User:Granados-marshall

→ Material in this article duplicates content on the Asociación Musical Granados-Marshall website.

The Granados-Marshall Musical Association (AMGM — Asociación Musical Granados-Marshall) is a non-commercial organization in Spain, presided over by Alicia de Larrocha and created to pursue the following goals:

• To pay homage to Enrique Granados and to his pupil and successor Frank Marshall, two personalities who set trends in the world of pianistic interpretation and left a deep mark in the musical and cultural life of Spain.
• To spread music, especially that of Spanish composers.
• To create a Documentary Center to preserve and to put at the disposal of the general public the important historical archives begun by Enrique Granados and continued by Frank Marshall.

Among its other activities, the AMGM also awards music scholarships.

AMGM was constituted on 26 November 2001 and approved by the Generalitat de Catalunya on 25 March 2002.

Enrique Granados

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Enrique Granados was born in Lleida. His father was a captain in the army. His first music teacher was a soldier, José Junceda, who was in the same company as his father. When the Granados family was moved to Barcelona he continued his musical education in Escolania de la Mercè with maestro Francerc Xavier Jurnet. Later on, he entered the Academia Pujol, run by Joan Batista Pujol, who at that time, was considered to be the best piano teacher in Barcelona and taught the most important pianists of Granados generation : Isaac Albéniz, Joaquim Malats, Carles Vidiella and Ricard Viñes. At the age of fifteen, Granados gave his first concert in public where he won first prize awarded by the Academia Pujol. The musicologist Felip Pedrell and the pianist and composer Isaac Albéniz were among the jury. Granados began earning a living as a musician playing in the most emblematic cafés in the Barcelona of that time. He also began giving private piano lessons, in particular to the daughters of Eduardo Conde, a businessman who became his first maecenas. He studied harmony and composition with Felip Pedrell, through whom he discovered popular music. This knowledge inspired Granados to compose ‘Doce danzas españolas', his first great work, written in 1883.

In 1887, at the age of twenty, Granados moved to Paris to study with Charles de Bériot, a professor at the Conservatory of Paris. There Granados, accompanied by Ricard Viñes, used to go to the workshops of Catalan and French painters with whom he shared a deep love for art. In 1892 he held his first great recital in the Teatre Líric of Barcelona. In 1892 he performed the ‘Concert for piano and orchestra in A minor' by Eduard Grieg for the first time in our country and a year later he married Amparo Gal, born in Valencia, with whom he had six children. In 1898 he performed the opera ‘Maria del Carmen' for the first time, for which Queen Maria Cristina awarded him the Carlos III Cross. In those years he held many concerts, mainly in Barcelona, among which should be mentioned the ones he shared with two other great pianists, Joaquin Malats and Carlos Vidiella. In 1900 he founded the Classical Concerts Society and as well as his facet as a pianist, he presented himself in public for the first time as a conductor. He also played his transcriptions for piano of the sonatas of Scarlatti in the Sala Pleyel in Paris and collaborated with artists as great as Jacques Tribaud or Eugène Ysaÿe.

In 1901 he founded the Academia Granados which soon became the school of reference in Barcelona and where he could apply his method about sonority and use of the pedal, the first to be published in Spain. Among his students should be mentioned ; Conxita Badia, Robert Gerhard, Paquita Madriguera, Frederic Longas and Frank Marshall, who was assistant headmaster of the Academy and continuator of his pianistic school. His work ‘Allegro de Concierto' won first prize in the composition competition of the Conservatory in Madrid in 1904. In 1912, the Sala Granados was opened in Avenida Tibidabo, Barcelona, under the auspices of Doctor Salvador Andreu. He presented many of his works in this concert hall : for piano solo (Valses poéticos, Escenas romànticas, etc.) for voice and piano (Canciones Amatorioas, Tonadillas, etc.), chamber (string quartet, trio, the ‘Doble Quinteto' etc.), the works he wrote for the Teatre Líric Català with words by Apel.les Mestres (Elisenda, Follet, Liliana, etc.). In 1911 he performed his ‘Goyescas' or ‘Los Majos Enamorados', for the first time in Paris. This piano suite is based on the paintings of Goya. Granados made an opera version which was performed for the first time in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in 1916. On the way back from his journey to the United States, having attended the opening night of ‘Goyescas' and having given a concert for the President of the United States, Enrique Granados and his wife drowned in the sinking of the ship ‘Sussex', torpedoed by a German submarine off the French coast of the English Channel.

Frank Marshall

→ Material in this section duplicates content on the AMGM Frank Marshall King page.

Frank Marshall, the son of an English family that went to live in Catalonia to work in the construction of a textile factory, was born in Mataró in 1883. As a child he already showed great musical talent. He began his musical education in his native city with maestro Teodor Solà Vendrell. Later he moved to Barcelona to study at the High Conservatory of Music of the Liceo with Professor Sanchez Cabañach and Professor Puyé. When he finished his degree he continued further training with Enrique Granados and, in 1907, was named assistant headmaster of piano studies in the Academia Granados. At that same period of time, he began his career as a pianist appearing in several European and American capital cities. In 1906, he gave some concerts in the Milan exhibition and around Germany, which allowed him to meet personalities from the pianistic world of that time such as the pianists Ferrucio Busoni and Emil von Sauer.

In 1907 he won the Ortiz Cussó Award at the Sobrequés I Reig Composition Competition with the piece ‘Suite Catalonia'. The jury was presided by Granados himself. It was due to his close relationship with this composer that Frank Marshall became the legitimate continuator of this maestro's pianistic school through the Academia Granados. He perpetuated the principles about sonority and use of the pedal that Granados systemized in his pedagogic method. When Granados died, in 1916, Frank Marshall became headmaster of the Academia Granados until 1920, when he changed the name of the school to Marshall Academy. He is the author of two pedagogic treatise: ‘Practical study about ‘Piano pedals' (1919) and ‘Piano sonority' (1940), in which he applies his principles of sonority in the repertoire of each course. He maintained his relationship with the international music world throughout his whole life. In 1925 he made several recordings for the record company Wette-Mignon of Freiburg (Germany).

Between 1926 and 1927 Marshall took part in the Falla Festivals, which were held in Barcelona, interpreting the soloist part of the work ‘Noches en los jardines de España' which he also played in Seville and Cadiz conducted by Manuel de Falla himself. In 1932 he was invited to form part of the jury of the international Piano Competition of Vienna and, in 1937, of the Frederic Chopin International Competition alongside Henry Wieniawksy, Clemens Krauss, Wilhem Kempff and Alfred Corcot. As well as carrying out his pedagogic work, he was also delegate president in Barcelona of the Musical Culture Association, a society which was fostered by the Conciertos Daniel agency, which brought one of the most brilliant seasons of concerts to the Palau de la Música Catalana with performances by Claudio Arrau, Arthur Rubinstein, Wanda Landowska, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Yasha Heifetz among many others. Frank Marshall was maestro to a whole generation of Catalan pianists, among which should be mentioned Carles I Giocasta Corma, Mercedes Roldós, Maria Vilardell, Rosa Maria Kurcharsky, Rosa Sabater, Alberto Attenelle, Carlota Garriga and Alicia de Larrocha, who inherited the headship of the Academy from him.

He married Teresa Cabarrús, the daughter of French diplomats, who was a painter and a poet. They had no children. Teresa Cabarrús supported the pedagogic work of her husband, organizing concerts and taking care of the courses of recitation and literature which complemented the musical studies given in the Academy. Thanks to his spirit, this school became a cultural reference in the Barcelona of the 40's and 50's. Frank Marshall died of a lung disease in 1959

Document Center

→ Material in this section, in which "fund" means "archive," duplicates material on the AMGM Documentary Center page.

The AMGM possesses a documentary archive which gathers the history of the music school founded by Enrique Granados in 1901 (Granados Academy), continued by his pupil Frank Marshall (Marshall Academy) and later by one of Frank Marshalls own pupils, Alicia de Larrocha.

Enrique Granados Fund

During the 15 years in which the Academy was run by Enrique Granados, the school formed a whole generation of great musicians which were outstanding both at national and international level: Robert Gerhard, Alexandre Vilalta, Frederic Longas, Conxita Badia, among others. As well as this, the Academy also became a very important center for cultural activities in the city of Barcelona, thanks to the concerts that were given there in which many of Granados¨own works were performed for the first time along with those of other composers of the period with whom he shared a great friendship.

The documents that form this fund complete the documentary archives on the figure of Granados which can be found in other institutions ( The Museum of Music of Barcelona), especially through concert programmes, some letters, photographs and several original manuscripts such as the "Requiebros" or the "Intermezzo" of the Goyescas. Documents which bear testimony to his pedagogic facet have also remained, with manuscripts of conferences that he gave on the sonority and the use of the mechanism of the pedal, on which his method of teaching was based, and which was pioneer in Spain.

Frank Marshall Fund

Dating from the time that Frank Marshall was director of the Academy, there are many documents that link the figure of this maestro to numerous personalities from the musical and cultural world of our country and overseas. Correspondence with Manuel de Falla, Joaquin Turina, Emil von Sauer, Rodrigo, Casals, Millet, Rubinstein, Mompou, Cortot, and many others, convert this fund into a rich mosaic of information of a whole period. We can also find a great quantity of concert programmes, many of which are linked to the Association of Musical Culture of which Marshall was the president in Barcelona; and press clippings of the musical activity of that century with a long list of names especially related to the world of the piano, but also to other interpretative areas such as Victoria de Los Angeles or the Ars Musicae ensemble. By his side, his wife Teresa Cabarrus, promoter of many cultural initiatives which arose through the Academy such as the poetry recitals or the chamber theater that completed the cultural life of the Academy. We also find an important number of original manuscripts as the Sevillian Symphony by Joaquin Turina, or some songs by Mompou, a cadence by Malats or the Catalonia Suite by Marshall himself.

Alicia de Larrocha Fund

The Alicia de Larrocha fund is also important at historical level both for the concert programmes it contains, which date back to her debut in public, as well as for the letters, photographs or various biographical documentation. From this period we can highlight the original manuscript of the "Concerto Breve" by Xavier Montsalvatge which he dedicated to Alicia de Larrocha.

Marshall Academy Fund

Frank Marshall has gone down in history as a disciple of Granados and an acknowledged pianist, but above all, as a great pedagogue, continuator of the method of teaching of his maestro and discoverer of great musical talents: as the brothers Carlos and Giocasta Corma, Mercedes Roldos, Rosa Sabater, Maria Vilardell, Alberto Attenelle, Rose M. Kucharsky, Carlota Garriga, among many others and very especially Alicia de Larrocha, who has been the most highly acclaimed pianist at all levels to come from this Academy.

The Marshall Academy Fund keeps registration books of pupils dating from 1920 up to the present day, plans of study and of examination, programmes of pupils´ concerts, press cuttings, photographs and programmes of different events and concerts held at the Academy.