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Manuel de Falla

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Manuel de Falla
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(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.

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Music Encyclopedia: Manuel de Falla (y Matheu)
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(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.


Biography: Manuel de Falla
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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.

Further Reading

Falla's life and place in the panorama of Spanish music are most fully discussed in J. B. Trend, Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music (1929), and Gilbert Chase, The Music of Spain (1941; 2d ed. 1959). Joseph Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music (1961), gives a generally sympathetic view of Falla in the light of 20th-century musical composition.

Additional Sources

Demarquez, Suzanne, Manuel de Falla, New York: Da Capo Press, 1983, 1968.

Pahissa, Jaime, Manuel de Falla, his life and works, Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979.

Dictionary of Dance: Manuel de Falla
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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
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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).

Artist: Manuel de Falla
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Manuel de Falla
  • Period: Modern (1910-1949)
  • Country: Spain/Argentina
  • Born: November 23, 1876 in Cádiz, Spain
  • Died: November 14, 1946 in Alta Gracia, Córdoba, Argentina
  • Genres: Ballet, Chamber Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Miscellaneous 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, All Music Guide
Wikipedia: Manuel de Falla
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This is a Spanish name; the first family name is de Falla and the second is y Matheu.
ManuelDeFalla.JPG

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

Contents

Biography

Manuel de Falla was born in Cádiz. His early teacher in music was his mother; at the age of 9 he was introduced to his first piano professor. Little is known of that period of his life, but his relationship with his teacher was likely conflicted. From the late 1890s he studied music in Madrid, piano with José Tragó and composition with Felipe Pedrell. In 1899 by unanimous vote he was awarded the first prize at the piano competition at his school of music, and around that year he started to use de with his first surname, making de Falla the name he became known as from that time on.

It was from Pedrell, during the Madrid period, 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 (Life is Short, or The Brief Life, written in 1905, though revised before its premiere in 1913).

De Falla 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. While at no stage was he a prolific composer, it was then that he entered into his mature creative period.

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

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 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 (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, de Falla began work on the large-scale orchestral cantata Atlàntida (Atlantis), based on the Catalan text L'Atlàntida by Jacint Verdaguer. De Falla considered Atlàntida 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, 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.

De Falla tried but failed to prevent the murder of his close friend, the poet Federico García Lorca in 1936.

Manuel de Falla never married and had no children. 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. His image appeared on Spanish currency notes for some years.

List of works

Stage works

Opera

  • Los amores de la Inés ("Inés' loves") - zarzuela with 5 musical parts (1901-1902)
  • La vida breve (Life is Short, also translated as The Brief Life) - opera (lyric drama) (1904-1913)
    Interlude and Dance
  • Fuego fatuo - opera after themes by Frédéric Chopin; unfinished (1918-1919)
  • El retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show) - puppet opera (1919-1923)
  • El gran teatro del mundo ("The great theatre of the world") - incidental music for a performance of Calderón de la Barca's play (1927)
  • Atlàntida (Atlantis) - scenic cantata for soloist, choir and orchestra (1927-1946); revised and completed by Ernesto Halffter (first perf. 1961)

Ballet and dance

Orchestral works

  • Nights in the Gardens of Spain - piano and orchestra (c. 1909-1916)
  • Homenajes ("Homages") - orchestra (1938-1939)
    Sections: I. "Fanfare sobre el nombre de E. F. Arbós" - II. "À Claude Debussy (Elegía de la guitarra)" - Rappel de la Fanfare - III. "À Paul Dukas (Spes Vitae)" - IV. "Pedrelliana".

Choral works

  • Balada de Mallorca ("Ballad of Majorca") - for choir (1933)

Works for chamber ensembles and solo instruments

  • Melodía para violonchelo y piano - for piano and cello (1897)
  • Pieza en Do mayor and Romanza - for cello and piano (1898)
  • Fanfare pour une fête ("Fanfare for a feast") - for two trumpets, timpani and side-drum (1921)
  • Concerto for harpsichord, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello - dedicated to Wanda Landowska (c. 1923-1926)
  • Fanfare sobre el nombre de Arbós ("Fanfare on the name of Arbós") - for trumpets, horns and drums (1934); orchestrated as a section of Homenajes.

Vocal works

  • Preludios ("Preludes") - voice and piano, text ("Madre todas las noches") by Antonio de Trueba (c. 1900)
  • Rima ("Rime") - voice and piano, text ("Olas gigantes") by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (c. 1900)
  • Dios mío, qué solos se quedan los muertos - voice and piano, text by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (c. 1900)
  • Tus ojillos negros ("Your small black eyes") - voice and piano, text by Cristóbal de Castro (1902-1903)
  • Cantares de Nochebuena "Songs of Christmas Eve" - nine popular songs for voice, guitar and (at least in the case of the first two songs) zambomba and rebec or chicharra (1903-1904)
  • Trois mélodies - voice and piano, words by Théophile Gautier (1909-1910)
  • Siete canciones populares españolas ("Seven Spanish Folksongs") - for voice and piano, dedicated to Madame Ida Godebska (1914)
  • Oración de las madres que tienen sus hijos en sus brazos ("Prayer of the mothers embracing their children" - voice and piano, words by Gregorio Martínez Sierra (1914)
  • El pan de Ronda que sabe a verdad ("The bread of Ronda has a taste of truth") - voice and piano, by G. Martínez Sierra (1915)
  • Psyché - for mezzo-soprano, flute, harp, violin and cello (1924)
  • Soneto a Córdoba ("Sonnet to Cordoba") - for soprano voice and harp (or piano), text by Luis de Góngora (1927)

Instrumental works

Piano

  • Nocturne (1896)
  • Mazurka in C minor (1899)
  • Serenata andaluza ("Andalusian Serenade") (1900)
  • Canción ("Song") (1900)
  • Vals capricho (1900)
  • Cortejo de gnomos ("Procession of Gnomes") (1901)
  • Allegro de concierto (1903-1904)
  • Cuatro piezas españolas, Pièces espagnoles ("Four Spanish Pieces") - for piano, dedicated to Isaac Albéniz (c. 1906-1909)
  • Fantasía bética - for piano, dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein (1919)
  • Canto de los remeros del Volga (del cancionero musical ruso) ("Song of the Volga boatmen") (1922)
  • Pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas (1935) - piano (1935); orchestrated as the third part of Homenajes

Guitar

  • Pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy - for guitar; arranged for piano (1920); orchestrated as the second section of Homenajes

Versions and arrangements of other authors' works

  • Cançó de nadal (1922)
  • Claude Debussy - Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1924)
  • Preludio (1924)
  • Gioachino Rossini - Overture to The Barber of Seville (1924-1925)
  • Ave María (1932)
  • L´amfiparnaso (Palma de Mallorca, 1934)
  • Invocatio ad individuam trinitatem (Granada, 1935)
  • Himno marcial (Granada, 1937)
  • Emendemus in melius (Granada, 1939)
  • Madrigal: prado verde y florido (Granada, 1939)
  • Romance de Granada: qué es de ti, desconsolado (Granada, 1939)
  • Tan buen ganadico (Granada, 1939)
  • ¡Ora, sus! (Granada, 1939)
  • O magnum mysterium (in circuncisione Domini) (Villa del Lago, 1940-1942)
  • Tenebrae factae sunt (responsorium) (Villa del Lago, 1940-1942)
  • Miserere mei Deus (salmo 50) (Villa del Lago, 1940-1942)
  • In festo Sancti Jacobi (o Lux et decus Hispaniae) (Villa del Lago, 1940-1942)
  • Benedictus (de la misa "Vidi speciosam") (Villa del Lago, 1940-1942)
  • Gloria (de la misa "Vidi speciosam") (Villa del Lago, 1940-1942)
  • Cançó de l´estrella (Villa del Lago, 1941-1942)
  • Romance de Don Joan y Don Ramón (Villa del Lago, 1941-1942)

Media
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Popular Spanish Suite #1
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Popular Spanish Suite #5
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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)

See also

External links

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
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 © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
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