Granados, Enrique

Preface

Granados, Enrique – Dante, poème symphonique pour orchestre

b. Lérida , 27 July 1867 – d. after the torpedoing of the Sussex Channel ferry
in the English Channel, 24 March 1916)

Preface
Granados is nowadays best remembered for his piano suite Goyescas, which he wrote towards the end of his life. However, he composed a good deal of other music, including operas and chamber music as well as a few orchestral works, of which the most important is this two-part symphonic poem Dante, which he completed in 1907-8 and which was first performed in 1915.

Dante takes its inspiration from the Divine Comedy by the thirteenth century Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). This is a long poem, in Italian, which purports to tell the story of the author’s journey through the Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio and Paradiso and at last to experience the beatific vision. In the first two parts of his journey Dante is guided by Virgil, the Roman poet, who is reimagined as a fictional character. In the third part his guide is Beatrice, the Florentine noblewoman whom he had loved at first sight, who had married someone else and died young.

On his journey, Dante encounters all sorts of people, including people he knew personally as well as historical and legendary figures from the past, among them characters from the Bible and from classical mythology. He meets them in ones or twos, and they tell him their stories. Each of the three parts of the poem is divided into thirty-three cantos, with an extra one at the beginning, and these are of moderate length. So there is constant variety in the people he meets and a wide range of stories. …

read more / weiterlesen … > HERE