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Juan Crisóstomo Jacobo Antonio de Arriaga y Balzola (January 27, 1806 _ January 17, 1826) was a Spanish composer. He was nicknamed "the Spanish Mozart" after he died, because, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was both a child prodigy and an accomplished composer who died young.
Arriaga's music is "elegant, accomplished and notable for its harmonic warmth" (New Grove Concise Dictionary of Music). His greatest works are undoubtedly the three string quartets, which (like his predecessors D. Scarlatti, Soler and Boccherini) contain notably Spanish ethnic rhythmic and melodic elements.
Periodwise, his style is on the borderline between late Classicism and early Romanticism, ranging from the late Classical idiom of Mozart to the proto-Romanticism of early Beethoven.
Following his early death, with the only reliable biographical material being some reports by Fétis, his life story was fictionalized to play into rising Basque nationalism. A public theatre in his home city of Bilbao carries his name.  [en.wikipedia.org/Juan_Crisostomo_Arriaga]