The probably most popular composition of female authorship, even though this fact evades the attention of many classical musicians, is the song Bésame mucho by the Mexican composer-pianist Consuelo Velázquez (c. 1916–2005), written in the mid-1930s, and subsequently becoming a worldwide success through all musical styles and genres. The initial melody is presumably based on the 1911 piece Quejas, ó la maja y el ruiseñor, part of the Goyescas piano cycle by Catalan composer Enrique Granados, which he adopted as an aria for the opera of the same name a few years later. Consuelito, as she was called by her friends and family, provided the tune with soulful lyrics and a relaxed bolero rhythm, and transformed it into a regular periodical theme, while maintaining its melancholic mood and Phrygian-inflected harmony.
