Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu (
November 23,
1876 –
November 14,
1946) was a
Spanish composer of
classical music.
He was born in
Cádiz. From the late 1890s he studied music in
Madrid, piano with José Tragó and composition with
Felipe Pedrell. It was from Pedrell that de Falla became interested in native Spanish music, particularly
Andalusian
flamenco (specifically
cante jondo), the influence of which can be strongly felt in many of his works. Among his early pieces are a number of
zarzuelas, but his first important work was the one-act
opera La vida breve (
A Brief Life, written in 1905, though revised before its premiere in 1913).
He spent the years 1907 to 1914 in
Paris, where he met a number of composers who had an influence on his style, including the
impressionists Maurice Ravel,
Claude Debussy and
Paul Dukas. He wrote little more music, however, until his return to Madrid at the beginning of
World War I.
In Madrid he composed several of his best known pieces, including:
* The
nocturne for piano and orchestra
Noches en los jardines de España (
Nights in the Gardens of Spain, 1916)
* The
ballet El amor brujo (Love the Magician, 1915) which includes the much excerpted and arranged
Ritual Fire Dance * The ballet
El corregidor y la molinera (The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife) which, after revision, became
El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat, 1917) and was produced by
Serge Diaghilev with set design by
Pablo Picasso.
|
Composer Manuel de Falla as depicted on a former currency note of Spain |
From 1921 to 1939 Manuel de Falla lived in
Granada, where he wrote the puppet opera
El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show, 1923) and a
concerto for
harpsichord and
chamber ensemble (1926). In these works, the Spanish folk influence is somewhat less apparent than a kind of
Stravinskian neo-classicism.
Also in Granada, he began work on the large-scale orchestral cantata
L'Atlàntida (Atlantis) based on the
Catalan text by
Jacint Verdaguer, which he considered to be the most important of all his works. Verdaguer's text gives a mythological account of how the submersion of Atlantis created the Atlantic ocean, thus separating Spain and Latin America, and how later the Spanish discovery of America reunited what had always belonged together. De Falla continued work on the cantata after moving to
Argentina in
1939. The orchestration of the piece remained incomplete at his death and was completed posthumously by
Ernesto Halffter.
De Falla tried but failed to prevent the murder of his close friend the poet
Federico García Lorca in 1936. Following
Franco's victory in the
Spanish Civil War, De Falla left Spain for
Argentina. He died in
Alta Gracia, in the Argentine province of
Córdoba. In 1947 his remains were brought back to Spain and entombed in the cathedral at Cádiz. One of the lasting honors to his memory is the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at
Complutense University of Madrid.
*
L'Atlàntida (Atlantis)
*
El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-cornered Hat)
*
El amor brujo (ballet) (
The Love Wizard, also translated:
Love the Magician)
*:
Danza ritual del fuego (Ritual Fire Dance)
*
La vida breve (lyric drama) (
A Brief Life, also translated:
Life is Short)
*: Interlude and Dance
*
El retablo de Maese Pedro (puppet opera)
*
Noches in los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain) for piano and orchestra
*
Siete canciones populares españolas ("Seven Spanish Folksongs") for voice and piano, dedicated to Madame Ida Godebska (1914)
*
Concerto per clavicémbalo (o pianoforte), flauto, oboe, clarinetto, violino e violoncello ("Concerto for Harpsichord"), dedicated to Wanda Landowska (c. 1923-1926)
*
Cuatro piezas españolas ("Four Spanish Pieces") for piano, dedicated to Isaac Albéniz (c. 1906-1909)
*
Serenata andaluza for piano (c. 1900)
Manuel de Falla by Nancy Lee Harper (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998)
Manuel De Falla and Modernism in Spain by Carol A Hess (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
*
The Manuel de Falla Foundation in Spanish and English
*
Nana by Manuel de Falla from his Siete Canciones Populares Espanolas (Duo Roldan)
