| Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola | |
|---|---|
Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga |
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| Born | January 27, 1806 Bilbao, Spain |
| Died | January 17, 1826 (aged 19) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Composer |
| Parents | Juan Simón de Arriaga |
Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola (January 27, 1806 – January 17, 1826) was a Spanish composer. He was nicknamed the "Spanish Mozart" after he died, because, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was also a child prodigy and an accomplished composer who died young. Whether by coincidence or design, they also shared the same first and second baptismal names; and they shared the same birthday, January 27 (fifty years apart).
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Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga was born in Bilbao, Biscay, on what would have been Mozart's fiftieth birthday. His father and older brother first taught him music. He then studied the violin under Pierre Baillot, and counterpoint and harmony under François-Joseph Fétis at the Paris Conservatoire. He was so talented that he soon became a teaching assistant in Fétis's class. He died in Paris at the age of nineteen, of a lung ailment, or exhaustion, perhaps both.
The amount of music by Arriaga which has survived to the present day is quite small, reflecting his early death. It includes:
Arriaga's music is "elegant and accomplished and notable for its harmonic warmth" (New Grove Concise Dictionary of Music). There is nothing characteristically Spanish or Basque in Arriaga's music. Rather it is international (European) music from the formative period between the late classical music of Mozart to the early Romanticism of the young Beethoven.
According to Grove, Arriaga's death "before he was 20 was a sad loss to Basque music." Following his early death, with the only reliable biographical material being some reports by Fétis, Arriaga's life story was fictionalized to play into rising Basque nationalism. A public theatre in his home city of Bilbao carries his name.