Spain's most eminent composer, Joaquin Rodrigo, was born in Sagunto in the province of Valencia on 22 November, the feast day of St Cecilia - music's patron saint. Permanently blinded as a result of diphtheria at the age of three, and no doubt highly sensitized to sound as a result, he learned the piano and violin from the age of eight. Beginning in 1918, he attended composition lessons with Antich at the Conservatoire in Valencia and completed his first works around 1923. From the start, he composed first in braille, dictating each completed work to a copyist. In 1927, following the example of Albeniz, Granados and Falla, Rodrigo moved to Paris, where he studied with Dukas for five years at the Ecole Normale de Musique. He won recognition as a pianist and composer with encouragement from Ravel and Falla, while Stravinsky's influence gave his music a neoclassical element. In 1929, he met the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi and the two were married in 1933.

During a brief return to Spain, he won a scholarship for further studies in musicology at the Paris Conservatoire and at the Sorbonne. The outbreak of civil war in Spain in 1936 cut off the grant, leaving the Rodrigos in Paris in difficult financial circumstances. After the war, in 1939, they returned to Madrid, which has remained their home ever since. On his return Rodrigo brought with him the recently completed score of the Concierto de Aranjuez, for guitar and orchestra, which was premiered the following year and established him immediately as Spain's leading composer.

Since then the piece has become internationally famous as the most frequently performed guitar concerto, and remains by far his most popular work. The slow movement in particular has become almost a second national anthem, with its haunting melody evoking distinctly Spanish moods and colours yet without making direct reference to folk sources. The success of the Concierto de Aranjuez led Rodrigo to write a further ten concertos for leading international performers, such as the Concierto pastoral (1 977) for the flautist James Galway. However, none of the pieces has achieved the success of their precursor, although many of the solo guitar works and the Fantasia para un gentil- hombre for guitar and orchestra (1954) are widely performed.

In the immediate postwar period Rodrigo was a highly influential force in Spanish music but his style developed little after Aranjuez; indeed, its success has arguably presented an obstacle for younger Spanish composers seeking to continue Falla's work in establishing a more progressive national style.

In 1939 Rodrigo was appointed head of Spanish Radio's music broadcasts; he has also acted as head of the music section of the Spanish National Organization for the Blind. In 1947 the Manuel de Falla Professorship in music at Madrid University was created for him, and in 1954 he became vice-president of the International Society for Contemporary Music. He has toured in North and South America, Europe, Israel and Japan, and has received numerous awards and honorary doctorates. He continued composing songs and piano and guitar pieces until well into his eighties, although no large-scale works have emerged since 1982.

Victoria Kami, his wife, died on July 21, 1997 and Joaquin Rodrigo two years later, on July 6, 1999. They both were buried in Aranjuez, close to Madrid.