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Siete canciones populares españolas for Voice and Piano
Manuel de Falla

- Born November 23, 1876, in Cádiz, Spain
- Died November 14, 1946, in Alta Gracia, Argentina
- Composed in 1914
- Duration: 11 minutes

In 1907, Manuel de Falla was 30 years old, living in Madrid, and deeply frustrated with his career prospects. Though he had won some prizes, he was spending his time on unsatisfying teaching work and unable to break through as either a pianist or composer. In the summer of that year, he received a vague offer to play concerts as an accompanist in Paris and he immediately boarded a train, planning to stay for a few weeks. 

Though the promised concerts fell through, he found enough other work to remain in France for seven years. He worked on his compositions with Paul Dukas, Claude Debussy, and leading Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz, who lived in France at the time. There, he saw successful performances of his opera La vida breve, and eventually secured a contract and a monthly salary from the publisher Max Eschig to write music of the newly developing Spanish school. Finally provided with the financial guarantees he needed to write the kind of music he wanted to write, he set to work on a cycle of seven songs from popular Spanish-language sources, which he completed in 1914. He would not see these songs performed in France; the threat of war sent him and many of his fellow Spanish expatriate composers back home, and the Siete canciones populares españolas were premiered in Madrid in early 1915.

Most of the Siete canciones comes from Ecos de España, a collection of folk and popular tunes compiled in 1873 by the composer and musicologist José Inzenga. But Falla puts these found melodies through a filter: a distinctive blend of rhythmic density and unpredictability and the shining, impressionistic flourishes and harmonies that he had taken up under the influence of Debussy and other French composers. The first song in the set begins with a light-footed introduction in the guitar; the singer’s entry, a metaphor-laden lament for a piece of fine cloth that is stained and cannot be sold, is full of pained bravado. The second tune is marked by a chromatic ostinato (repeated pattern) in the accompaniment, which chugs along in train-like fashion while the exasperated singer uses a humorous, repeated-note melody to chide her inconstant addressee. The lightness of the first songs, along with their surprising dissonances, melt away at the opening of the third song where the speaker turns to a powerful green tree in hope that it will absorb some of her grief. In the guitar outro, the otherwise constant, undulating accompaniment picks up a melody where the singer’s last line leaves off, leaving us to feel that the solace of nature can in fact take on some of the burden of pain in our lives.

The Jota is a colorful depiction of a secretive affair. The guitar opening and interludes hint at the fluttering, twitching hearts that show the characters’ true feelings, while the singer declares her affection, and the bittersweet joy of parting, in indulgent, ornamented, slower-tempo statements. The two lovers are to see each other the next day, and so all that remains is to go to sleep, an activity that is invited by the following Nana, a haunting modal tune that floats atop soothing syncopated counterpoint in the guitar. The child sung to in the Nana returns that affection in the next song, in which a woman seeks solace from her mother after being betrayed by her lover. The urgency of the speaker’s cry that “all is lost” is contradicted by the steady, motoric rhythm that we hear throughout the number, which communicates a note of reassurance. All-out rage over love is saved for the final song, in which the soprano’s insistent “Ay” soars over the cross-metric strumming of the aggressive accompaniment, a climactic texture that is well served by this guitar arrangement. 

Siete canciones populares españolas for Voice and Piano
Manuel de Falla

- Born November 23, 1876, in Cádiz, Spain
- Died November 14, 1946, in Alta Gracia, Argentina
- Composed in 1914
- Duration: 11 minutes

In 1907, Manuel de Falla was 30 years old, living in Madrid, and deeply frustrated with his career prospects. Though he had won some prizes, he was spending his time on unsatisfying teaching work and unable to break through as either a pianist or composer. In the summer of that year, he received a vague offer to play concerts as an accompanist in Paris and he immediately boarded a train, planning to stay for a few weeks. 

Though the promised concerts fell through, he found enough other work to remain in France for seven years. He worked on his compositions with Paul Dukas, Claude Debussy, and leading Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz, who lived in France at the time. There, he saw successful performances of his opera La vida breve, and eventually secured a contract and a monthly salary from the publisher Max Eschig to write music of the newly developing Spanish school. Finally provided with the financial guarantees he needed to write the kind of music he wanted to write, he set to work on a cycle of seven songs from popular Spanish-language sources, which he completed in 1914. He would not see these songs performed in France; the threat of war sent him and many of his fellow Spanish expatriate composers back home, and the Siete canciones populares españolas were premiered in Madrid in early 1915.

Most of the Siete canciones comes from Ecos de España, a collection of folk and popular tunes compiled in 1873 by the composer and musicologist José Inzenga. But Falla puts these found melodies through a filter: a distinctive blend of rhythmic density and unpredictability and the shining, impressionistic flourishes and harmonies that he had taken up under the influence of Debussy and other French composers. The first song in the set begins with a light-footed introduction in the guitar; the singer’s entry, a metaphor-laden lament for a piece of fine cloth that is stained and cannot be sold, is full of pained bravado. The second tune is marked by a chromatic ostinato (repeated pattern) in the accompaniment, which chugs along in train-like fashion while the exasperated singer uses a humorous, repeated-note melody to chide her inconstant addressee. The lightness of the first songs, along with their surprising dissonances, melt away at the opening of the third song where the speaker turns to a powerful green tree in hope that it will absorb some of her grief. In the guitar outro, the otherwise constant, undulating accompaniment picks up a melody where the singer’s last line leaves off, leaving us to feel that the solace of nature can in fact take on some of the burden of pain in our lives.

The Jota is a colorful depiction of a secretive affair. The guitar opening and interludes hint at the fluttering, twitching hearts that show the characters’ true feelings, while the singer declares her affection, and the bittersweet joy of parting, in indulgent, ornamented, slower-tempo statements. The two lovers are to see each other the next day, and so all that remains is to go to sleep, an activity that is invited by the following Nana, a haunting modal tune that floats atop soothing syncopated counterpoint in the guitar. The child sung to in the Nana returns that affection in the next song, in which a woman seeks solace from her mother after being betrayed by her lover. The urgency of the speaker’s cry that “all is lost” is contradicted by the steady, motoric rhythm that we hear throughout the number, which communicates a note of reassurance. All-out rage over love is saved for the final song, in which the soprano’s insistent “Ay” soars over the cross-metric strumming of the aggressive accompaniment, a climactic texture that is well served by this guitar arrangement.