Granados as a Teacher: Origins of Music

Thoughts on Granados

(focusing on Granados as a teacher)

To educate young students toward a poetic feeling in which the entire work must breathe.— Enrique Granados

My encounter with

back to my days as a music student.

Looking back now, at this point in my life,

it might sound as if I had long been deeply familiar

with Spanish music.

It sounds nice, at least.

But that wasn’t the case at all.

Up to that point,

I didn’t know a single work by a Spanish composer.

Not even one.

Things really do change

depending on how you present them.

The first Spanish music I ever encountered

was actually at a vocal department concert at my school.

Someone sang works by Falla and Granados.

I think it was.

I was instantly captivated by how beautiful the music was.

But the problem was rhythm.

No matter how I thought about it,

it felt impossible for me.

I remember looking at piano scores in the library,

listening to recordings,

and giving up.

That’s probably why I got hooked on flamenco afterward.

Watching it, though.

Not dancing myself.

Later, I encountered Albéniz,

and finally began to study Spanish music properly.

Even then,

the one composer I kept hesitating over was Granados.

Even pieces that looked sight-readable

because there weren’t many notes,

his music had unpredictable harmonic turns,

and that was difficult for me.

And yet, for some reason,

I started thinking:

I should play Granados.

I want to play Granados.

If I don’t play him now, I never will.

It almost turned into an obsession.

So I started.

I’ve already written about that part,

so I won’t repeat it here.

For people who study piano,

there are composers who become deeply familiar, right?

Probably because they left so many piano works.

With those composers,

you naturally come to know not only their lives and personalities,

but also their musical world through the works themselves.

Granados wasn’t like that for me.

That made it harder.

But Albéniz was the same in that sense.

I came to understand him, both his music and the person behind it,

by playing his works.

I figured,

if I keep playing, I’ll understand.

Maybe this is just my tendency,

wanting to understand a piece or a composer

through the works they left behind.

I want to deepen my understanding

by touching the music directly.

Of course,I do look at things like when they were born,

or why they composed.

But still.

Goyescas was very different from the music I had been used to,

and that difference made it especially difficult.

It was challenging enough

that I ended up researching quite a lot.

And now, finally,

I’ve started reading about Granados himself.

It feels like finally checking my answers.

But then I found something even more interesting.

Granados as a teacher.

How he taught.

What he valued in teaching.

I’ve always felt how difficult pedaling is in his music.

And then I learned that Granados thought of the pedal

as the “lungs” of the piano.

That he even published a book on pedaling.

That there exists an unpublished treatise on technique.

That in his lectures,

he took a scientific approach,

including explanations of how piano sound is produced.

That he addressed rhythmic flexibility in melodic playing,

almost imperceptible tempo adjustments within a phrase.

And that he systematized all of this

in a way that was easy to understand,

presenting it together with scientific explanations.

Then there’s the “law of contrast.”

How contrast gives music expressivity

and sustains it.

Yes, yes.

It’s because there’s difference

that we can perceive anything at all.

The brain needs it.

At this point,

some of you might be thinking,

isn’t this similar to what we’re studying now?

And what stopped me in my tracks was this:

His educational philosophy.

“Interpretation of a work accompanied by emotion.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Prioritizing the student’s own thoughts and choices.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean,

exactly that.

Of course,

way of being as a personis deeply reflected in this.

There’s much more written in the book.

But when you strip things down

to the base beyond individual differences,

it’s right here.

I didn’t know.

What an extraordinary teacher he was.

If I quote a passage from the book:

In other words, “rules” are general principles,not something to be applied mechanically or dogmatically,but something that must be used with intelligence and sensitivity.

Many teachers say things like this.

But helping students actually live itis another matter.

It seems Granados never went as far as anatomy.

If he had,

Spain might now be producing

countless performers

leading the global music world.

To educate young students toward a poetic feelingin which the entire work must breathe.(Granados)

What if we replaced

“poetic feeling” here

with

“the trembling of your heart”

and adjusted it just a little?

Somehow, I start to feel this:

That what Granados was doing as a teacher

(and while his curriculum itself seems to have been quite strict,

that strictness is not the same as true education.

Diligence and severity can exist separately.)

and the environment I found myself in,

desperately trying to reclaim my own music,

were very close.

Perhaps Granados’s music

was speaking to me.

It’s here.

What you’ve been looking for.

It fits perfectly

along the path you’re on.

The words and advice Chopin gave to his students

have been collected in books,

and those passages often circulate on social media these days.

But almost no one knows

about Granados as a teacher

outside of Spain, or circles closely connected to Spanish music.

It’s such a shame.

I hope I can help share this,

alongside my own learning.

Ah, and here’s the difficult part.

There are sections where Granados himself explains things in detail,

and you can read them and try them at the piano.

(Some parts, like the explanation of staccato,

I think are a bit dangerous.

Many might read that and think it’s how to play staccato.

I believe it’s actually describing types of staccato.)

But once you try it,

you need to let it sink in

until it becomes part of your own flesh and blood.

That processis what turns academic study into something alive.

What I’m telling myself right now is this:

For now,

I want to follow everything Granados wrote into the score.

Then digest it.

Because, honestly,

there were crescendos written in the score

that I had been casually ignoring.

And I had absolutely no awareness

that I was ignoring them.

It was unconscious.

Which means

I was prioritizing my own sensation above all else,

and wasn’t in enough dialogue with the music.

Let’s remember that, Pink Elephant.

For me, these kinds of discoveries, through AT sessions,

are precious time.

If you frame it as marketing,

it looks like self-help.

But what’s happening

is not something that shallow.

Because it generalizes

all the way to being human.

It’s deep.