Manuel de Falla

(born Nov. 23, 1876, Cádiz, Spain — died Nov. 14, 1946, Alta Gracia, Arg.) Spanish composer. He studied with Felipe Pedrell and conceived a powerful musical nationalism. His first major work was the opera La vida breve (1905). He lived in Paris (1907 – 14), where he absorbed the music of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and others. The intensely Spanish ballet El amor brujo (1915) gained him further acclaim. The Spanish Civil War caused him to leave Spain for Argentina c. 1938, and he never returned. His other works include Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1915), The Three-Cornered Hat (1919), the puppet opera El retablo de maese Pedro (1923; with Federico García Lorca), a harpsichord concerto (1926), and the huge unfinished oratorio L'Atlántida. He is regarded as the greatest Spanish composer of the 20th century.

For more information on Manuel de Falla, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...

Browse: Unanswered questions | Most-recent questions | Reference library

Manuel de Falla (y Matheu)

Top

(b Cádiz, 23 Nov 1876; d Alta Gracia, 14 Nov 1946). Spanish composer. He studied in Cádiz. and from the late 1890s in Madrid, where he was a pupil of Tragó for the piano and Pedrell for composition. In 1901-3 he composed five zarzuelas in the hope of making money; then in 1905 came his first important work, the one-act opera La vida breve, which he revised before its first performance, in Paris in 1913. He had moved to Paris in 1907 and become acquainted with Dukas, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Albéniz, all of whom influenced his development of a style using the primitive song of Andalusia, the cante jondo, and a modern richness of harmony and colour. This was not an immediate achievement: he wrote little before returning to Madrid in 1914, but then came the piano concerto Noches en los jardines de España (1915) and the ballets El amor brujo (1915) and El sombrero de tres picos (1919), the latter presented by Dyagilev and designed by Picasso.

Like Stravinsky a few years before, he turned to a much sparer style and to the format of touring theatre in El retablo de maese Pedro (1923). He also began to concern himself with the medieval, Renaissance and Baroque musical traditions of Spain, reflected in his Concerto for harpsichord and quintet (1926). Most of the rest of his life he devoted to a vast oratorio, Atlántida, on which he worked in Granada (where he had settled in 1919) and after 1939 in Argentina. With Albéniz and Granados he was one of the first Spanish composers to win international renown and the most gifted of the three.

Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Manuel de Falla

Top

The Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) infused his compositions with the distinctive idioms of native folk song and dance to create music on nationalistic lines.

Manuel de Falla was born on Nov. 23, 1876, in Cadiz into a family that had a lively interest in music. His mother gave him piano lessons, and from local musicians he had instruction in harmony, counterpoint, and solfeggio. At the age of 20 he enrolled in the Madrid Conservatory and earned the school's highest awards in piano. More important to him, though, since he did not want to be a concert pianist, was his composition study with Felipe Pedrell. Working with that ardent nationalist for 3 years, Falla entered deeply into the study of his country's folk music and made his goal the development of an expressive mode of composition rooted in Spanish culture.

In Siete canciones populares españoles (1914) Falla took folk songs whole and put them in simple but imaginative settings; generally, however, he freely used only certain aspects of folk originals to give a Spanish quality to his compositions. Examples occur in his first important work, the two-act opera La vida breve (1905), which calls up memories of Giacomo Puccini and Richard Wagner but makes its best effects from the employment of two varieties of folk music native to Andalusia: lively flamenco dance rhythms and melodic patterns of the passionate, sometimes melancholic, type of song known as the cante hondo. These two elements also served Falla in his work through 1919, which includes music written in France as well as at home.

Living in Paris from 1907 to 1914, Falla came under the influence of Claude Debussy, whose impressionistic techniques are plainly audible in Quatres pièces espagnoles (1908) for piano and Noches en los jardines de España (1916) for piano and orchestra. The image of Spain shines through, though, in their thematic material and in Falla's evocation of guitar qualities in his treatment of both piano and orchestra. The same may be said of the music that closed what is commonly called his Andalusian period: El amor brujo (1915), a ballet containing the well-known "Ritual Fire Dance;" El sombrero de tres picos (1919), another ballet; and his single large piece for solo piano, Fantasía bética (1919).

The balance of Falla's production is less locally centered, less picturesque, but no less Spanish in impulse. Its high spots are a delightful puppet opera, El retablo de Maese Pedro (1923), based on a scene from Cervantes' Don Quixote, and a rather severe-sounding concerto in neoclassic vein for harpsichord and chamber orchestra (1926). His last work, an enormous cantata entitled La Atlántida, which occupied him from 1928 until his death, was left unfinished.

Falla died on Nov. 14, 1946, in Argentina, where he had moved in 1939 after deciding that he could no longer adapt himself to the Franco regime. Long before then he had been accepted as the foremost creative musician of his time in Spain. Present-day criticism is less favorable, viewing his music as expressively strong but limited in range and technical originality.

Manuel de Falla

Top

Falla, Manuel de (b Cadiz, 23 Nov. 1876, d Alta Gracia, Argentina, 14 Nov. 1946). Spanish composer who wrote two ballet scores: El amor brujo (chor. Pastora Imperio, 1915; new version chor. Peter Wright for Royal Ballet Touring Company, 1975) and Le Tricorne (chor. Massine, 1919). His posthumous opera Atlantida features several dance numbers (prod. M. Wallmann, La Scala, Milan, 1962).

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Manuel de Falla

Top

Falla, Manuel de (mänwĕl' dā fä'lyä), 1876-1946, Spanish composer; pupil of Felipe Pedrell. In Paris from 1907 to 1914, he met Debussy, Dukas, and Ravel, and was to some extent influenced by their impressionism. His music, however, remained distinctively Spanish, rooted both in Andalusian folk music and the classical tradition of Spain. Falla was an authority on flamenco music and made use of it in his compositions, keeping the vitality of flamenco but imposing upon it rigorous musical structure. Notable among his compositions are an opera, La vida breve [life is short] (1913); a suite for piano and orchestra, Noches en los jardines de España [nights in the gardens of Spain] (1916); and the celebrated ballets El Amor Brujo [wedded by witchcraft] (1915) and El sombrero de tres picos [the three-cornered hat] (1917). From 1921 to 1939 Falla lived in Granada, organizing festivals of native folk songs and touring Europe to conduct his own works. He moved to Argentina in 1939, where he directed the first performance of his guitar solo, Homenaje (1920); later orchestrated as Homenajes. His ambitious choral work La Atlántida occupied his later years; it was finished after his death by Ernesto Halffter and presented in Madrid in 1961.

Bibliography

See G. Chase, The Music of Spain (1960) and S. Demarquez, Manuel de Falla (tr. 1968).

AMG AllMusic Guide to Classical Music:

Manuel de Falla

Top

Genres: Ballet, Chamber Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Vocal Music

Biography

Part Impressionist, and part neo-Classicist, Manuel de Falla is difficult to peg, but he is widely regarded as the most distinguished Spanish composer of the early twentieth century. His output is small but choice, and revolves largely around music for the stage. Falla's reputation is based primarily on two lavishly Iberian ballet scores: El amor brujo (Love, the Magician), from which is drawn the Ritual Fire Dance (a pops favorite, often heard in piano or guitar transcriptions), and the splashy El Sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat). He also gained a permanent place in the concert repertory with his evocative piano concerto, Nights in the Gardens of Spain.

Born in 1876,Falla first took piano lessons from his mother in Cádiz, and later moved to Madrid to continue the piano and to study composition with Felipe Pedrell, the musical scholar who had earlier pointed Isaac Albéniz toward Spanish folk music as a source for his compositions. Pedrell interested Falla in Renaissance Spanish church music, folk music, and native opera. The latter two influences are strongly felt in La Vida breve (Life Is Short), an opera (a sort of Spanish Cavalleria rusticana) for which Falla won a prize in 1905, although the work was not premiered until 1913.

A second significant aesthetic influence resulted from Falla's 1907 move to Paris, where he met and fell under the Impressionist spell of Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, and Maurice Ravel. It was in Paris that he published his first piano pieces and songs. In 1914 Falla was back in Madrid, working on the application of a quasi-Impressionistic idiom to intensely Spanish subjects; El amor brujo drew on Andalusian folk music. Falla wrote another ballet in 1917, El Corregidor y la molinera (The Magistrate and the Miller Girl). Diaghilev persuaded him to expand the score for a ballet by Léonide Massine to be called El sombrero de tres picos, and excerpts from the full score have become a staple of the concert repertory. In between the two ballets came Nights in the Gardens of Spain, a suite of three richly scored impressions for piano and orchestra, again evoking Andalusia.

In the 1920s, Falla altered his stylistic direction, coming under the influence of Stravinsky's Neo-Classicism. Works from this period include the puppet opera El retablo de Maese Pedro (The Altarpiece of Maese Pedro), based on an episode from Don Quixtote, and a harpsichord concerto, with the folk inspiration now Castilian rather than Andalusian. After 1926 he essentially retired, living first in Mallorca and, from 1939, in Argentina. He was essentially apolitical, but the rise of fascism in Spain contributed to his decision to remain in Latin America after traveling there for a conducting engagement. He spent his final years in the Argentine desert, at work on a giant cantata, Atlántida, which remained unfinished at his death in 1946. ~ James Reel, Rovi

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Manuel de Falla

Top

This name uses Spanish naming customs; the first or paternal family name is Falla and the second or maternal family name is Matheu.

Manuel de Falla y Matheu (23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) was a Spanish Andalusian composer. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century.

Contents

1 Biography
2 Works
3 Media
4 References
5 See also
6 Recordings by de Falla
7 External links

Biography

Falla was born as Manuel María de los Dolores Falla y Matheu in Cádiz. 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 and counterpoint 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'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 Albéniz and composition with Felipe Pedrell. In 1897 he composed Melodia for cello and piano and dedicated it to Salvador Viniegra who hosted evenings of chamber music 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 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 like La Juana y la Petra and La casa de tócame Roque. On 12 April 1902 he premiered Los amores de la Inés in the Teatro Cómico de Madrid. The same year he met the composer Joaquín Turina 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 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 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 La vida breve (Life is Short, or The Brief Life, written in 1905, though revised before its premiere in 1913). With a libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw, La vida breve won Falla first prize in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando musical competition. In April 1905 he won the first prize in a piano competition sponsored by the firm of Ortiz and Cussó. On 15 May his work Allegro de concierto premiered in the Ateneo de Madrid and on 13 November the Real Academia presented him with his prize for La vida breve.

Paris

In 1907 at the advice of Joaquín Turina and Víctor Mirecki Larramat, Falla moved to Paris. There he met a number of composers who had an influence on his style, including the impressionists Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Paul Dukas. 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 translated the libretto of La vida breve into French for its French premiere on 1 April 1913 at the Municipal Casino in Nice. In 1910 Falla met Igor Stravinsky and traveled briefly to London. He wrote Siete canciones populares españolas which he finished in mid-1914. Shortly afterward World War I 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 nocturne for piano and orchestra Nights in the Gardens of Spain (Noches en los jardines de España, 1916)
The ballet El amor brujo (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 Diaghilev with set design and costumes by Pablo Picasso.

Granada period

From 1921 to 1939 Manuel de Falla lived in Granada, where he organized the Concurso de Cante Jondo in 1922. In Granada he wrote the puppet opera El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show, 1923) and a concerto for harpsichord and chamber ensemble (Harpsichord Concerto, 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 in mind. In these works, the Spanish folk influence is somewhat less apparent than a kind of Stravinskian neoclassicism.

Also in Granada, Falla began work on the large-scale orchestral cantata Atlàntida (Atlantis), based on the Catalan text L'Atlàntida by Jacint Verdaguer. 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 in 1936.

Argentina

Falla continued work on Atlàntida after moving to Argentina in 1939, following Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. The orchestration of the piece remained incomplete at his death and was completed posthumously by Ernesto Halffter. He also premiered his Suite Homenajes in Buenos Aires in November 1939. In 1940, he was named a Knight of the Order of King Alfonso X of Castile. 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. 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 on 14 November 1946 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. His image appeared on Spanish currency notes for some years. Manuel de Falla never married and had no children.

Works

See List of compositions by Manuel de Falla and List of works for the stage by Falla.

Media

	Spanish Dance Performed by Carrie Rehkopf Popular Spanish Suite #1 Performed by John Michel Popular Spanish Suite #5 Performed live by John Michel
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

References

Manuel de Falla and the Spanish Musical Renaissance by Burnett James (Gollancz, London, 1979)
Manuel de Falla : a bibliography and research guide by Andrew Budwig with Preface by Gilbert Chase (Garland Publishers, 1986)
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)
Falla by Manuel Orozco Diaz (Barcelona: Salvat 1985)

Recordings by de Falla

Manuel de Falla 1876-1946 Grabaciones históricas; Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía. (Almaviva, HOM13080) (ref)
Rollos de Pianola (Obras de Albéniz, Granados, Turina, Ocón, Chapí, Alonso y Otros) (Almaviva, DS - 0141) ASIN B000GI34D6

External links

The Manuel de Falla Foundation in Spanish and English
Free scores by Manuel de Falla at the International Music Score Library Project
Nana by Manuel de Falla from his Siete Canciones Populares Españolas (played by Duo Roldan)
Arthur Rubinstein in De Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance" on YouTube performed by Arthur Rubinstein
Concert version for cello performed by Julian Lloyd Webber (cello)
Free scores by Manuel de Falla in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

Ballet portal

Persondata
Name	Falla, Manuel de
Alternative names	Falla y Matheu, Manuel de
Short description	Spanish composer
Date of birth	23 November 1876
Place of birth	Cádiz, Spain
Date of death	14 November 1946
Place of death	Alta Gracia, Argentina

v d e Manuel de Falla

Operas	Los amores de la Inés · La vida breve · El retablo de Maese Pedro

Ballets	El amor brujo · Ritual Fire Dance (from El amor brujo) · The Three-Cornered Hat

Orchestral	Nights in the Gardens of Spain

Manuel de Falla at Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia books: Manuel de Falla

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Donate to Wikimedia

		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more
		Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Oxford Dictionary of Dance. The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. Copyright © 2000, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		AMG AllMusic Guide to Classical Music . Copyright © 2012 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Manuel de Falla. Read more

	Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2000 Music Film)
	Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (Spanish writer, politician & statesman)
	12 Canciones de Garcia Lorca Para Guitarra/Paco de Lucia Interpreta a Manuel de Falla/D (1995 Album by Paco de Lucia)

	When did Manuel de Falla die? Read answer...
	How old was Manuel de Falla at death? Read answer...
	When did Manuel de Abreu die? Read answer...

	What was Manuel de Falla\'s favorite food?
	What are manuel de falla\'s famous peaces?
	What did Manuel De Falla do wen he was young?

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla (y Matheu)

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla

Biography

Manuel de Falla

Biography

Madrid

Paris

Return to Madrid

Granada period

Argentina

Works

Media

References

See also

Recordings by de Falla

External links