Франсиско Тарега

Francisco Tárrega (1852–1909) gave the classical guitar its modern voice. Born in Villarreal near Castellón on 21 November 1852, the son of a father who played flamenco, he was heard at ten by the touring virtuoso Julián Arcas, who persuaded the family to send him to Barcelona; the father agreed on condition that the boy also learn the piano, since the guitar was then thought fit only for accompanying singers. In 1874, with the backing of a wealthy merchant, Antonio Canesa, he entered the Madrid conservatory, where Emilio Arrieta convinced him to abandon the piano and give himself to the guitar. By the end of the 1870s he was teaching — Emilio Pujol, Miguel Llobet and Daniel Fortea were among his pupils — and concertising across Spain, playing his own pieces beside those of others. He refined technique, transcribed Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, and left a body of works, from the Recuerdos de la Alhambra to the preludes and mazurkas, on which every later guitarist has been raised. In 1881 he played at the opera house in Lyon and at the Paris Odeon for the Calderon bicentenary, and after a spell in Madrid he settled in Barcelona in 1885, where Albeniz, Granados and Casals were among his friends. A visit to Algiers in 1900 gave him the drum rhythm behind Danza Mora, about 1902 he cut his fingernails and arrived at the sound his school came to be known by, and the year after he toured Rome, Naples and Milan. Paralysis of his right side in January 1906 left him never fully recovered; he finished Oremus on 2 December 1909 and died thirteen days later.