Manuel de Falla

Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century.

[1] In 1889 he continued his piano lessons with Alejandro Odero and learned the techniques of harmony and counterpoint from Enrique Broca.

In 1897 he composed Melodía for cello and piano and dedicated it to Salvador Viniegra, who hosted evenings of chamber music that Falla attended.

It was from Pedrell, during the Madrid period, that Falla became interested in the music of his native Andalusia, particularly Andalusian flamenco (specifically cante jondo), the influence of which can be strongly felt in many of his works.

Enrique Granados took first prize with his composition of the same title, but the Society of Authors published Falla's works Tus ojillos negros and Nocturno.

There he met a number of composers who had an influence on his style, including Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Paul Dukas, as well as Igor Stravinsky, Florent Schmitt, Isaac Albéniz and the impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

[1] In 1908 King Alfonso XIII awarded him a royal grant that enabled him to remain in Paris while he finished his Cuatro piezas españolas.

In 1910 Falla met Stravinsky and in 1911–12 traveled to London, Brussels and Milan to give concerts and investigate possible venues for La vida breve, which he had composed shortly after his arrival in Paris in 1907 but which, despite the support of Dukas and Falla's own best efforts, was not finally performed until 1 April 1913 at the Municipal Casino in Nice, with the libretto translated into French by the dramatist Paul Milliet.

[1][5][6] During the 1920s and 1930s, he frequently visited Barcelona and Catalonia and became associated with various Catalan artists, critics and intellectuals, such as Joan Lamote de Grignon, Oleguer Junyent, Frank Marshall, Rafael Moragas, Jaume Pahissa and Santiago Rusiñol.

[7] Also in Granada, Falla began work on the large-scale orchestral cantata Atlántida (Atlantis), based on the Catalan text L'Atlàntida by Jacint Verdaguer.

[7] Falla continued work on Atlántida after moving to Argentina in 1939, following Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War.

His health began to decline and he moved to a house in the mountains where he was tended by his sister María del Carmen de Falla (1882–1971).

One of the lasting honors to his memory is the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at Complutense University of Madrid.