not actually be in either key.
* String quartets: Arriaga wrote three sparkling and idiomatic string quartets at the age of eighteen. These fine string quartets were the only works published during his lifetime.
* Other works: In addition to the aforementioned major works, Arriaga also wrote the following:
** An octet ("Nada y Mucho")
** Pieces of church music (A Mass (lost), Stabat Mater, Salve Regina, "Et vitam venturi saeculi (lost)"), cantatas ("Agar", "Erminia", "All' Aurora", "Patria", "La Hungara")
** Instrumental compositions (a nonet, Tres Estudios de Caracter for piano, and numerous Romances).

tature

Arriaga's music is "elegant and accomplished and notable for its harmonic warmth" ("New Grove Concise Dictionary of Music"). There is nothing characteristically Spanish in Arriaga's music. Rather it is international (European) music from the formative period between the late classical music of Mozart to the early Romanticism of the young Beethoven.

According to Grove, Arriaga's death "before he was 20 was a sad loss to Spanish music." Following his early death, with the only reliable biographical material being some reports by Fétis, Arriaga's life story was fictionalized to play into rising Spanish nationalism. A public theatre in his home city of Bilbao carries his name.

External links

*
* [http://www.classicalmidi.co.uk/arriag.htm Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga]
* [http://www.gramophone.co.uk/ The Gramophone] entry to Arriaga in "The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music" (1994) Oxford University Press, Inc.
* [http://www.editionsilvertrust.com/string-quartets.htm Arriaga String Quartet Nos.1-3 sound-bites and discussion of works]