At the beginning of the 1920s Joaquín Rodrigo was already an excellent pianist and

composition student familiar with the most important contemporary trends in the arts. His first
compositions were written in small musical forms, although his first large orchestral work dates
from1924. His opus 1, Two Sketches for violin and piano ('La enamorada junto al surtidor' and
'Pequeña ronda'), was written in 1923. The same year also saw the composition of the Suite
para piano, the Cançoneta for violin and string orchestra, and an austere Ave Maria for voice
and organ which he arranged years later for unaccompanied choir. The Berceuse de otoño,
also from 1923, was composed originally for piano, but Rodrigo orchestrated it in the 1930s
and also incorporated it later into the beautiful Música para un jardín of 1957. His first work for
large orchestra, Juglares, was successfully premiered by the Valencia Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Enrique Izquierdo in 1924. Encouraged by this triumph, Joaquín entered a
national competition the following year with a much more ambitious work, Cinco piezas
infantiles, which received an honourable mention from the jury and was premiered with great
success in Valencia and Paris in 1927 and 1929 respectively. By the latter date Joaquín was
studying with his French master Paul Dukas in the École Normale de Musique in Paris. Rodrigo
had decided to move to France in 1927, since the French capital had been from the beginning
of the century an important cultural centre for Spanish writers, painters and musicians. It was
to be expected, therefore, that the young Joaquín Rodrigo would want to follow in the
footsteps of Albéniz, Falla and Turina.
The youthful works of Joaquín Rodrigo are characterized by a delicate lyrical style, orchestral
colours which are at times quite daring, and a harmonic vocabulary reminiscent of Ravel and
Granados, among others. These characteristics, and others, would be confirmed and developed
through the years of study with Paul Dukas.