Asturiana manuel de falla biography

Reflections on "Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla" by Carol A. Hess.

We can learn from eras that provided ideal conditions for art - generous patrons, leisure, national confidence, and cultural vitality. But what about the naturally talented artist who is born at a less fortunate time, one of national decline, civil war, growing uncertainty, fear, and scarcity? The Spanish composer Manuel de Falla is such a figure.

By the time Falla was born, the peak of Spanish global power and its Golden Age of culture had long passed and Spain's loss in the Spanish-American War was the end of its status as a major world power. Then there was WWI and the Spanish Civil War, and he died just one year after the end of WWII, so war was thundering in the background of his entire creative life. If murder is everywhere, and it seems as though the world is ending, why make music at all?

He was born in Cádiz, the ancient port city with Phoenician heritage. He established his own literary magazines at age 12, and his admiration for Christopher Columbus was a recurring theme. His mother taught him piano and nurtured his love of music, taking him to recitals and concerts. He went on to study piano at Madrid's Escuela Nacional de Música y Declamación, which was established in 1830 under the patronage of María Cristina, Queen Consort of Ferdinand VII of Spain, and it was heavily influenced by Italian musical traditions.

Carol A. Hess described him as a “sin-haunted composer” in her biography Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla. “Deeply religious and distrustful of wealth, Falla led a life of quietude and abnegation,” she wrote, “He lived as a monk-like ascetic yet wrote some highly sensual music.” Stravinsky described Falla as “modest and withdrawn as an oyster” when he met him in Paris. Based on the evidence Hess draws upon, the same temperamental sensitivity and spiritual nature that made him capab

Manuel de Falla was a Spanish composer and pianist. Despite having composed only a modest number of pieces, he is highly regarded as one of Spain’s greatest musicians of the first half of the twentieth century. His image appeared on Spain's 1970 100-pesetas banknote.

Born to José María Falla and María Jesús Matheu in Cádiz in 1876, he began piano lessons under Alejandro Odero and learnt the techniques of harmony and counterpoint from Enrique Broca. At the age of 15 he became interested in literature and journalism, and later founded two literary magazines: El Burlón and El Cascabel.

By 1900 he had moved to Madrid with his family where he attended the Real Conservatorio de Música y Declamación. Here he studied piano with José Tragó and composition with Felipe Pedrell. In 1897 he had composed Melodía for cello and piano which was dedicated to Salvador Viniegra, the host of numerous evenings of chamber music that de Falla frequented. In 1899 he was awarded by unanimous vote the first prize in the piano competition held by the Conservatory.

Later that year 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. In 1900 he composed a variety of vocal and piano pieces but due to his family’s financial position, he had to begin teaching piano lessons to music students in order to make ends meet.

In 1907, Falla moved to Paris where he stayed for seven years. Whilst living in Paris his style of composition was affected greatly by the composers he met, including Ravel, Debussy, Dukas and Stravinsky. In 1908 he was awarded a Royal Grand by King Alfonso XIII to remain in Paris and finish his Cuatro piezas españolas. With the outbreak of the First World War, Falla was forced to flee back to Spain, settling in Madrid, where he composed several of his best-known pieces, such as Noches en los jardines de España (1916).

Fal

In 1907 Spanish composer Manuel de Falla went to Paris, where he formed friendships with Debussy, Dukas, and Ravel that greatly influenced his career. At the time of the Paris production of his opera La vida breve in the winter of 1913–14, a Spanish singer in the cast asked Falla for advice about which Spanish songs she should include on a Paris recital. He decided to arrange some Spanish songs himself using his own system of harmony, which he had just tried out for the harmonization of a Greek folk song that had been requested by a Greek singing teacher.

This system stemmed from Falla’s study of Louis Lucas’s L’acoustique nouvelle, a mid-nineteenth-century treatise that he had picked up as a young man in Madrid at an open-air book stall, and which was to influence his later style profoundly. It consisted of deriving harmonies from the natural resonance of a fundamental tone, that is, its harmonics, then using these harmonics as new fundamental tones. Though Falla never lost sight of traditional harmony he claimed that this system, which anticipated harmonic theories of the twentieth century, revolutionized his entire conception of harmony.

He completed the Siete canciones (from which various instrumental arrangements were made, often titled Suite populaire espagnole) in Paris before the outbreak of World War I forced him to return to Madrid in 1914. He did not permit the singer who had sought his advice to perform them on a Spanish-themed program in Paris because of a bad experience he himself had had performing on a similar Spanish program. They were first performed by Luisa Vela (who had just sung in the Madrid premiere of La vida breve) accompanied by the composer in Madrid on January 14, 1915. The first Paris performance was delayed until May 1920. The songs are dedicated to Madame Ida Godebski, a great friend of Falla; Cipa and Ida Godebski’s famous salon in Paris was a gathering place for many other composers and writers including Roussel, Stra

Spanish composer (1876–1946)

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Falla and the second or maternal family name is Matheu.

Manuel de Falla y Matheu (Spanish pronunciation:[maˈnweldeˈfaʎa], 23 November 1876 – 14 November 1946) was a Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. He has a claim to being Spain's greatest composer of the 20th century, although the number of pieces he composed was relatively modest.

Biography

Falla was born Manuel María de los Dolores Falla y Matheu in Cádiz. He was the son of José María Falla, a Valencian, and María Jesús Matheu, from Catalonia.

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.

Madrid

By 1900 he was living with his family in the capital, where he attended the Real Conservatorio de Música y Declamación. He studied piano with José Tragó, a colleague of Isaac Albéniz, and composition with Felip Pedrell. In 1897 he composed Melodía 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 pa