Francisco Tárrega

Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea (21 November 185215 December 1909) was a Spanish composer and classical guitarist of the late Romantic period. He is known for such pieces as Capricho Árabe, Recuerdos de la Alhambra and Gran Vals. Biography Tárrega was born on 21 November 1852, in Villarreal, Province of Castellón, Spain. It is said that Francisco’s father played flamenco and several other music styles on his guitar; when his father was away working as a watchman at the Convent of San Pascual, Francisco would take his father’s guitar and attempt to make the beautiful sounds he had heard. Francisco’s nickname as a child was “Quiquet”. As a child, he ran away from his nanny and fell into an irrigation channel and injured his eyes. Fearing that his son might lose his sight completely, his father moved the family to Castellón de la Plana to attend music classes because as a musician he would be able to earn a living, even if blind. Both his first music teachers, Eugeni Ruiz and Manuel González, were blind. In 1862, concert guitarist Julián Arcas, on tour in Castellón, heard the young Tárrega play and advised Tárrega’s father to allow Francisco to come to Barcelona to study with him. T