Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga was born in Bilbao, in the Basque Country in Spain. His father and older brother first taught him music. He started to compose when he was 11 years old, and by the time he was 15 he had already written 20 works. Many of these are now lost. He may have thrown them away, thinking that they were not very good. In 1921 he went to Paris where he studied the violin with Pierre Baillot, and counterpoint and harmony with François-Joseph Fétis at the Paris Conservatoire. He was so good that by 1824 he had become a teaching assistant in Fétis's class. 