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Manuel de Falla y Matheu was born on 23 November 1876 in Cadiz and was a composer of classic music. Along with
Isaac Albéniz and
Enrique Granados, he is considered one of the most important Spanish musicians of the first half of the XXth century.
Son of a pianist and from his grandfather’s influence, who introduced him in the first notions of music, 9 years of age he continues with a piano teacher. In 1889 he continued his piano studies with Alejandro Odero, and learns harmony and counterpoint with Enrique Broca.
In the 1893 very wrapped up in literature and the arts, he is present at a concert in Cadiz where
Edvard Grieg is interpreted and feels, according to him that his "vocation is definitely music ".
From 1896 he travels to Madrid, where he frequents the Conservatory and is perfected in piano with José Tragó, managing in 1899 to obtain the first award in an interpreters' contest. It was then he starts using the surname "de Falla".
In 1897 he moves to Madrid permanently, where on the following year he finishes with honors his studies in the Conservatory. In 1901 he meets Felipe Pedrell, who will have notable influence in his later career: he will wake de Falla’s interest in flamenco and, especially, the
jondo song.
After some operettas, today lost or forgotten, like
Los amores de Inés, the years of study in the Spanish capital culminated with the composition of the opera
La vida breve.
Settled down in Paris from 1907 due to the advice of Turina and Mirecki, and he related to Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Dukas and
Isaac Albéniz, whose mark would be perceptible in several later works as
Noches en los jardines de España. It is in the French capital that also he met
Pablo Picasso. But his creative ripeness begins with his return to Spain, in the year 1914.
It is that moment that he composes his most famous works: the pantomime
El amor brujo and the ballet
El sombrero de tres picos (composed to complete an order of the famous Russian Ballets of Sergei Diaghilev), Seven popular Spanish songs for voice and piano, the
Fantasía bética para piano and the mentioned
Noches en los Jardines de España, released in the Teatro Real in 1916.
His style evolved across these compositions from the folkloric nationalism that reveal these first scores been inspired by topics, melodies, rhythms and Andalusian or Castilian drafts, up to a nationalism that he was looking for his inspiration in the musical tradition of the Spanish Siglo de Oro (Century of Gold) and to which they respond with the opera for marionettes
El retablo de maese Pedro, one of his most praised works, and
Concierto para clave y cinco instrumentos.
On returning to Spain in 1919, living in a house near Alhambra (Granada), he lived a cloistered life, surrounded with a group of friends between whom of which Federico García Lorca was one of them. In 1936, he tried with all his might to save his friend of the execution of the rebellious troops of the army, although without effect.
The already mentioned works are written in this period for the marionettes theater. In these works the influence of the folkloric music is less visible than of luck of Neoclassicism in the style of
Igor Stravinski.
The last twenty years of his life, Manuel de Falla spent them being employed at where he considered he had the job of his life: the scenic cantata
La Atlántida, on a poem from the poet in the Catalan language,
Jacint Verdaguer. And he kept on working in this after his exile in Argentina and was finished by his disciple Ernesto Halffter after the death de Falla.
He passed away in Alta Gracia, Argentina, on 14 November 1946.