The Music of Spain

by Carl Van Vechten

Manuel de Falla was born at Cadiz, November 23, 1877. He studied harmony with Alejandro Odero and Enrique Broca; later he went to Madrid where he studied piano with José Trigo and composition with Felipe Pedrell. He was still under fourteen when the Madrid Academy of Music awarded him the first prize for his piano playing. Between 1890 and 1904 he divided his time between composing and piano playing, both as soloist and in concerted chamber music. The compositions of this period were not published, however, and now de Falla cannot be urged to speak of them. In 1907 he went to Paris, where, from the very first, he received a warm welcome from Paul Dukas. Debussy was also friendly. His only published works at this time were Quatres Pièces Espagnoles: Aragonesa, Cubana, Montañesa, and Andaluza, for piano, and Trois Mélodies: Les Colombes, Chinoiserie, and Seguidille, words by Théophile Gautier. In 1910 he made his début as a pianist in Paris and the following year in London....

On April 1, 1913, the Casino at Nice produced his first opera, La Vida Breve (which so early as 1905 had won a prize at the Madrid Academy of Fine Arts) with Lilian Grenville as Salud; on December 30, 1913, the work was performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris with Marguerite Carré as Salud. The first performance of this lyric drama in Spain occurred at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, November 14, 1914. La Vida Breve has been compared to Cavalleria Rusticana, "a Cavalleria written by a consummate musician penetrated with a keen desire to express his thoughts without making easy concessions to the mob."... The orchestration has been warmly praised. "In the first act he has linked the two scenes with an admirable evocation of Granada at dusk; faint sounds of voices rise from the distant town and all the atmosphere is laden with nonchalance, fragrance, and love."

With the beginning of the war de Falla left France for his native land. He launched La Vida Breve in Spain with some success and on April 15, 1915, his second opera, El Amor Brujo, was produced at the Lara Theatre in Madrid. Aubry tells us that this work was a failure. However, the composer suppressed the spoken and sung parts, enlarged the orchestration, and made of it a symphonic suite, "semi-Arabian" in style. Pastora Imperio, too, has used this music for her dances.

Aubry pronounces de Falla's Nocturnes, produced in Madrid in 1916, the most important orchestral work yet written by a Spaniard. The Spanish title reads: Noches en los Jardines de España. There are three parts described by these subtitles: En el Generalife, Danse Lejana, and En los Jardines de la Sierra de Córdoba. The piano plays an important part in the orchestration but is never heard alone. "The thematic material is built, as in La Vida Breve or in El Amor Brujo on rhythms, modes, cadences, or forms inspired by but never borrowed from Andalusian folk-song."

When the Russian Ballet visited Spain Serge de Diaghilew was so much interested in the work of de Falla that he commissioned him to write a ballet on the subject of Alarcón's novel, "El Sombrero de tres Picos."

Joaquín Turina is another important figure in the modern school. Debussy compared his orchestral work, La Procesión del Rocio, to a luminous fresco. In an article in "The Musical Standard," January 6, 1917, Guilhermina Suggia writes: "This work, composed in 1912 and dedicated to Enrique Fernández Arbós, depicts one of those striking processions in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary of which Richard Ford writes in such picturesque fashion in the old edition of Murray's 'Handbook of Spain' (1845)." Every year in the month of June, la procesión del rocio takes place, and all the grandees in the town of Seville come out in their carriages to take part in the festivity. Turina has also composed an opera, Fea y con Gracia (1905), a string quartet, and numerous works for piano, among which may be mentioned Trois Danses Andalouses (Petenera, Tango, and Zapateado), Sevilla, a suite, and Recuerdos de mi rincón (Tragedia cómica para piano).

José María Usandizaga, one of the most promising of the younger composers, died in 1915. He was born in 1888 at San Sebastian and died therefore at the age of 27, one year after his opera, Las Golindrinas, was successfully produced at Madrid (February 4, 1914) with the tenor Sagi-Barba in the leading rôle. Usandizaga was a man of exceedingly frail physique, weak and lame, and he died of tuberculosis. He was a pupil, I believe, of Vincent d'Indy. His posthumous opera, La Llama, was produced at San Sebastian and Madrid during the winter of 1917-18. Gregorio Martínez Sierra, one of the foremost writers of the younger generation, furnished the books for both his operas.

Enrique (more properly Enrich or Enric; Enrique is the Castilian form of this Catalan name) Morera is, perhaps, the leading Catalan composer. He is best-known for his choral arrangements of folk-songs, some of which have been heard in New York through the medium of the Schola Cantorum, but he has written music for Guimerá's plays, and a lyric drama entitled L'Alegría que passa, the book for which was furnished by Santiago Rusiñol.

Conrado del Campo has written a Divina Comedia for orchestra and Bartolomé Pérez Casas a Suite Murcienne which G. Jean-Aubry includes in a list of modern Spanish orchestral music. Pérez Casas is at present the conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Madrid. He and Turina conducted the orchestra for the Russian Ballet during the May, 1918, visit of that organization to Madrid.