Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola
(1806 – 1826) was a Spanish Basque composer. He was
nicknamed "the Spanish Mozart" after he died, because,
like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was both a child
prodigy and an accomplished composer who died young.
They also shared the same first and second baptismal
names; and they shared the same birthday, 27 January
(fifty years apart). He was born in Bilbao, Biscay, on
what would have been Mozart's fiftieth birthday. His
father (Juan Simón d...(+)
Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola
(1806 – 1826) was a Spanish Basque composer. He was
nicknamed "the Spanish Mozart" after he died, because,
like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was both a child
prodigy and an accomplished composer who died young.
They also shared the same first and second baptismal
names; and they shared the same birthday, 27 January
(fifty years apart). He was born in Bilbao, Biscay, on
what would have been Mozart's fiftieth birthday. His
father (Juan Simón de Arriaga) and the boy's older
brother first taught him music. Juan Simón had some
musical talent and at age seventeen Juan Crisóstomo
was an organist at a church in Berriatúa. Juan Simón
worked in Guernica and in 1804 moved to Bilbao and
became a merchant in wool, rice, wax, coffee and other
commodities. The income generated in this way allowed
Juan Simón to think about providing his son, who had
shown prodigious musical talent, a way of developing
those gifts.
In September 1821, Arriaga's father, with the
encouragement of composer José Sobejano y Ayala
(1791–1857), sent Juan Crisóstomo to Paris, where in
November of that year Arriaga began his studies. These
included violin under Pierre Baillot, counterpoint with
Luigi Cherubini and harmony under François-Joseph
Fétis at the Paris Conservatoire. From all evidence,
Arriaga made quite an impression on his teachers. In
1823, Cherubini, who had become director at the
Conservatoire the previous year, famously asked on
hearing the young composer's Stabat Mater, "Who wrote
this?" and learning it was Arriaga, said to him,
"Amazing – you are music itself."
Arriaga soon became a teaching assistant in Fétis's
class, noted and highly praised both by fellow students
and other faculty at the Conservatoire for his talent.
Cherubini referred to Arriaga's fugue for eight voices
(lost) based on the Credo ... et vitam venturi simply
as "a masterpiece", and Fétis was no less effusive —
apparently, what impressed all his mentors was his use
of sophisticated harmonies, counterpoint and fugue with
minimal or no formal instruction. Fétis was already
familiar with Arriaga's now-lost opera Los Esclavos
Felices ("The Happy Slaves"), stating that "without any
knowledge whatsoever of harmony, Juan Crisóstomo wrote
a Spanish opera containing wonderful and completely
original ideas." Arriaga was well supported during his
four years in Paris by his father, but the intensity of
his commitment to his studies at the Conservatoire and
his meteoric rise, based on his teachers' compliments
and assessments of his promise, may have taken a toll
on his health: he died in Paris ten days before his
twentieth birthday, of a lung ailment (possibly
tuberculosis), or exhaustion, perhaps both. He was
buried in an unmarked grave at the Cimetière du Nord
in Montmartre. Thanks to the Spanish Embassy, since
1977 there has been a plaque marking the house at 314
rue Saint-Honoré in memory of the composer.
Arriaga's music was used to create an opera pasticcio,
Die arabische Prinzessin. The work was commissioned by
the Barenboim-Said Foundation from the composer
Anna-Sophie Brüning and the author Paula Fünfeck, and
is based on a traditional Arabic tale. The piece was
premiered under the title Die Sultana von Cadiz by the
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of the Barenboim-Said
Foundation and local children's choirs at the Cultural
Palace, Ramallah on 14 July 2009. The music publisher
Boosey & Hawkes lists further performance runs in
Leipzig (in 2011); in Bonn, Bilbao, and Barañáin (in
2013); and in Madrid, Coburg, and Linz (in 2014).
Arriaga wrote the opera "Los esclavos felices" in 1820
when he was 14. It was produced in Bilbao however, only
the overture and some fragments have survived.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Cris%C3%B3stomo_Arr
iaga).
Although originally written for Full Orchestra, I
created this Interpretation of the Los esclavos felices
("The Happy Slaves") for Small Orchestra (Flutes,
Oboes, Bb Clarinets, French Horns, Bassoons, Timpani,
Violins, Violas, Cellos & Basses).
PARTITION