I know, I said I’d be starting Berlioz this week, but I’m just not ready with that post yet, so here’s a peek into a musical life that showed great promise before it was cut short at the age of nineteen. Spanish composer Juan Crisostomo Arriaga was born fifty years to the day after Mozart was, and like Mozart, Arriaga was a child prodigy who might have become Spain’s greatest composer had he not contracted a lung ailment during his studies in Paris and died just ten days before he would have turned twenty. Alas, for this symphony is a clear sign of a confident and talented voice that was cut short far, far too early.
Here is Arriaga’s Symphony in D.
Next week, we turn to Berlioz.