Isaac Albéniz

Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual was born 29 May 1860, a virtuoso pianist and conductor who belonged to the post-Romantic swell but kept one ear on Spanish soil. His piano works wove folk idioms into formal structures, and that hybrid vision - most fully realized in the suite Iberia, composed 1905-1908 - left a mark on both European classical tradition and the Spanish nationalist current around the Generation of '98. Pieces like Asturias, Granada, Sevilla became guitar repertoire standards through transcription, though Albéniz himself never scored a note for the instrument. He died 18 May 1909; some of his papers rest in the Library of Catalonia.