Francisco Tárrega and the Nokia Ring Tone

Today is Francisco Tárrega's birthday. He was born on November 21, 1852 and he died in 1909.

He had an eye infection when he was young which messed up his eyesight but he studied music and his first 2 music teachers were blind. He ran away a lot but by the time he was a teen he could play both the piano and guitar. He wrote lots of pieces for the guitar and he transcribed piano works by Beethoven and Chopin and others for the guitar.

His most known piece is a clip from "Grand Vals" which is used in the Nokia Ring Tone.

I don't think he could have guessed that his music would be used the way it is now. Telephones were just becoming popular around the time he died and they hadn't even thought of cellphones yet.


Here's another piece by Tárrega that I mentioned in an earlier blog post. It's Recuerdos de la Alhambra played by Drew Henderson.

Here's Tárrega's Lagrima played by Miloš Karadaglić