Antonio Segura’s House

Antonio Segura Mesa (Granada 1842-1916), Federico García Lorca’s music teacher and one of the most influential people in his youthful artistic training, to whom he dedicated his first book, Impressions and Landscapes, was a modest composer of little recognition who taught the poet in his house in Escudo del Carmen since the Lorca family settled in Granada in 1908 in the house on Acera del Casino.

Segura, unlike other contemporary creators, never left Granada. Two other famous students also passed through his house, the guitarist and composer Ángel Barrios (1882-1964) and Francisco Alonso (1887-1948), author of still popular works such as the passacaglia Los Nardos or the chotis Pichi, both from Las Leandras.  The original house was demolished and rebuilt. He was also a teacher of Rafael Salguero, first director of the Conservatory of Granada, and of José Montero, founder of the Municipal Band.

Segura’s teaching gave Lorca an encounter with cultured music. From him he received lessons in Harmony and Composition. But he also told him about the lives, loves, sorrows and miseries of the great artists.

When, in 1915 or 1916, García Lorca began to approach the young creators of the tertulia of El Rinconcillo, introduced himself as a musician; he was the only aspiring piano player and composer in the group. In fact, one of the reasons for his poor aptitude for study was his inordinate fondness for music. Before arriving in Granada, in Fuente Vaqueros and Valderrubio, the songs and children’s games and the compositions of the popular ballads were his first and main way of learning within a family very gifted for music.

According to Francisco García Lorca, who also received lessons along with his sister Concha when they settled in Granada, the musical talent came from the family, specifically from one of his grandfathers, and in it there were cases of “no ordinary” ability.

Segura’s teaching gave Lorca an encounter with cultured music. From him he received lessons in Harmony and Composition.

José Mora Guarnido describes Segura as an “old composer of unpublished operas and failed artist” but who discovered Lorca’s “admirable native conditions”. His lessons were not only technical, but extended to other enticements of musical life. “I would tell him about the lives, loves, sorrows and miseries of the great artists during times of hope,” Mora recalls.

“The fact that I have not reached the clouds,” he would tell him, “does not mean that the clouds do not exist.” The phrase, according to friends of El Rinconcillo, Federico used to repeat with “religious emotion.”

The poet used to emphasize that Segura was a good disciple of Verdi and that he had composed a “colossal opera, The Daughters of Amapolo, which was taken apart with verve”. The score, however, has not been preserved.

Segura also composed a zarzuela in two acts entitled The Vinegar Mayor, with a libretto by Joaquín Afán de Ribera and had a close friendship with the Iitialian baritone Giorgio Ronconi, famous for his interpretations of Verdi and Donizetti to the point of both creating a singing conservatory.