Enrique Granados Campiña was born in Lleida, Spain, the son of Calixto Granados, a Spanish army captain, and Enriqueta Campiña. As a young man he studied piano in Barcelona, where his teachers included Francisco Jurnetand and Joan Baptista Pujol. In 1887, he went to Paris to study. He was unable to become a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but he was able to take private lessons with a conservatoire professor, Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, whose mother, the soprano Maria Malibran, was of Spanish ancestry. Bériot insisted on extreme refinement in tone production, which strongly influenced Granados’s own teaching of pedal technique. He also fostered Granados's abilities in improvisation. Just as important were his studies with Felip Pedrell. He returned to Barcelona in 1889. His first successes were at the end of the 1890s, with the zarzuela Maria del Carmen, which attracted the attention of KingAlfonso XIII.
In 1911 Granados premiered his suite for piano Goyescas, which became his most famous work. It is a set of six pieces based on paintings of Francisco Goya. Such was the success of this work that he was encouraged to expand it. He wrote an opera based on the subject in 1914, but the outbreak of World War I forced the European premiere to be canceled. It was performed for the first time in New York City on 28 January 1916, and was very well received. Shortly afterwards, he was invited to perform a piano recital for President Woodrow Wilson. Prior to leaving New York, Granados also made live-recorded player piano music rolls for the New-York-based Aeolian Company's "Duo-Art" system, all of which survive today and can be heard – his very last recordings.
The delay incurred by accepting the recital invitation caused him to miss his boat back to Spain. Instead, he took a ship to England, where he boarded the passenger ferry SS Sussex for Dieppe, France. On the way across the English Channel, the Sussex was torpedoed by a German U-boat, as part of the German World War I policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. In a failed attempt to save his wife Amparo, whom he saw flailing about in the water some distance away, Granados jumped out of his lifeboat and drowned. However, the ship broke in two parts and only one sank (along with 80 passengers). Ironically, the part of the ship that contained his cabin did not sink and was towed to port, with most of the passengers, except for Granados and his wife, on board. Granados and his wife left six children: Eduard (a musician), Solita, Enrique (a swimming champion), Víctor, Natàlia, and Francisco.

From the end of 1890, de Falla studied piano at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid in Madrid under José Tragó and Felipe Pedrell. Under their influence, he got interested into the native Spanish music, especially the flamenco music of Andalusia and more specifically the cante jondo, of which he publiced a manuscript called El cante jondo. Influences of this can be found throughout his body of works. His first major work was an opera (zarzuela) in one act from 1905 La vida breve, which did not premier until 1913. From 1907 to 1914 De Falla stayed in Paris, where he got inspired by composers such Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Paul Dukas. During this time, he wrote little music. Much of his much most famous works were composed upon arrival in Madrid at the start of the First World War, such as his Noches en los jardines de España, El amor brujo and El corregidor y la molinera, which after an adaption is now know as El sombrero de tres picos. From 1921 to 1939, he lived in Granada where composed his El retablo de maese Pedro. The harpsichord part was specifically written for Wanda Landowska. Slowly, the Spanish folk music influences decreased and he adopted a more neo-classicistic style.

In 1939 De Falla moved to Argentina, where he died in 1946.

Alberto Evaristo Ginastera (Spanish pronunciation April 11, 1916 – June 25, 1983) was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas. Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires to a Catalan father and an Italian mother. During the last few years of his life, he preferred to pronounce his surname in its Catalan pronunciation, with a soft 'G' as in 'George' rather than a Spanish 'J' sound. In fact this would be the local Argentine pronunciation of his name if it were spelled Yinastera or Llinastera.
Ginastera studied at the conservatory in Buenos Aires, graduating in 1938. As a young professor, he taught at the Liceo Militar General San Martín. After a visit to the United States in 1945–47, where he studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, he returned to Buenos Aires and co-founded the League of Composers. He held a number of teaching posts. Among his notable students were Ástor Piazzolla (who studied with him in 1941), Alcides Lanza, Waldo de los Ríos, Jacqueline Nova and Rafael Aponte-Ledée. See: List of music students by teacher: G to J#Alberto Ginastera.
Ginastera moved back to the United States in 1968 and then in 1970 to Europe. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, at the age of 67 and was buried in the Cimetière des Rois there.

Gaspar Cassadó i Moreu (30 September 1897 – 24 December 1966) was a Spanish cellist and composer of the early 20th century. He was born in Barcelona to a church musician father and began taking cello lessons at age seven. When he was nine, he played in a recital where Pablo Casals was in the audience; Casals immediately offered to teach him. The city of Barcelona awarded him a scholarship so that he could study with Casals in Paris.
He was also the author of several notable musical hoaxes.
The personal papers of Cassadó family are preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.

This talented Cuban composer-pianist-musicologist was vital to the preservation of early Spanish music. Nin composed only a modest number of original works, mostly songs. However, he edited several important volumes of old Spanish music, particularly from the Spanish Baroque. A very dedicated artist, he was decorated with high honors during his lifetime.
Born in Cuba, he was taken to Spain as a child. After studies in Barcelona, he went to Paris in 1902 to continue piano studies with the Polish-German composer-pianist Moritz Moszkowski. He also studied counterpoint and composition at D'Indy's Schola Cantorum. In 1905 Nin was appointed piano teacher at that school, and when in 1908 he left Paris for Berlin, the school made him an honorary professor. He worked in Berlin from 1908 to 1910. Returning to Havana in 1910 to start a concert society and music periodical, he then left for tours of Europe and South America as a pianist. In 1939, a long period in Europe was cut short by World War II. Eventually, he returned to Cuba, where he died in 1949.
Nin was a great performer of works by Bach as well as old and modern Spanish works. His own compositions were influenced by Spanish Baroque and French Impressionism. Nin is survived by his son, the composer-pianist-conductor Joaquín María Nin-Culmell.

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) is one of most important tango composers of all time. Surprisingly, he spent a large part of his youth in New York. In 1937, Piazzolla returned to his mother country Argentina. There, he started to focus on a career as a classical pianist while in the evening he would play accordion in tango cabaret. From 1955, he worked on his own compositions and wove these two influences together to a new, refreshing sound: the 'tango neuvo'.

At the wedding of crown prince Willem-Alexander and Máxima Zorreguieta, Carl Kraayenhof made a spectacular impression with his performance of Adios Noniño. Piazzolla died in 1992.

Antón García Abril (born 19 May 1933 in Teruel) is a Spanish composer and musician. Between 1974 and 2003, he was the head of the department of Compositions and Musical Forms (Composicion y Formas Musicales) of the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música in Madrid, and in 1982 he was elected a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. In 1994, he was awarded Spain's Premio Nacional de Música for composition, and in 2008, he was also named a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia.