Manuel de Falla

• Born: November 23, 1876, Cádiz, Spain
• Died: November 14, 1946, Alta Gracia, Argentina
  

Interlude and Spanish Dance from La vida breve  (“The Brief Life”)

• Composed: 1904-05
• Premiere: April 1, 1913 in Nice, France 
• Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, castanets, crash cymbals, glockenspiel, triangle, 2 harps, celeste, strings
• CSO notable performances: First: January 1987, Jesús López Cobos conducting. Most Recent: February 2008 for a special concert (Fine Arts Fund Weekend Sampler), Eric Dudley conducting. Recording: Falla: The Three-Cornered Hat (1987), Jesús López Cobos conducting 
• Duration: approx. 8 minutes

Between 1900 and 1902, while he was still a student at the Barcelona Conservatory, Falla wrote a series of five zarzuelas, the traditional form of popular Spanish musical theater whose origins trace back to the 17th century, but the works excited little interest and only Los amores de la Inés was staged (Madrid, April 12, 1902). At that time Falla chanced to discover, in an issue of the Revista Musical Catalana, a review and a musical excerpt from the opera Los Pirineos by Felipe Pedrell. Falla realized that the manner in which Pedrell incorporated authentic Spanish idioms into his music pointed the way toward a true national style, “something,” he said, “of which I had had only the illusion of knowing since the beginning of my studies.” He sought out Pedrell for private lessons, and he quickly came to share his teacher’s vision of returning Spanish music to the glory it had known during the golden age of the Renaissance while at the same time raising the country’s indigenous music to high art.

By the time Pedrell left Madrid for Barcelona in 1904, Falla had begun to formulate a musical style that would encompass both his own personality and the influence of his teacher. When the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid announced a competition for a new “Spanish lyrical drama” later that year, Falla eagerly applied. Performance of the winning entry was implied by the publicity materials, and Falla hoped that the receipts, should his opera be chosen, would fund his long-standing desire to study in Paris. He chose a successful writer of zarzuela librettos (and a fellow native of Cádiz), Carlos Fernández-Shaw, to supply the text. As the scores were to be submitted “before sunset” on March 31, 1905, Falla set quickly to work, but his schedule became complicated when José Tragó, his old Conservatory teacher, convinced him to enter a piano contest sponsored by the instrument manufacturers Ortiz y Cussó—planned to begin the day after the deadline for the opera submissions! Falla decided that he had little chance in the piano competition and concentrated instead during the following months on the new opera, titled La vida breve (“The Brief Life”). He finished the work just in time and then returned to his piano practice, grateful that he would be among the last to perform at the two-week competition. He worked furiously on the required pieces—a Bach fugue, a Beethoven sonata and compositions by Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Saint-Saëns—and played with such emotion and intensity at his recital that one of the judges was moved to tears. He placed first in that competition, and a few months later he learned that La vida breve had been chosen as the winning entry in the Academy contest. His elation turned to frustration, however, when he was informed that, owing to some ill-defined administrative problem, the new opera would not be staged. He reluctantly went back to teaching piano lessons and saved enough money during the following months to finance his long-hoped-for trip to study in Paris. In the summer of 1907, he set out for the French capital with the score of La vida breve tucked into his luggage, planning to stay a week. He did not return to Spain for seven years. La vida breve was finally premiered on April 1, 1913, when it was successfully staged at the Casino at Nice.

Suzanne Demarquez outlined the stark plot of La vida breve in her biography of Falla:

A Gypsy girl, Salud, lives with her grandmother and her aunt in the Albaïcin quarter of Granada. She has been seduced by Paco, a fashionable young man. Both have sworn eternal love, but Paco has deserted Salud for a rich novia [i.e., fiancée], Carmela, whom he plans to marry. On the day of the wedding, Salud, followed by her relations, appears in the middle of the wedding feast, reproaches her lover for his unscrupulous conduct, and falls dead at his feet.

The Interlude and Dance from La vida breve not only suggest the opera’s Andalusian setting but also distill the essence of Falla’s Spanish musical nationalism.

—Dr. Richard E. Rodda