Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)
Siete canciones populares españolas
Although de Falla spent seven beautiful years of his life in Paris, exposed to the art of Debussy and Ravel, he was a true, Cadiz-born Andalusian. And, as an Andalusian, he almost naturally permeated his music with that hardly definable phenomenon, the duende.
Between his piano concerto nicknamed “Nights in the Gardens of Spain” (1909) or the opera La vida breve, and his song cycle Siete canciones populares españolas and his ballet El amor brujo (1915), he wrote music rooted in his native culture and full of significant expression. Federico Garcia Lorca reminds us that “the great artists of the Spanish South know very well that there is no real emotion in song, dance, or play, without the duende.”
Although this cycle of seven Spanish folksongs brings together melodies and rhythms from the North as well as the South of the country, the duende makes itself felt. Roman Kowal, who devoted a separate essay to these songs, saw in de Falla’s work “the endless cycle of the experience of love,” measured out by the sequence of emotions: “love – happiness – betrayal and – hate,” when one’s lips pronounce the curse of “malaya el amor, malaya!” He saw the seven songs as “a great arch of lament, as an arrested cry, noble, worthy of a Spaniard.”
∙ El paño moruno is an Andalusian solea, song of solitude, jeering and bitter. The songs asks unanswerable questions, the piano gives an impression of a guitar.
∙ Seguidilla murciana. This dance, akin to a bolero, comes from Murcia that borders on Andalusia. Condemnation and curses: “You are like money, going from hand to hand!”
∙ Asturiana is a subdued, lyrical lamento, based on a song from those parts: “the pine wept with me.”
∙ Jota. This dancing song, of Aragonian origin, is on the antipodes of canto hondo. “Farewell! Farewell… until tomorrow.”
∙ Naña. A new moment of lyrical musing: a lullaby weaves an arabesque of a melody over a piano ostinato. It borders on silence: „Sleep, my child, sleep.”
∙ Canción is a song of curse and contempt. “How treacherous are your eyes! Let them be buried!”
∙ Polo is a return to the point of departure, the canto hondo of Andalusia, a solea, a lonely man’s complaint of his fate, more cried out than sung.
Mieczysław Tomaszewski