Antonio Jose's Biography

Antonio Jose was born on 12th December 1902 in Burgos, Spain. He was praised by Maurice Ravel as one who would 'become the greatest Spanish musician of our century', but his arrest and execution near his home city of Burgos in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War cast his music into a subsequent obscurity which has only recently been remedied.

Back then Burgos was a rather small city removed from the cultural concerns of Madrid or Barcelona. Despite this, the young musician made a name for himself and before he was twenty he was awarded a grant to continue his studies in Madrid. In 1920, at the age of eighteen, Jose was appointed orchestral conductor of the Teatro de la Latina, although his work there was fairly limited given that the theatres repertoire consisted mainly of revues and other such light entertainment.
Very little is known even today about Antonio Jose’s life in Madrid. As yet no light has been shed on his teachers or the people or music that influenced him, but it is known that he began to write more ambitious works, such as the Sonata castellana (Castilian Sonata, 1922), followed a year later by the Sinfona castellana (Castilian Symphony), his most formally advanced orchestral work. Other piano works dating from these years include the Danza de los bufones (Dance of the Jesters, 1920), the Poema de la juventud (Poem of Youth, 1924), the title by which his Fourth Sonata is known, and the Tres danzas burgalesas (Three Dances from Burgos, 1924). He also began to direct a number of choral ensembles, a very popular form of music-making in 1920s Spain, choral singing frequently being linked to the development of workers movements from the 1880s onwards.

In 1925 and 1926, Antonio Jose traveled to Paris, a trip that would definitive influence on his style. While his use of Castilian folk-music put him somewhat in the rearguard in comparison with some of the other Spanish composers of his generation who were experimenting with neo-classicism, as exemplified by Ernesto Halffters Sinfonietta (1925), his affection for French music in general and impressionism in particular led him to follow Fallas example and stay closer to France than to the modernism of fin-de-sicle Vienna.

In 1925 Antonio Jose moved to Malaga in Spain to take up the post of music teacher in a school whose pupils were drawn from local high society. This was a period of intense compositional work during which he produced a fourth Danza burgalesa (1928) and the Sonata gallega (Galician Sonata, 1929). The piece is generally considered to be among the finest sonatas written for the guitar in the 20th century and it’s in the top of the most performed modern guitar sonatas among Leo Brower’s and Alberto Ginastera’s Sonata.

The discovery of the moving and virtuosic Sonata for Guitar, not only has proved most popular in the concert hall, but has also been augmented by recordings of his orchestral pieces such as Sinfonía castellana. Considerable interest was aroused by the re-discovery in the late 1980s of the Sonata, which Antonio José finished on 23 August 1933. (One movement was first performed in Burgos by Regino Sáinz de la Maza in November 1934.) The Sonata offers further perspectives on the expansion of the guitar repertoire during the early twentieth century Spanish musical renaissance. The work established Antonio José's reputation beside those of his distinguished contemporaries who respected the guitar as an expressive medium. José's Sonata is a composition of virtuosity as well as great emotional depth and insight. Is is generally considered to be among the finest sonatas written for the guitar in the 20th century and it’s in the top of the most performed modern guitar sonatas among Leo Brower’s and Alberto Ginastera’s Sonata.

Antonio-José met the same fate as Lorca - he was executed by a Falangist firing squad in 1936 at Estepar (Burgos).