[스페인]Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga

 

 

Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga

Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga

Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola (January 27, 1806 – January 17, 1826) was a Spanish 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, January 27 (fifty years apart).

 

 

Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga 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 was an organist at a church in Berriatúa.^[1] He worked in Guernica and in 1802 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 1822 Arriaga's father, with the encouragement of composer José Sobejano y Ayala (1791–1857),^[2] sent Juan Crisóstomo to Paris, where in November of that year Arriaga began his studies.^[3] These included the 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."^[1]:11

 

Arriaga soon became a teaching assistant in Fétis's class, and also became noted both among the students and other faculty at the Conservatoire for his talent. Cherubini referred to Arriaga's fugue for eight voices (also 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 Arriaga's ability to use musically sophisticated harmonies, counterpoint, and related techniques, without having been taught. Fétis was already familiar with Arriaga's now-lost opera Los Esclavos Felices ("The Happy Slaves"),^{[note 1]} stating that "without any knowledge whatsoever of harmony, Juan Crisóstomo wrote a Spanish opera containing wonderful and completely original ideas."^[1]:12 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 the almost meteoric rise one could expect based on his teachers' compliments and assessments of his promise, may have taken a toll on his health.

 

Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga 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.^[1]:19 Thanks to the Spanish Embassy, there is since 1977 a plaque marking the house at 314 rue Saint-Honoré in memory of the composer.^[5]

Music

Main article: List of compositions by Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga

The amount of Arriaga's music that has survived to the present day is quite small,

reflecting his early death. It includes:

• Opera: Arriaga wrote an opera, Los esclavos felices ("The Happy Slaves"), in 1820 when he was 13. It was produced in Bilbao. only the overture and some fragments have survived.
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• Symphony: Arriaga composed a Symphony in D (Sinfonía a gran orquesta), which uses D major and D minor so equally that it is not in either key.
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• String quartets: At the age of 16, Arriaga wrote three sparkling and idiomatic string quartets that were published in 1824, and were the only works of his published during his lifetime.

• Other works: Arriaga also wrote the following:
  • An octet, Nada y Mucho
  • Pieces of church music: a Mass (lost), Stabat Mater, Salve Regina, Et vitam venturi saeculi (lost), cantatas (Agar, Erminia, All' Aurora, Patria)
  • Instrumental compositions: a nonet, Tres Estudios de Caracter for piano, La Hungara for violin and piano, Variations for String Quartet and numerous Romances

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 Youth Orchestra of the Barenboim-Said Foundation and local children's choirs at the Cultural Palace, Ramallah on 14 July 2009.^[6] 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).^[7]

[2015. 1.27. 1차]