Rodrigo was unable to play the guitar but he was the century's greatest composer for the instrument. Rodrigo is the greatest Spanish song composer ever in the opinion of some. Buy the recording of the Concierto de Aranjuez by Manuel Barrueca on EMI, one of 60 currently available, and you will also hear a handful of songs to poems by Lope de Vega sung, at his relaxed and seductive best, by Placido Domingo. To the outside world, Rodrigo has provided what Spain has so often offered the outside world, a kind of emotional refreshment. And not even Manuel de Falla, Rodrigo's mentor and the greatest Spanish composer of the century, who came closest to modernism in his friendships with Picasso, Stravinsky and Massine, ever indulged his puritan spirit with a puritan, modernist musical rigour.
Music exists and passes away in time.
Through its fame, the Concierto de Aranjuez is shored up against its own ruin.