Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)
Suite populaire espagnole
Manuel de Falla, together with Albeniz and Granados one of the great three of „racial” (to use a term of Karol Szymanowski) Spanish composers, used in extenso Spanish folk music as his main source of inspiration. He came from a family with a double national colour: his father was an Andalusian, his mother a Catalan. The idea of Siete canciones populares españolas for voice and piano was born in 1914, in the last months of the composer’s stay in Paris. The songs premiered in Madrid as early as in 1915, were published in 1922, and transcribed for the violin by Paweł Kochański and for the cello by Maurice Maréchal. The are known in their instrumental version as Suite populaire espagnole. A collection of miniatures rather than a cycle, they can be understood as a metaphorical journey through region of Spanish culture.
El paño moruno has its origins in the Moorish South. The popular folksong Canción received an original harmonic accompaniment; it is characteristic in the repetitiveness of melodic turns, typical for the folk style. The lyrical and melancholy character is represented in the suite by two lullabies, the Andalusian Nana and Asturiana from Northern Spain. The temperament of fiery flamenco is personified in Polo, an Andalusian dance maintained in small metre, with syncopated rhythm and rapid note repetitions that energise the course of the music. Its Oriental roots are audible in melismas and intonations of motives in the melody. A different variety of gesture is brought by Jota, a dance of Aragonian provenience, in a rapid tempo and compound metre, originally performed with castanet accompaniment. The differentia specifica is defined by the contrasts between the motoric qualities and the quasi-improvisational character of cascade motives.
In his Spanish Suite, Manuel de Falla did more than just reproduce the emotionality of folklore, suspended between deep singing and elemental rhythm – he sublimated it. The musical narration, varying from one individual miniature to the next, draws the audience into a kaleidoscope of colourful images of music and movement, provoking it into active participation. Olé
Małgorzata Janicka-Słysz