The guitarist and composer Francisco Tárrega was inspired by a visit to the Alhambra in Granada two years previous in composing this piece.
The guitarist Francisco Tárrega’s fame grew with the genre known as alhambrismo – an artistic current characterised by a mixture of Romanticism and Eastern influences, with Memories of the Alhambra being a model piece.
The piece has a very simple structure (two sections in A minor and A major) and is built around the famous uninterrupted tremolo of the Romantic Spanish guitar. Tárrega did not invent this performing technique, but in his hands it reaches its zenith. He had already used it in some variations but here, for the first time, it becomes the absolute protagonist of the work’s sound.
