Joaquín Rodrigo

Joaquín Rodrigo lost his sight at age three after a diphtheria epidemic swept his hometown of Sagunto, near Valencia, where he was born in 1901. He composed for the rest of his very long life, working out his music in Braille and dictating it note by note to a copyist. In the 1920s and 30s he studied in Paris with Paul Dukas, part of a generation of Spanish composers who trained in France.

His fame rests above all on the Concierto de Aranjuez of 1939, a concerto for guitar and orchestra whose slow movement, with its long, grieving melody over gently strummed chords, became one of the most recognizable pieces of the twentieth century. Remarkably, Rodrigo did not play the guitar himself; he was a pianist. The piece did more than any other to put the guitar on the concert stage.

Start with the Concierto de Aranjuez, then the Fantasía para un gentilhombre, built on tunes by a Spanish guitarist of the 1600s.