The UAB identifies an unpublished work by Enric Granados

Lecturer of the Department of Art and Musicology Francesc Cortès recently identified an unpublished score of an Italian song based on the text Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri, created by composer Enric Granados. The study was published in Dante e l’Arte, a journal by the UAB Institute of Medieval Studies.

23/11/2016

Francesc Cortès recently identified the unpublished score while working on a research on Enric Granados.The findings of the research are published in the second number of the Dante e l’Artejournal, a worldwide annual publication edited by the UAB's Institute of Medieval Studies, co-directed by Rossend Arqués and Eduard Vilella, lecturers of Italian Studies and authors of several works.

“Granados composed a lied which until recently was unknown, the Sonnet XV by Dante (Vita Nuova). (Bib. Cat. M 6994/10). The text, in Italian, originates from chapter XXVI of the Vita Nuova. The manuscript studied - made by a copyist - covers five pages, with an extension of forty bars", Francesc Cortès detailed in his paper.

The UAB lecturer in Musicology discovered that the piece was a present from Granados to Eusebi Bertran, an important Catalan industrialist closely linked to the artistic circles of that time. Until now, the original manuscript had belonged to a private owner. The copy which allowed them to find the original piece was located in the Library of Catalonia, fruit of a donation.

The piece will be presented publicly on Wednesday 23 November, and interpreted by Italian soprano Cinzia Monari, at the Reial Cercle Artístic in Barcelona, where Granados became a member in 1900 and in 1901 gave his first concert.

Enrique Granados, composer and pianist, was born in Lleida in 1867. The composer was greatly interested in the figure of Dante, so much that he composed a symphonic poem with the name of the Florentine poet. Dante Alighieri is known especially for two of the greatest works in universal literature, Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy.