Falla:
La vida breve
Introduction
At the end of the nineteenth century the
young pianist and composer Manuel de Falla
(1876 – 1946) left his native city of Cádiz; after
having made occasional trips to Madrid to
receive piano instruction from José Tragó, he
moved to the Spanish capital in 1896, eager
to complete his training. Tragó, who was
Professor of Piano at the Conservatorio de
Madrid, immediately saw and appreciated
the excellent musical and pianistic skill of the
young boy from Cádiz, who, after finishing
his studies in 1899, went on to win the Primer
Premio de Piano. By this time the business
of his father in Cádiz had been seriously
affected by the 1898 crisis, and finally, in 1900,
the Falla family, now in economic hardship,
decided to move to Madrid to be close to
Manuel.
For Falla the direction of his career at
this point still looked somewhat uncertain.
His progress as a pianist was clear, but
his temperament as a composer was also
strong. Following the works composed and
premiered in Cádiz, other pieces for piano
were written during 1900 and 1901, and Falla
began to develop an interest in the voice,
composing songs. However, the musical life
of Madrid at the beginning of the century was
dominated by the zarzuela: it was the heyday
of the género chico, and success in this
genre was the only means by which popular
recognition and immediate financial reward
could be guaranteed. Becoming well known
and contributing to his family’s economy were
both legitimate and rather pressing motives
for the young Falla and, albeit unsuccessfully,
he immersed himself in the zarzuela. He
collaborated with Amadeo Vives in three small
works and, alone, composed Limosna de amor,
La casa de tócame Roque, and Los amores de
la Inés. Only the last was actually performed, in
somewhat precarious conditions, at the Teatro
Cómico. Falla did not retain good memories
of the experience, and he even criticised the
quality of the music that he had written for a
musical-theatre medium with which he was
not comfortable.
The discovery of a fragment of the opera
Los Pirineos by Felipe Pedrell, published in
the Revista Musical Catalana, stunned the
young Falla, who immediately established
direct contact with the patriarch of Spanish
nationalist music, having also read his