ΣΑΝ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ. ΜΑΝΟΥΕΛ ΝΤΕ ΦΑΛΙΑ

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Manuel de Falla (23/11/1876 -14/11/1946)
Spanish composer ManueL Maria de Falla y Matheu was the eldest son of a cultured and prosperous couple who resided in the Andalusian city of Cádiz. Falla’s parents made sure that their children had the best tutors at home, including excellent training in music. At twenty, Falla enrolled as a student at the Real Conservatorio de Música in Madrid, where he completed the demanding course in piano in just two years. He later fell under the sway of the noted composer and musicologist Felipe Pedrell who encouraged Falla to explore Spanish folk music. In 1907, Falla journeyed to Paris, where he impressed leading French composers such as Dukas, Ravel, and Debussy. While in Paris, Falla was entranced by the music and aesthetics of impressionism and worked hard to perfect his mastery of orchestration. This seven-year period of study in Paris bore fruit in 1915 with the creation of the gipsy ballet El amor brujo and the completion in the same year of a set of “symphonic impressions” for piano and orchestra entitled Noches en los jardines de España. Falla’s next large work, the ballet El sombrero de tres picos, was written for Diaghilev’s Ballets Risses; it successfully premiered in London on July 2, 1919, with choreography by Diaghilev’s then lover Léonid Massine and decor by Picasso. Falla settled in Granada in 1920, living with his sister, Maria del Carmen. Falla’s serene life was shattered by the convulsions of the Spanish Civil War. The deleterious effect of the war on the composer’s precarious physical and mental health eventually necessitated an escape from Spain. Falla and his sister emigrated to a remote part of Argentina in 1939, where he worked in his final work, the “scenic cantata” Atlántida. The massive score left unfinished at the composer’s death and was later completed by Falla’s disciple Ernesto Halffter.
Igor Stravinsky once characterized Falla’s nature as “the mostly unpityingly religious I have ever known”. Yet Falla never composed a note of religious music, and his style is often as overtly erotic as that of Ravel. Like the reclusive Ravel’s Falla’s sexual predilections are difficult to determine with certainty. Thus evidence of any homosexuality is circumstantial. Falla was a lifelong bachelor with no documented love affairs with members of either sex. Aside from his sister and the lesbian harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, he seems to have had no interest in women whatsoever. Falla collaborated enthusiastically with both Diaghilev and Massine on El sombrero de tres picos, making a protracted automobile tour through Spain with them in search of inspiration for the ballet. Falla’s home in Granada was a meeting place for gay Spanish artists and intellectuals, such as his intimate friend Federico García Lorca. Lorca’s murder by the Nationalists in 1936 and the stringent homophobia of Franco’s regime may well have contributed to Falla’s decision to settle in Argentina. Finally, there is his music: so sensuous, so coruscating, so elegant, and, at times, so very campy.
Byron Adams

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George E. Haggerty(ed.): Gay histories and cultures: an encyclopedia (Garland Publishing Inc, 2000)

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A concerto for harpsichord, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello.

The first two parts: Allegro and Lento giubiloso ed energico.

Composed between 1923 and 1926. Wanda Landowska was the dedicatee.
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***Η ανάρτηση αποτελεί εκπλήρωση μιας παλιάς υπόσχεσης στον really nothing και ο ντε Φάλια είναι η απάντηση του κουίζ (εδώ), στο οποίο ο μόνος που απάντησε (σωστά) ήταν ο SK.