Sarasate was born in
Pamplona,
Navarre, in 1844, the son of Don Miguel Sarasate, a local artillery bandmaster. Apparently, after seeing his father struggle with a passage for a long time, he picked up the violin and played it perfectly. He began studying the violin with his father at the age of five and later took lessons from a local teacher. His musical talent became evident early on and he appeared in his first public concert in
A Coruña at the age of eight. His performance was well-received, and caught the attention of a wealthy patron who provided the funding for Sarasate to study under Manuel Rodríguez Saez in
Madrid, where he gained the favor of
Queen Isabella II. Later, as his abilities developed, his parents decided to send him to study under
Jean-Delphin Alard at the
Paris Conservatoire at the age of twelve. Aboard the train en route to
Paris, his mother (who had been accompanying him) died of a heart attack at the Spanish-French border, and Sarasate was found to be suffering from
cholera. The Spanish Consul in
Bayonne took Sarasate to his home and nursed him back to health, then financed his trip to Paris. There, Sarasate auditioned successfully for Alard, who arranged for him to live with his colleague Théodore de Lassabathie, administrator of the Conservatoire. At seventeen, Sarasate entered a competition for the Premier Prix and won his first prize, the Conservatoire's highest honor. (No other Spanish violinist achieved this until
Manuel Quiroga did so in 1911; Quiroga was frequently compared to Sarasate throughout his career.) Sarasate, who had been publicly performing since childhood, made his Paris debut as a concert violinist in 1860, and played in
London the following year. Over the course of his career, he toured many parts of the world, performing in
Europe,
North America, and
South America. His artistic pre-eminence was due principally to the purity of his tone, which was free from any tendency towards the sentimental or rhapsodic, and to that impressive facility of execution that made him a virtuoso. In his early career, Sarasate performed mainly
opera fantasies, most notably the
Carmen Fantasy, and various other pieces that he had composed. The popularity of Sarasate's Spanish flavour in his compositions is reflected in the work of his contemporaries. For example, the influences of Spanish music can be heard in such notable works as
Édouard Lalo's
Symphonie espagnole which was dedicated to Sarasate;
Georges Bizet's
Carmen; and
Camille Saint-Saëns'
Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, written expressly for Sarasate and dedicated to him. Of Sarasate's idiomatic writing for his instrument, the playwright and music critic
George Bernard Shaw once declared that though there were many composers of music for the violin, there were but few composers of violin music. Of Sarasate's talents as performer and composer, Shaw said that he "left criticism gasping miles behind him". Sarasate's own compositions are mainly show-pieces designed to demonstrate his exemplary technique. Perhaps the best known of his works is
Zigeunerweisen (1878), a work for violin and orchestra. Another piece, the
Carmen Fantasy (1883), also for violin and orchestra, makes use of themes from Georges Bizet's opera
Carmen. Probably his most performed encores are his four books of
Spanish Dances, Opp. 21, 22, 23, 26, brief pieces designed to please the listener's ear and show off the performer's talent. He also made arrangements of a number of other composers' work for violin, and composed sets of variations on "potpourris" drawn from operas familiar to his audiences, such as his Fantasia on
La forza del destino (his Opus 1), his "Souvenirs de
Faust", or his variations on themes from
Die Zauberflöte. At
Brussels, he met
Berthe Marx, who traveled with him as soloist and accompanist on his tours through Europe, Mexico, and the US; playing in about 600 concerts. She also arranged Sarasate's
Spanish Dances for the piano. In 1904, he made a small number of recordings. In all his travels Sarasate returned to Pamplona each year for the
San Fermín festival. Sarasate died in
Biarritz, France, on 20 September 1908, from chronic bronchitis. He bequeathed his violin, made by
Antonio Stradivari in 1724, to the
Musée de la Musique. The violin now bears his name as the
Sarasate Stradivarius in his memory. His second Stradivari violin, the
Boissier of 1713, is now owned by
Real Conservatorio Superior de Música, Madrid. Among his violin pupils were
Alfred de Sève and
M. J. Niedzielski. The Pablo Sarasate International Violin Competition is held in Pamplona. A number of works for violin were dedicated to Sarasate, including
Henryk Wieniawski's
Violin Concerto No. 2,
Édouard Lalo's
Symphonie espagnole,
Camille Saint-Saëns'
Violin Concerto No. 3 and his
Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso,
Max Bruch's
Scottish Fantasy, and
Alexander Mackenzie's
Pibroch Suite. Also inspired by Sarasate is
William H. Potstock's
Souvenir de Sarasate. ==Appearance in other art forms==