Manuel de Falla
Encyclopedia
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
of classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
. With Isaac Albéniz
Isaac Albéniz
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual was a Spanish Catalan pianist and composer best known for his piano works based on folk music idioms .-Life:Born in Camprodon, province of Girona, to Ángel Albéniz and his wife Dolors Pascual, Albéniz...
, Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...
and Joaquín Turina
Joaquín Turina
Joaquín Turina was a Spanish composer of classical music.-Biography:Turina was born in Seville but his origins were in northern Italy . He studied in Seville as well as in Madrid...
he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century.
Biography
Falla was born as Manuel María de los Dolores Falla y Matheu in CádizCádiz
Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....
. He was the son of José María Falla y Franco and María Jesús Matheu y Zabal. His early teachers in music were his mother and grandfather; at the age of nine he was introduced to his first piano professor, Eloísa Galluzo. Little is known of that period of his life, but his relationship with his teacher was soon ended after she decided to then enter in a convent, Sisters of Charity, to become a nun. In 1889 he continued his piano lessons with Alejandro Odero and learned the techniques of harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
from Enrique Broca. At age 15 he became interested in literature and journalism and founded the literary magazines El Burlón and El Cascabel. In 1893 he was inspired by a concert of Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
's works, later saying that at the time he felt that "my definitive vocation is music".
Madrid
In 1896 he moved to Madrid where he attended the Real Conservatorio de Música y Declamación. He studied piano with José Tragó, a colleague of Isaac AlbénizIsaac Albéniz
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual was a Spanish Catalan pianist and composer best known for his piano works based on folk music idioms .-Life:Born in Camprodon, province of Girona, to Ángel Albéniz and his wife Dolors Pascual, Albéniz...
and composition with Felipe Pedrell
Felipe Pedrell
Felip Pedrell , was a Spanish Catalan composer. He worked as a musicologist and early music specialist and edited Victoria’s opera omnia and the requiem of Joan Brudieu. This and other of his writings fostered a keen interest in the early music of Spain...
. In 1897 he composed Melodia for cello and piano and dedicated it to Salvador Viniegra
Salvador Viniegra
Salvador Viniegra y Lasso de la Vega was a Spanish historical painter and patron of the arts.Born in Cádiz, Viniegra began studying law but soon decided to be a painter and entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Cádiz, where he was taught by Rámon Rodríguez Barcaza and José Pérez Jiménez...
who hosted evenings of chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
that Falla attended. In 1899, by unanimous vote, he was awarded the first prize at the piano competition at his school of music. He premiered his first works: Romanza para violonchelo y piano, Nocturno para piano, Melodía para violonchelo y piano, Serenata andaluza para violín y piano, and Cuarteto en Sol y Mireya. That same year he started to use de with his first surname, making Manuel de Falla the name he became known as from that time on. When only the surname is used, however, the de is omitted.
In 1900 he composed his Canción para piano and various other vocal and piano pieces. He premiered his Serenata andaluza y Vals-Capricho para piano in the Ateneo de Madrid. Due to the precarious financial position of his family he began to teach piano classes.
It was from Pedrell, during the Madrid period, that Falla became interested in native Andalusian music, particularly Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
n flamenco
Flamenco
Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....
(specifically cante jondo
Cante jondo
Cante jondo is a vocal style in flamenco. An unspoiled form of Andalusian folk music, the name means deep song It is generally considered that the common traditional classification of flamenco music is divided into three groups of which the deepest, most serious forms are known as cante jondo...
), the influence of which can be strongly felt in many of his works. Among his early pieces are a number of zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...
s like La Juana y la Petra and La casa de tócame Roque. On April 12, 1902 he premiered Los amores de la Inés in the Teatro Cómico de Madrid. The same year he met the composer Joaquín Turina
Joaquín Turina
Joaquín Turina was a Spanish composer of classical music.-Biography:Turina was born in Seville but his origins were in northern Italy . He studied in Seville as well as in Madrid...
and saw his Vals-Capricho y Serenata andaluza published by the Society of Authors. The following year he composed and performed Allegro de concierto for the Madrid Royal Conservatory competition. Pianist Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...
took first prize but the Society of Authors published Falla's works Tus ojillos negros and Nocturno. Falla then began his collaboration with composer Amadeo Vives
Amadeo Vives
Amadeu Vives i Roig was a Catalan Spanish musical composer, creator of over a hundred stage works. He is best known for Doña Francisquita, which Christopher Webber has praised for its "easy lyricism, fluent orchestration and colourful evocation of 19th Century Madrid—not to mention its memorable...
on the zarzuelas Prisionero de guerra, El cornetín de órdenes and La cruz de Malta (only fragments of these works survive).
His first important work was the one-act opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
La vida breve
La vida breve
La vida breve is an opera in two acts and four scenes by Manuel de Falla to an original Spanish libretto by Carlos Fernández-Shaw...
(Life is Short, or The Brief Life, written in 1905, though revised before its premiere in 1913). With a libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw
Carlos Fernández Shaw
Insert non-formatted text hereCarlos Fernández Shaw was a Spanish poet and playwright. He wrote the libretti for the operas Margarita la tornera by Ruperto Chapí and La vida breve by Manuel de Falla.Fernández Shaw was the son of a Spanish father and an English mother...
, La vida breve won Falla first prize in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando , located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery....
musical competition. In April 1905 he won the first prize in a piano competition sponsored by the firm of Ortiz and Cussó. On May 15 his work Allegro de concierto premiered in the Ateneo de Madrid and on November 13 the Real Academia presented him with his prize for La vida breve.
Paris
In 1907 at the advice of Joaquín TurinaJoaquín Turina
Joaquín Turina was a Spanish composer of classical music.-Biography:Turina was born in Seville but his origins were in northern Italy . He studied in Seville as well as in Madrid...
and Víctor Mirecki Larramat
Víctor Mirecki Larramat
Víctor Alexander Marie Mirecki Larramat was a Spanish cellist and music teacher of Franco-Polish origin. He was born in Tarbes, France and died in Madrid, Spain.-Introduction:...
, Falla moved to Paris. There he met a number of composers who had an influence on his style, including the impressionists
Impressionist music
Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere...
Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
and Paul Dukas
Paul Dukas
Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...
. In 1908 King Alfonso XIII awarded him a royal grant that enabled him to remain in Paris while he finished his Cuatro piezas españolas. Meanwhile, the dramatist Paul Milliet
Paul Milliet
Paul Milliet was a French dramatist and librettist of the Parisian Belle Époque. His opera librettos include Jules Massenet's Hérodiade and Werther , Alfred Bruneau's Kérim , Spyridon Samaras's La biondinetta , Mademoiselle de Belle Isle and Rhea and Camille...
translated the libretto of La vida breve into French for its French premiere on April 1, 1913 at the Municipal Casino in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
. In 1910 Falla met Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
and traveled briefly to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. He wrote Siete canciones populares españolas which he finished in mid-1914. Shortly afterward World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
began when Germany declared war and Falla returned to Madrid. While at no stage was he a prolific composer, it was then that he entered into his mature creative period.
Return to Madrid
In Madrid he composed several of his best known pieces, including:- The nocturneNocturneA nocturne is usually a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night...
for piano and orchestra Nights in the Gardens of SpainNights in the Gardens of SpainNights in the Gardens of Spain is a piece of music by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla...
(Noches en los jardines de España, 1916) - The balletBallet (music)Ballet as a music form progressed from simply a complement to dance, to a concrete compositional form that often had as much value as the dance that went along with it. The dance form, originating in France during the 17th century, began as a theatrical dance. It was not until the 19th century that...
El amor brujoEl amor brujoEl amor brujo is a piece of music originally composed by Manuel de Falla for a chamber group, then re-scored as a symphonic suite, and eventually as a ballet...
(Love the Magician, 1915) which includes the much excerpted and arranged Ritual Fire Dance - The ballet The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife (El corregidor y la molinera) which, after revision, became The Three-Cornered Hat (El sombrero de tres picos, 1917) and was produced by Serge DiaghilevSergei DiaghilevSergei Pavlovich Diaghilev , usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.-Early life and career:...
with set design and costumes by Pablo PicassoPablo PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
.
Granada period
From 1921 to 1939 Manuel de Falla lived in GranadaGranada
Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...
, where he organized the Concurso de Cante Jondo
Concurso de Cante Jondo
El Concurso del Cante Jondo was a well-known celebration of the art of flamenco, its music, song, and dance, held in Granada, Andalusia on Corpus Christi, the 13th and 14th of June, 1922.-Falla's purpose:...
in 1922. In Granada he wrote the puppet opera El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show, 1923) and a concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
for harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
and chamber
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
ensemble (Harpsichord Concerto
Harpsichord Concerto (De Falla)
Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello is a concerto written for harpsichord and chamber ensemble by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla in 1926.The work is in three movements:* I: Allegro* II: Lento...
, 1926). The puppet opera marked the first time the harpsichord had entered the modern orchestra; and the concerto was the first for harpsichord written in the 20th Century. Both of these works were written with Wanda Landowska
Wanda Landowska
Wanda Landowska was a Polish harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century...
in mind. In these works, the Spanish folk influence is somewhat less apparent than a kind of Stravinskian
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
.
Also in Granada, Falla began work on the large-scale orchestral cantata Atlàntida
Atlàntida
Atlántida is an opera by Manuel de Falla based on a Spanish translation of the Catalan poem L'Atlàntida by Jacint Verdaguer.Atlántida started in the 1920s as a cantata, but grew over 20 years to become a full opera. De Falla died in Argentina before it was finished, leaving a loose collection of...
(Atlantis), based on the Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
text L'Atlàntida
L'Atlàntida
L'Atlàntida is an 1877 poem in Catalan by Jacint Verdaguer. It comprises an introduction, ten books, and a conclusion, dealing with the wanderings of Heracles in the Iberian Peninsula, the sinking of the continent of Atlantis, the creation of the Mediterranean Sea, and the discovery of the...
by Jacint Verdaguer
Jacint Verdaguer
Jacint Verdaguer i Santaló is regarded as one of the greatest poets of Catalan literature and a prominent literary figure of the Renaixença, a national revival movement of the late Romantic era. The bishop Josep Torras i Bages, one of the main figures of Catalan nationalism, called him the...
. Falla considered Atlàntida to be the most important of all his works; posterity has not agreed with this verdict, and performances of the piece have been extremely rare. 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. Falla tried but failed to prevent the murder of his close friend, the poet Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
in 1936.
Argentina
Falla continued work on Atlàntida after moving to ArgentinaArgentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
in 1939, following Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
's victory in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. The orchestration of the piece remained incomplete at his death and was completed posthumously by Ernesto Halffter
Ernesto Halffter
Ernesto Halffter Escriche was a Spanish composer and conductor. He was the brother of Rodolfo Halffter....
. He also premiered his Suite Homenajes in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
in November 1939. In 1940, he was named a Knight of the Order of King Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X was a Castilian monarch who ruled as the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1252 until his death...
. Franco's government offered him a large pension if he would return to Spain, but he refused.
Falla did spend some time teaching in exile. Among his notable pupils was composer Rosa García Ascot
Rosa García Ascot
Rosa García Ascot was a Spanish composer and pianist. She was the only woman in the famed Group of Eight, whose members also included Julián Bautista, Ernesto Halffter and his brother Rodolfo, Juan José Mantecón, Fernando Remacha, Salvador Bacarisse and Jesús Bal y Gay. She married Bal y Gay in 1933...
. His health began to decline and he moved to a house in the mountains where he was tended by his sister María del Carmen de Falla. He died of cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest, is the cessation of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively...
on November 14, 1946 in Alta Gracia
Alta Gracia
Alta Gracia is a city located in the north-centre of the . Its name means "High Grace". It is built upon the Sierras Chicas, in a region that the Comechingón Indians used to call Paravachasca. It has about 43,000 inhabitants .- History :...
, in the Argentine province of Córdoba
Córdoba Province (Argentina)
Córdoba is a province of Argentina, located in the center of the country. Neighboring provinces are : Santiago del Estero, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, La Pampa, San Luis, La Rioja and Catamarca...
. 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
Complutense University of Madrid
The Complutense University of Madrid is a university in Madrid, and one of the oldest universities in the world. It is located on a sprawling campus that occupies the entirety of the Ciudad Universitaria district of Madrid, with annexes in the district of Somosaguas in the neighboring city of...
. His image appeared on Spanish currency notes for some years. Manuel de Falla never married and had no children.
Works
Media
Recordings by de Falla
- Manuel de Falla 1876-1946 Grabaciones históricas; Centro de Documentación Musical de AndalucíaCentro de Documentación Musical de AndalucíaMusical Documentation Center of Andalusia is an organization created in 1987 by the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía to recover, preserve, catalog, classify and disseminate the musical heritage created in or related to Andalusia in all forms.Its current director is the musicologist...
. (Almaviva, HOM13080) (ref) - Rollos de Pianola (Obras de Albéniz, Granados, Turina, Ocón, Chapí, Alonso y Otros) (Almaviva, DS - 0141)
External links
- The Manuel de Falla Foundation in Spanish and English
- Nana by Manuel de Falla from his Siete Canciones Populares Españolas (played by Duo Roldan) performed by Arthur RubinsteinArthur RubinsteinArthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...
- Concert version for cello performed by Julian Lloyd WebberJulian Lloyd WebberJulian Lloyd Webber is a British solo cellist who has been described as the "doyen of British cellists".-Early life:Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer William Lloyd Webber and his wife Jean Johnstone . He is the younger brother of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber...
(cello)