1852–1909 · Spain · Romantic
Francisco Tárrega was a Spanish guitarist and composer who lived from 1852 to 1909. He studied at the Madrid Conservatoire, gave many concerts and taught, and later made his home in Barcelona. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern guitar playing. Among his pieces are Recuerdos de la Alhambra and Danza Mora.
Francisco Tárrega came into the world on 21 November 1852 in Villarreal, a town in Castellón province. According to what is told, his father played flamenco and other styles on the guitar. While the father was away at work guarding the Convent of San Pascual, the boy would pick up the instrument and try to imitate the lovely sounds he remembered. His childhood nickname was Quiquet.
The boy once ran off from his nanny, tumbled into an irrigation ditch and hurt his eyes. His father was afraid he might go blind, so the family relocated to Castellón de la Plana, where the boy could study music: a musician could make a living even without sight. His first two teachers, Eugeni Ruiz and Manuel González, were both blind.
Tárrega started guitar lessons with Julián Arcas in 1862. His father also required him to study the piano. At that time the guitar was thought of as something to accompany singers, whereas the piano enjoyed wide popularity across Europe. The lessons did not last long, since Arcas went off to perform abroad.
At just ten, the boy left home and set out to make a musical living by himself, performing in Barcelona's cafés and restaurants. Before long he was tracked down and sent back to his father, who gave up a great deal to keep his son's musical training going. In 1865 he fled once more, now to Valencia, and there he lived with a Romani family. Once again his father fetched him, yet the boy escaped for a third time, going to Valencia again.
As a young teenager Tárrega played both the guitar and the piano well. He earned some money by joining other musicians for local performances, but in the end he went back home to help his relatives.
Tárrega enrolled at the Madrid Conservatoire in 1874 for piano and composition, as there was no guitar class. A rich merchant, Antonio Canesa, supported his studies. He arrived with a guitar built by Antonio de Torres; the tone of that instrument gave him fresh energy as a player and fresh ideas about what could be composed for the guitar.
His composition teacher at the conservatoire was Emilio Arrieta, who talked him into devoting himself to the guitar rather than pursuing a career as a pianist. He completed his studies in 1880. A solo recital at Madrid's Alhambra theatre brought him enormous acclaim and opened his career as a concert guitarist.
In the winter of 1880, in Novelda in the province of Alicante, Tárrega stood in for his friend Luis de Soria at a concert. Afterwards a prominent local resident asked him to hear his daughter María José Rizo, a student of the guitar. The two were soon engaged.
Tárrega gave concerts in Lyon, Paris and London, and took part in events honouring Pedro Calderón de la Barca. London did not suit him: he disliked both its language and its climate. Once the London engagements were over he travelled back to Novelda, and at Christmas 1882 he and María José Rizo were married.
After a while the couple made Barcelona their home, and there Tárrega taught, performed and composed. He wanted more repertory for the guitar and wanted to put his knowledge of keyboard music to use, so he began arranging piano works by Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn and other composers. His Barcelona friends included Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, as well as Joaquín Turina and Pau Casals. Tárrega was the first to arrange numerous pieces by Granados and Albéniz for guitar.
During a tour in Valencia, Tárrega met a rich woman, Concepción Gómez de Jacoby, who became an important supporter. She gave his family the use of a part of her home outside Barcelona. She also brought him to Granada, and the trip led him to compose Recuerdos de la Alhambra. He first dedicated it to her in 1899; a later, revised edition he dedicated to Alfred Cottin, a French guitarist whom he got to know in Paris.
Between the late 1880s and 1903 Tárrega kept writing music and travelling. In 1900 he went to Algiers. As the story goes, he heard a rhythm repeated on an Arabian drum there, and by the next morning had written Danza Mora from it. Around 1902 he trimmed his nails, and the resulting tone later marked the guitarists of his school. After that he toured Italy, with concerts in Rome, Naples and Milan.
A stroke in 1906 left Tárrega paralysed on the right side. He went back to the concert platform but was never fully well again. His final composition, Oremus, was completed on 2 December 1909. He passed away in Barcelona on 15 December 1909, and his grave is in Castellón de la Plana, where a monument stands in his memory.
The music Tárrega wrote belongs to the Romantic tradition of the 19th-century masters of Europe. Both his own pieces and his arrangements show the effect of his conservatoire education and his knowledge of the forms and methods then current; they are more refined than the work of Spanish guitarist-composers of the generation before him and of his contemporaries. He liked character pieces best, some of them with Spanish, Moorish or Arabic references, along with preludes, etudes, caprices, serenades and dances.
During his life only some of his own compositions appeared in print, much of his work being meant for himself and his pupils. Other people later edited the works published afterwards, and frequently changed them. Alongside original pieces, Tárrega produced many arrangements drawn from piano, violin and opera music.
Well known among his pieces are Recuerdos de la Alhambra, Danza Mora, Capricho Árabe and the Variations on the Jota Aragonesa, as well as Gran Vals and Lágrima. In common with his friend Isaac Albéniz, he wanted to join the dominant Romantic idiom with Spanish folk material, and he arranged a number of Albéniz's piano pieces for guitar. Other instruments have taken up his music as well: violinist Ruggiero Ricci made a solo-violin version of Recuerdos de la Alhambra and frequently played it as an encore.
Miguel Llobet, Emilio Pujol and Daniel Fortea were among his pupils. Andrés Segovia held Tárrega's skill in high regard, played his works often and drew on his teaching approach. Tárrega is credited with laying the base of 20th-century classical guitar playing and with stirring wider interest in the guitar for solo recitals, and he is looked on as the father of the modern classical guitar.
The site has three editions for solo guitar: Adelita and Claro de Luna (Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata) at intermediate level, and Capricho Árabe at the upper-intermediate level. You can begin with the first two and leave Capricho Árabe for later.