Buried in Snow A Granados practice diary: Origins of Music

Since yesterday, snow has been falling without pause.

Today, even the schools are closed.

A few lessons were rescheduled,

and suddenly, a small pocket of time

opened up and became the main part of the day.

I happened to look at my shelf,

and of course it was there.

, played by Alicia de Larrocha.

There are fewer people outside,

and the snow absorbs sound,

so the world feels especially quiet.

A perfect day

to listen slowly.

Among everything I listened to,

de Larrocha’s Goyescas felt the closest to me,

the most natural to my own sense of sound.

So I found myself wondering

what kind of balance the whole set holds,

when heard as a complete work.

The fourth piece,

, o La Maja y el ruiseñor(Complaint, or the Girl and the Nightingale),

is famous, of course.

So famous that I had been listening mostly to that one,

hardly getting to know the others.

But then I heard the fifth piece,

El Amor y la muerte (Balada)(Ballad of Love and Death).

How beautiful it is.

What was I thinking,

not having really listened to this?

It felt like the true jewel of the set.

I was listening while preparing dinner,

and I simply could not move.

After that comes a set of shorter pieces,

románticas,

and those too are deeply beautiful.

Ah, so this is where Granados’s music comes from.

Listening closely,

I could hear how deeply his composing

is rooted in improvisation.

Chopin and Liszt were like that too.

To take music that is spun out in the moment

and turn it into notation,

so that anyone can play it

and it still holds its shape,

that must have taken an extraordinary amount of work.

It must have been different for each composer,

but the closer their improvisation was

to their written music,

the greater the tension must have been.

Because something that changes freely each timeh

as to be fixed, at least for a moment,

in order to be published as a score.

I feel Granados stayed closer than most

to improvisation as the source of his composing.

Rather than just letting my own taste

walk down a red carpet,

I want to be escorted by Granados himself.

Then, I think,

I will naturally find my place

on top of his music.