José María Usandizaga

José María Usandizaga in 1915

José María Usandizaga (31 March 1887–5 October 1915) was a Spanish Basque composer.

A native of San Sebastián, Usandizaga began his musical studies in his hometown before moving to the Schola Cantorum in Paris. There, he was a composition pupil of Vincent d'Indy, and he took piano lessons from Gabriel Grovlez. From 1906 he was back in Spain, where he won success with his works for the stage and a number of other pieces. Usandizaga succumbed to tuberculosis in 1915.

Most of Usandizaga's music is based on Basque themes; among his works are several chamber pieces, some rhapsodies, and the operas Mendi Mendiyan ("High in the Mountains", a Basque language opera) and Las golondrinas (The Swallows), initially a zarzuela which was arranged as an opera after the composer's death by his brother Ramón and premiered in 1929 at the Liceu in Barcelona.[1][2] A third opera, the lyric drama La llama ("The Flame"), was left incomplete after his death; this, too was completed by his brother Ramón and premiered in 1918 in San Sebastián.

References

1. Christopher Webber · The Zarzuela Companion 2002- Page 244 This was the lyric drama in three acts Las golondrinas (The Wanderers), written at white heat between late September and mid-December of 1913 and performed in Madrid a few weeks later. Its sensational success saw the young composer ...
2. Tomás Marco Spanish Music in the Twentieth Century 1993- p 93 The other two lyric works he left us were zarzuelas . Las golondrinas (1913), one of the best works in the history of the genre, was enthusiastically received, then stumbled, but was finally definitely incorporated into the repertoire

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