Manuel de Falla

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Composer Manuel de Falla as depicted on a former currency note of Spain
Composer Manuel de Falla as depicted on a former currency note of Spain

Manuel de Falla y Matheu (November 23, 1876 – November 14, 1946) was a Spanish composer of classical music.

Manuel De Falla 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. And at no stage was he a prolific composer.

In Madrid he composed several of his best known pieces, including:

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.

[edit] Partial list of works

  • 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)
  • Danse Du Meunier (The Millers Dance) for Piano

[edit] References

  • Manuel de Falla and the Spanish Musical Renaissance by Burnett James (Gollancz, London, 1979)
  • 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)

[edit] External links

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