FALLA, MANUEL DE

Foremost 20th-century Andalusian composer; b. Cádiz, Nov. 23, 1876; d. Alta Gracia (Córdoba province), Argentina, Nov. 14, 1946. He studied piano first with his mother, then in 1897 began his training with José Tragó (piano) and Felipe Pedrell (composition)—the leaders of the Spanish national music renewal. His opera La Vida Breve won first prize in a national competition in 1905. From 1907 to the outbreak of World War I he lived in Paris, accompanying, teaching piano, and learning from his Impressionist friends, debussy, Ravel, and Dukas. Once more in Spain, Falla found his stride, turning out a succession of masterful works, such as the ballets El Amor Brujo (containing the popular "Ritual Fire Dance") and El Sombrero de Tres Picos ("The Three-Cornered Hat"); the symphonic "impressions" Noches en los jardines de España ("Nights in the Gardens of Spain"); a puppet opera based on Cervantes, El Retablo de Maese Pedro; a concerto for harpsichord and chamber orchestra; and a suite, Pedrelliana, in tribute to his old master. After joining his sister in Argentina in 1939, he concentrated on his miracle-play setting of Jacinto Verdaguer's mystical epic of the birth of America, L'Atlántida, unfinished at his death. After services in Córdoba cathedral, his body was interred in the Cádiz cathedral crypt by permission of Pius XII. He was a man of self-effacing austerity and a deep spirituality that issued not so much in church music as in the evocation of the Spanish mystique by means of a pure, abstract, lucidly structured style.

Bibliography: m. de falla, Escritos sobre música y músicos, ed. f. sopeÑa (Buenos Aires 1950). j. b. trend, Manuel de Falla and the Spanish Music (New York 1934). j. pahissa, Manuel de Falla (London 1954). r. arÍzaga, Manuel de Falla (Buenos Aires 1961). h. wirth, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. f. blume (Kassel-Basel 1949–) 3:1747–57. v. salas viu, "The Mystery of Manuel de Falla's La Atlántida, " Inter-American Music Bulletin 33 (Jan. 1963) 1–6. s. demarquez, Manuel de Falla (Paris 1963). a. budwig, "The Evolution of Manuel de Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat, (1916–20)," Journal of Musicological Research 5 (1984) 191–212. m. christoforidis, "El peso de la vanguardia en el proceso creativo del Concerto de Manuel de Falla," Revista de Musicología 20 (1997) 669–682. n. h. lee, Manuel de Falla: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Conn. 1998). c. a. hess, "Manuel de Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat and the Right-Wing Press in Pre-Civil War Spain," Journal of Musicological Research 15 (1995) 55–84. g. moshell, "El Retablo de Maese Pedro [Master Peter's Puppet Show ]," in International Dictionary of Opera, ed. c. s. larue, 2 v. (Detroit 1993) 1099–1100. y. nommick, "Un ejemplo de ambigüedad formal: El Allegro del Concerto de Manuel de Falla," Revista de Musicología 21 (1998) 11–35; "Forma y transformación de las ideas temáticas en las obras instrumentales de Manuel de Falla: Elementos de apreciación," Revista de Musicología 21 (1998) 573–591. c. urcheuguÍa schÖlzel, "Aspectos compositivos en las Siete Canciones populares Españolas de Manuel de Falla (1914/15)," Anuario Musical 51 (1996) 177–201.

[r. stevenson]