Jaime Felipe José Bosch (in Catalan: Jaume Bosch i Renard, known in France as Jacques Bosch) (26 May 1825 – 31 March 1895) was a Catalan guitarist and song composer who settled in Paris.
Bosch was born in Barcelona and received his education at the school of the Convent de la Mercè in Barcelona, where he began his studies in piano and guitar.
Before emigrating, Bosch gave successful concerts in Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia between 1849 and 1852. From 1853 he settled in Paris and from 1857 toured frequently in France, the Netherlands, and Germany. Bosch was a very good friend of the painter Édouard Manet and posed for him several times. A portrait served as an illustration for one of Bosch’s publications, Plainte Moresque op. 85, which is also dedicated to Manet. In addition to many original compositions, he wrote a Méthode de guitare (1891, see below) and an opera (Roger de Flor, 1868) that was not performed. In Paris, Bosch was highly praised in aristocratic salons and had a large number of students, including the brothers Alfred and Jules Cottin. His best-known piece was to be his song collection Dix Mélodies, praised by Felipe Pedrell as a “true model of what a composer’s inspiration can create in this genre”.
Most of Bosch’s guitar works were not published at the time of their creation, but in collections of Dix Pièces (ten pieces) in 1887 and 1894, 12 Pièces faciles (12 easy pieces) in 1892, and a further six easy pieces in 1894. A later edition of ten easy pieces (1923) prints several previously published pieces together with seven pieces that had apparently not been published before.
Bosch’s Méthode de guitare is a composer’s method in that it contains numerous original compositions of varying length and difficulty. Over the course of its 116 pages, there are 16 Leçons (spread across pages 3–14), 31 exercises (pages 22–92), and 39 original compositions ranging from one to five pages. Most of them are dedicated to one of his students, including Guy de Polignac, a member of a famous French aristocratic family. Among the more extensive works are two movements of a sonata dialogue dedicated to the memory of Fernando Sor.
