Description
Michael Christoforidis is widely recognized as a leading expert on one of Spain's most important composers, Manuel de Falla. This volume brings together both new chapters and revised versions of previously published work, some of which is made available here in English for the first time. The introductory chapter provides a biographical outline of the composer and characterisations of both Falla and his music during his lifetime. The sections that follow explore different facets of Falla’s mature works and musical identity. Part II traces the evolution of his flamenco-inspired Spanish style through contacts with Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky, while Part III explores the impact of post-World War I modernities on Falla’s musical nationalism. The final part reflects on aspects of Falla’s music and the politics of Spain in the 1930s and 1940s. Situating his discussion of these aspects of Falla's music within a broader context, including currents in literature and the visual arts, Christoforidis provides a distinctive and original contribution to the study of Falla as well as to the wider fields of musical modernism, exoticism, and music and politics.
Table of Contents
Prelude
1. Images of a Life
Parisian Encounters and Andalusian Echoes
2. Conversations with Claude Debussy: La vida breve and Beyond
3. Isaac Albéniz, Claude Debussy and Views of the Alhambra from Paris
4. Fabricating Folk-songs in Paris: Siete canciones populares españolas
5. Belle-Epoque Primitivism, Igor Stravinsky, and El amor brujo (1915)
6. Spanish Guitar Traditions and Evocations of Andalusia
The Hispanic Modernist
7. Picasso, Ortega y Gasset and the Framing of El retablo de maese Pedro
8. New Orchestral Horizons and Echoes of the Past in El retablo de maese Pedro
9. The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Moors in El retablo de maese Pedro
10. The Aesthetics of Sobriety: Reconciling Faith and Modernity
11. Hispanic Traditions through the Lens of European Modernity in the Concert
In Search of Atlantis
12. Greek Echoes in the Construction of Hispanic Identity
13. Negotiating Politics, Religion and the Idea of Castile in 1930s Spain
14. Argentine Afterword: Thoughts on Religion, Spain, and Global Cataclysm from the New World
