Juan Chrisóstomo Arriaga: The Three String Quartets

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In 1819 Arriaga’s opera Los esclavos felices appeared, of which only fragments remain. There were additionally some piano pieces, motets and patriotic hymns, amounting to about 20 works by 1821. In September of that year Arriaga left Spain. He met the Spanish ambassador in Paris, and the composer Cherubini, at that time one of the inspectors of the Paris Conservatoire. There he was admitted to the counterpoint class of a newly appointed professor Francois-Joseph Fétis (1784-1871), and to the violin class of Pierre Baillot. His Conservatoire prizes included those for counterpoint and fugue in both 1823 and 1824 – the year that Fétis took him as a teaching assistant. During these years Arriaga revised, and perhaps destroyed, several earlier works as well as producing a regular flow of new compositions. The three string quartets, probably written before 1822, were published in 1824. Arriaga was buried in the cemetery at Montmarte, his death, as reported by Fétis to his father, was attributed to overwork, exhaustion and an infection of the lungs. On the death of his father in 1836 the composer’s papers were divided between various family members and only reunited in the 1880s in such a way that an impression of his legacy could be made.