The ethos of a bygone Spain as captured in the paintings of Francisco Goya (1746–1828) captivated Enrique Granados and inspired his crowning achievement, Goyescas (Los majos enamorados) (Majos in Love), a suite for piano in two books. Majos and majas were the idealized and romanticized lower classes of Spain, often depicted in exaggerated traditional attire. Granados’ portrayals of their amorous adventures, begun in 1909, seek to capture the spirit of Goya’s work.

In the immortal “Quejas, o la maja y el ruiseñor” (Complaints, or the Maiden and the Nightingale), a brokenhearted girl shares her sorrows with the nightingale, whose song of trills and arpeggios drifts away into the night. The distinguished English critic Ernest Newman said it best when he compared this music to “the voluptuous sense of passing the fingers through masses of richly colored jewels.”

—Grant Hiroshima