Andrés Segovia, was born in Linares, Jaén, in the region Andalusia, on 21 February 1893. From early childhood he was deeply responsive to the sound of the guitar, an instrument which was part of everyday life in southern Spain. He moved to Granada where he acquired his first guitar when he was ten. Despite the absence of any competent teachers, Segovia soon gained a prodigious mastery of the instrument and discovered the existence of many fine guitar compositions surpassing the limitations of Andalusia’s folkloric guitar styles.
By 1909 Segovia gave his first public performance at the Centro Artístico in Granada. Concerts in Cordoba and Seville followed and he later went to Madrid where in 1912 he gave a recital at the Ateneo and was presented with a concert guitar of superlative quality by the luthier, Manuel Ramírez. Segovia’s first international tour was to South America in the early 1920s while his European reputation was established by a resoundingly successful concert in Paris in 1924 attended by many distinguished musicians.
From this period of his life onwards Segovia not only enriched the range of the guitar repertoire by transcribing and performing works by great composers of the past, but also persuaded his contemporaries to write new pieces. Composers such as Moreno Torroba, Turina and Manén (Spain), Ponce (Mexico), Castelnuovo-Tedesco (Italy), Villa-Lobos (Brazil), Roussel (France), and Tansman (Poland), wrote significant compositions for him during this crucial period of his early concert career. Following the Second World War, other composers contributed to his musical treasury including Rodrigo, Mompou and Asencio (Spain), Duarte (England), and Haug (Switzerland), among others. Since Segovia’s death, further works by a variety of composers such as Vicente Arregui, Lennox Berkeley, Henri Collet, Cyril Scott, Gaspar Cassadó, Raymond Petit and others have been discovered among his private papers.
Armed with an expanding repertoire, Segovia’s international esteem rapidly increased, especially after his initial commercial recordings in 1927. In 1926 he performed in Russia and Britain, in 1927 in Scandinavia, in 1928 came his first tour of the United States, and in 1929 Segovia made his début in Japan. From then on Segovia’s guitar was heard in almost every country in the world. He continued touring until the age of 94, his last concert taking place in Miami, Florida on 4 April 1987. Andrés Segovia died at his home in Madrid two months later on 2 June 1987.