Composition Characteristics Of Granados' The Twelve Pieces Of Spanish Dances And The Piano Performance Analysis

'The twelve Spanish Dances' is one of masterpieces of Granados' compositions. As an important national representative of the School of Spanish piano at the end of 19th and early of 20th, Enrique Granados' compositions are brimming with romanticism in poetic and artistic flavor and manifest the intense Spain national characteristics deeply. Based on analyses of the features and performance techniques in the composition, this paper tries to discover the tradition from the classic music——strict structure, the neat phrase combination and the creation philosophy, the romanticism elements in the lyrical melody, unique emotion expressions. Through further analysis of the work, the paper attempts to inquire about the specific characteristics and laws in the creative application and development of his national folk music vocabulary by Granados. During the performance of this work, the author practices these pieces skillfully with integration of the rational understandings and apprehensions about the very complicated relations between the Europe romanticism and the nationalism at 19th century as well as the unique culture atmosphere of Spanish music and the exotic.This paper is composed of four chapters. In chapter I, the author gives an overview on the Europe ethnic music including the origin, features, Spanish music development history and the cultural background; in chapter II, the author shows a brief introduction on Granados and his piano music 'the Twelve Spanish Dances'; chapter III and chapter IV are the key parts of the paper, in chapter III the author analyzes the composition characteristics of 'the Twelve Spanish Dances' from three aspects which are classicism inheritance and development, the embodiment of romanticism characteristics and the embodiment of the nationalism; in chapter IV the author puts emphasis on the piano performance of 'the Twelve Spanish Dances', involving performing skills, pressing keys and tamber, controlling the speed and strength and stepping on the pedal.Based on the analysis and study on the composition characteristics and the piano performance, the purpose of this paper is to have an understanding on the European ethnic music, Spanish music and Granados at 19 century; to extend the piano performance text and the practice field; to integrate the music itself characteristics—the composition skills and features into the piano teaching-performance which is particularly stress on sensibility, making the feeling tending to intelligence and rationality, the handling of the skills and methods in the piano performance is more precise to express the music, music content and music signification.