Enrique Granados

Enrique Granados was a Spanish pianist and composer whose piano suite Goyescas, inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya, is one of the foundational works of late-Romantic Spanish nationalist music. He died at sea when the cross-Channel ferry SS Sussex was torpedoed by a German U-boat in March 1916.

Born on July 27, 1867, in Lleida, Catalonia, Enrique Granados y Campiña was the son of Calixto Granados, a Cuban-born captain in the Spanish army, and Enriqueta Elvira Campiña, a Galician. The family moved to Barcelona during his childhood, where he began piano studies with Francesc Jurnet and the composer Joan Baptista Pujol.

Granados travelled to Paris in 1887 to study privately with Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot at the Conservatoire, having been refused formal admission for arriving after the entrance exams. He returned to Barcelona in 1889 and made his debut as a concert pianist.

He composed the zarzuela María del Carmen in 1898 and the piano suite Goyescas between 1909 and 1911, later expanding the latter into an opera that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on January 28, 1916. Returning to Europe with his wife Amparo, the couple's ship SS Sussex was torpedoed in the English Channel on March 24, 1916. Granados drowned trying to save Amparo from the water, aged 48.

His name Enrique derives from the Germanic name Heinrich, meaning ruler of the home. Enrique is a common masculine name in Spanish-speaking countries.