Enrique Granados (1867-1916) is one of Spain’s better-known composers, and you can still occasionally hear pieces from his famous Goyescas on the classical music stations. Still, he’s fairly obscure, which lends suspense to John W. Milton’s biographical novel about Granados, The Fallen Nightingale. Because he’s not one of the major deities of the classical world, we don’t know even the rough outlines of the plot.
The novel is a surprise, to say the least. Milton lives in Minnesota (Afton, to be exact)—quite a ways from the Iberian peninsula. Yet he’s a brilliant researcher, assembling thousands of details from primary sources and interviews into a colorful, very Catalan mosaic. He is also an elegant tour guide, painting such a benevolent, gentle portrait of the maestro that we are not even annoyed when he neglects his family or takes a mistress.
The writing is simple, light, graceful. Early on he places us squarely in the Barcelona of 1899 by describing the town as Granados walks through it to meet friends or go to work at the music academy he has founded. Later on, visits to Switzerland and Paris, and his fateful visit to America, are drawn out in full detail. There are many characters in this book (Ravel, President Wilson, the great Caruso, a young Pablo Ruiz Picasso and a nine-year-old Anais Nin all make cameos) but it is mainly concerned with his patrons, Salvador and Carmen Andreu; his friendships with Isaac Albéniz and Pablo Casals; and a deep relationship with a student, Clotilde Godó, who, along with the nightingale in her garden, inspires the best of his music. Many pages are devoted to Granados’ endeavors to win recognition and get his operas performed, and this at times can get rather tiresome, but it does give a very honest portrayal of the life of a struggling artist, seeming always to be on the brink of some lasting fame.
A biographical novel of this kind has its own inherent problem—the urge for the biographer to be exact and thorough, crossing swords with the fiction writer’s need for brevity and drama. Milton carries off the former well and gives the latter a noble effort. The book would have been better with some structural editing (a poem from Darío appears, I think, four times in the book), and we are stuck an awful long time in New York. Still, this is probably the best novel published in Minnesota last year. Though a far cry from justifying the ways of god to man, our Milton gives the performance of a true virtuoso, and one that can be enjoyed even by those not holding season tickets at the orchestra.
The Fallen Nightingale comes with it’s own CD of Granados’ music, performed by Douglas Riva, so that you can listen to the maestro while you read about him.
- Joel Van Valin