Manuel de Falla, "El amor brujo", suite

Such was the eagerness of Manuel María de los Dolores de Falla y Matheu for setting foot in Paris, back in 1904, that he dared to participate simultaneously in two musical skills contests while in Madrid after his family moved there from his native Cadiz.
One of them summoned pianists, with a first prize consisting of an instrument donated by the piano builder who organized the contest. In the other, he had to compete with a symphonic work or an opera, whose royalties, if he won, would allow him to travel to the City of Light.

A double winner
Manuel de Falla was victorious in both contests. But the one he was most looking forward to, in which he won with the operetta La vida breve, turned out to be a fiasco. The ambiguous wording of the contract did not assure in any way that the piece was going to be performed, at all events. And there was just no theater that would take the risk with a novel composer.

On tour
Falla overcame his frustration by joining as a pianist a mime company that was preparing to tour France, Belgium, Switzerland and some German cities. Thus, the composer found himself in Paris in 1907, at the same time as his fellow countryman Albéniz, who was working hard on the Iberia suite, while Debussy was writing the triptych Imágenes, and Ravel was busy working on the Spanish Rhapsody.

"El amor brujo"

Manuel de Falla (1876 - 1946)

After the outbreak of war in 1914, Falla returned to Madrid. And the first thing he did was to accept a commission from a gypsy artist, Pastora Imperio, who asked him to compose for her something as simple as "a song and dances". Falla responded with a "gitanería" in two scenes for small orchestral ensemble, which tells the story of a gypsy girl who wins back an indifferent lover with the magic of love; the story ends happily. This was not the case with "gitanería". Premiered at the Teatro de Lara, in Madrid, in April 1915, with the title "El amor brujo", the work was not well received.

Versions and arrangements - Ritual fire dance

In view of the failure, the following year Falla rewrote the work for symphony orchestra, dividing it into two tableaux and adding three mezzo-soprano songs. In late 1930, he took four pieces from the original "gitanería" and turned them into a suite for piano. But before that, in 1924, he had made the arrangement that has survived to the present day. It is the ballet version, a one-act "ballet-pantomima", which was the most successful of all and the one commonly heard in concert halls as an orchestral piece, consisting of thirteen pieces, including the popular "Danza ritual del fuego", which can be heard from minute 09:40 in the version of the Radio Kamer Filharmonie ensemble, conducted by the Spanish conductor Alejo Perez.