'The life and work of this great composer demand an exhaustive and detailed study, and I congratulate Walter Aaron Clark for contributing to the preservation of Granados' music.''

Alicia de Larrocha

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One of the world's leading experts on Enrique Granados (1867-1916), Walter Aaron Clark marks the composer's centenary with a lecture entitled 'Spain, the Eternal Maja': Goya, Majismo, and the Reinvention of Spanish National Identity in Granados’ 'Goyescas'. Goyescas, a suite of six pieces in two books inspired by the art of Francisco Goya and composed between the years 1909 and 1911, is among the best-known Spanish piano works. The composer’s fascination with Goya was shared by many writers and composers in Spain around 1900, and this fascination has wider resonance in the political culture of the time. This paper briefly surveys the phenomenon of majismo in Granados’ late career and the role it played in the reinvention of Spanish national identity around 1900.

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Walter Aaron Clark is a Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Riverside, where he is the Director of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music. He was the founding editor of Oxford University Press’ award-winning series Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music, and he is now editor-in-chief of the online journal Diagonal: An Ibero-American Music Review. He is the author of Oxford biographies of Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and Federico Moreno Torroba. In June 2016, King Felipe VI of Spain conferred on him the title of Comendador de la Orden de Isabel la Católica.

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Walter Aaron Clark speaker

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Organised by ILAMS