Granados, too, was captured by Pedrell's vision and began concentrating his compositional efforts toward works steeped in the music of his native Spain. As a composer, he, like Chopin, never strayed far from the piano as the vehicle for expressing his creativity, concentrating the majority of his efforts in that idiom. Eventually he gained notoriety for both his brilliant pianistic abilities and his delightfully accessible music. Among his most famous works were various suites of pieces for the piano - Six Pieces on Spanish Popular Songs, Danzas espaûoles (Spanish Dances), Escenas Romonticas (Romantic Scenes) and Escenas Poeticas (Poetic Scenes). His music drew great admiration from contemporaries like Saint-Saæns, Grieg and Massenet. It was music infused with fresh melodic and harmonic ideas, dashing modulations and captivating rhythms. Cellist Pablo Casals, himself a fellow Spaniard, once commented to Enrique, "Granados, every form you employ has been employed before, and yet from them you have evolved something never before heard in the world."
Granados shared most of Spain's love for the paintings of Goya, "The People's Artist." His home study was adorned in tapestries by the master artist. It is no surprise, then, that the acknowledged masterpiece among all of Granados' compositions were his two books of Goyescas. These technically demanding little piano pieces dramatically convey the impressions of one or more Goya paintings - perhaps even capturing the very spirit of the man who so vividly interpreted the life of the Spanish people on canvas. So popular was this piano collection that Granados was persuaded to fashion an opera based on it. While eagerly written, Goyescas (as the opera was also called) could not be produced in Paris, as scheduled in 1914, due to the breakout of World War I.
Finally in 1916 the Metropolitan Opera agreed to stage the world premire and Enrique journeyed to New York to attend both his opera's inaugural performance and to perform a concert before President Wilson. On his return trip, his ship of passage, the Sussex , was torpedoed by a German U-boat engaged in wartime hostilities, resulting in the death of both Granados and his wife.
