Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre

Álvaro Gómez Gómez

The influences of Andalusian folk music and the Impressionist style of Debussy

on Manuel de Falla’s work Noches en Los Jardines de España

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Music)

Supervisor: Prof. Toomas Siitan

Tallinn 2015

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The influences of Andalusian folk music and the Impressionist style of Debussy on Manuel de

Falla’s work Noches en Los Jardines de España

Abstract

The research focuses on the influence of the music of the folklore of southern Spain and that

of the music of Debussy in the works of Manuel de Falla, who lived for seven years in Paris (1907–

1914). The study focuses specifically on the last piece Manuel de Falla began to compose in Paris,

Noches en los Jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain).

The purpose of the study is to assess the importance of the French influence in Falla’s music,

alongside the tools he already possessed from the music of Spanish folklore. In order to achieve a

suitable reading of his music, the main purpose of the thesis is to understand whether the influence

of Debussy on Falla was sufficient to change radically his manner of composition or whether this

influence served merely to complement a style of composition based on the music of the folklore of

southern Spain.

A major part of the dissertation is devoted to an analysis of Manuel de Falla’s Noches en los

Jardines de España. Here the author tries to identify the best way to perform the piece, searching

for the most suitable tools the orchestra can use to recreate as faithfully as possible the ideas of the

colours, rhythms, textures and so on that Falla had in his mind while composing the piece.

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Table of contents

1. Introduction ..........................................................................................................................4

1.1. Aim of the research ...............................................................................................5

1.2. Background to the research....................................................................................5

1.3. Research methods..................................................................................................7

2. Manuel de Falla and Paris.....................................................................................................9

2.1. Manuel de Falla moves to Paris...........................................................................11

2.2. Two personalities of major importance:

Joaquín Turina and Claude Debussy...........................................................................13

2.2.1. Joaquín Turina and Manuel de Falla ....................................................14

2.2.2. Claude Debussy and Manuel de Falla ..................................................16

3. The influences of flamenco singing and Debussy’s music in Manuel de Falla’s

Noches en los Jardines de España .........................................................................................20

3.1. The influence of flamenco singing in

Noches en los Jardines de España .........................................................................................27

3.1.1. Harmony ...............................................................................................31

3.1.2. Melody and sonority ............................................................................33

3.1.3. Rhythm .................................................................................................48

3.2. The influence of Debussy’s music in

Noches en los Jardines de España ............................................................................51

3.2.1. Harmony ...............................................................................................52

3.2.2. Melody .................................................................................................58

3.2.3. Texture ..................................................................................................64

4. Conclusion .........................................................................................................................74

Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................78

Töö lühikokkuvõte .................................................................................................................81

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1. Introduction

It is difficult to know the extent to which an experience outside one’s homeland can change

an individual’s personality; what is very evident in the case of Manuel de Falla, however, is that his

music saw a change of direction during the seven years he was in Paris (from 1907 to 1914) as a

result of his contact with the musical culture of his neighbouring country. During his sojourn in

Paris Falla improved his compositional skills and gained international acknowledgement as a

composer as he worked on some of his most important works, including Cuatro Canciones

Españolas, Trois Mélodies, Siete Canciones Populares Españolas and Noches en los Jardines de

España.

For an orchestral conductor it is very important to understand the context in which a

particular work is written, including the wider environment in which the composer is working, so as

to be able better to grasp his musical intentions and to find the right tools with which to transmit as

closely and effectively as possible the message that the composer wishes to convey in his music.

Unfortunately, this is not always possible. Conductors often have to prepare concerts very fast,

concentrating on the music from inside at the risk of overlooking such important aspects as an

awareness of the context in which the work was written, both that of the composer himself and of

the wider environment in which he was writing. Often, when working with an unfamiliar piece from

inside, musicians may struggle to grasp the meaning of a work or the significance of a particular

passage. In such a situation an awareness of the broader context in which the work was composed

can often shed light on such issues, clarifying them and perhaps significantly altering performance

decisions and thus the effect of the music in concert.

Noches en los Jardines de España (Nights in the Garden of Spain) is the last work Manuel

de Falla started to compose in his Paris period, and we might assume that a major factor in the piece

will be the influence of Debussy’s music. Such an assumption, however, besides being very

superficial, fails to provide a key to understanding and interpreting the music correctly. This

research attempts to ascertain more precisely what Falla had in mind while he was composing this

masterpiece and thus to understand more clearly the musical ideas he wished to transmit in it. On a

practical level, this will enable conductors to find the right tools with which to help the orchestra to

approach as closely as possible in performance the musical sensations that Falla intended to convey

in the piece.

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1.1. Aim of the research

The aim of this research is to assess the importance of Paris to Falla’s music and to

demonstrate how he combined the French influence with the tools he already possessed from the

music of flamenco singing. The study focuses specifically on Falla’s work Noches en los Jardines

de España: as an orchestral conductor, such a study is a valuable aid to obtaining insights into the

music that will enable the piece to be performed as faithfully as possible to the composer’s original

intentions. In order to achieve this aim, the thesis will be divided into two sections.

The first of these provides a general picture of the relevant background to Falla’s decision to

move to Paris in 1907, taking as its focus on one hand the artistic environment in the French capital

at the time and, on the other, the personal and artistic situation of Manuel de Falla. A sojourn in a

city that is not one’s own and the relationships with the people one finds there people there do much

to define the personality of any individual, and this is one of the many factors that may influence

the music of a composer in a particular period of his life. I will therefore examine the most

important influences to which Falla was exposed in Paris, personified by the principal proponents of

the two musical styles present in the city at the time. On one hand the influence of Joaquín Turina,

one of the most representative followers of the Schola Cantorum led by the French composer

Vincent d’Indy, a Spanish composer living in Paris at the same time as Falla; on the other hand,

Claude Debussy, the most important representative of the music of French Impressionism.

The second section then demonstrates how the confluence between two different strands –

on one hand the influence of the music of Claude Debussy, and on the other the flamenco singing

tradition from the music of Spanish folklore that was already part of the composer’s heritage before

he arrived in Paris – combined to create Falla’s style at that moment in his career. To this end

Noches en los Jardines de España, the last piece Falla began to compose in France, will be analysed

in some detail as the most complete example of this combination of styles in his music.

1.2. Background to the research

Manuel de Falla is without doubt one of the most important Spanish composers of the 20th

century. During the seven years he lived in Paris he sampled the culture of the early 20th century in

what was at the time one of the most important cultural centres in Europe. The results of those years

are visible in the work Noches en los Jardines de España, which is, according to some

musicologists as for example Mariano Pérez Gutiérrez or Yvan Nommick, his most impressionistic

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piece. The work, described by Falla as „Symphonic Impressions“, was begun in Paris in 1909 and

completed in 1915, after his return to it in Spain. Focusing particularly on this piece will enable us

to assess clearly the real influence of French music – and of Debussy, in particular – on Falla’s

music by the end of his Paris years.

The use of the term „Impressions“ in Falla’s own description of the work is itself striking. Is

Falla’s use of the term meant to suggest some affinity with the music of the Impressionist

composers? Though the answer to this question must remain uncertain, it is interesting to note that

Claude Debussy himself, the icon of the musical movement known as Impressionism, disliked the

use of the term „Impressionist“ to describe his own music. What is quite clear, however, is that

when listening to Noches en los Jardines de España the sonorities of both Debussy’s music and

flamenco singing are both recognisable. As performers, there are therefore two ways of reading the

music that will achieve two different results in performance in this particular piece. We can focus

our interpretation on trying to bring out the sonorities of the Andalusian folk music, with a more

aggressive way of playing in imitation of the gypsy way of making music and the sounds of the

guitar, the flamenco singers or the percussive way of dancing; alternatively, on the other hand, we

can take a softer approach, trying to bring out the different orchestral colours and giving less

importance to the accentuation and the aggressive rhythms, thereby approaching more closely the

impressionistic style of the music of Claude Debussy.

It is interesting to compare two performances featuring the pianist and conductor Daniel

Barenboim in his two different roles. (My intention at this point is merely to give these as examples;

they will not be analysed further in the body of the text.) In the first example Barenboim is

conducting the Paris Orchestra and the piano soloist is Marta Algerich.1 Here the conductor has in

his hands a French orchestra, and he adopts a softer approach to the piece. In the second example,

with Daniel Barenboim as the piano soloist with Plácido Domingo conducting the Chicago

Symphony Orchestra,2 we can perceive how Barenboim and Domingo adopt a more aggressive

performance style, exaggerating the accents and the changes in dynamics more strongly and giving

greater importance to the rhythmical sense of the piece. A comparison of the playing of the wind

instruments and the piano soloist, in particular, in the two versions reveals clearly how the second

version adopts a more aggressive style.

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYCiyNbDmRM 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MS332sS7cA

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1.3. Research methods

The principal methods of investigation are based on the documents and literature I have had

the opportunity to work with; these are available in the Manuel de Falla Foundation and Archive,

which has been located in Granada (Spain) since 1991. The Manuel de Falla Archive is a public

institution which preserves the library and documental legacy of the composer. The archive consists

of a collection of historical documents and an extensive reference library concerning the

composer’s life and times. The Spanish composer was closely associated with the most important

figures of his time, and documentary evidence of these relationships is preserved in the archive.

In order to obtain essential information specifically related to my area of research, my

research methods involved the following:

• An analysis of the different articles, letters, scores, and unpublished works available in the

Manuel de Falla Archive that relate to my research topic, with the aim of discovering the factors

that influenced and changed the compositional style of the Spanish composer change and thus to

find the best way of interpreting his work Noches en los Jardines de España. It is important here to

mention the works that appear in the bibliography. First of all, Manuel de Falla. His Life and Music

by Nancy Lee Harper, who uses a large amount of unpublished sources from the Manuel de Falla

Archive in Granada. Harper’s book uses letters and unpublished material that I use as well in my

research, but with a different goal. The focus of my research and my use of these resources is to

obtain information which will help the performer play Falla’s music in the way the composer

wished. Also important here is to mention the Doctoral dissertation by Elizabeth Anne Seitz, the

title of which is Manuel de Falla’s years in Paris, 1907–1914. The focus of that work is analytical –

an analysis of the music of Manuel de Falla during his stay in Paris, but without any kind of

conclusion with regard to performance, which marks a very big difference from the focus of the

present research work.

There are two works from the unpublished sources listed in the bibliography of this thesis which

add very important information about Manuel de Falla’s life in Paris and which have not, as far as I

am aware, been used in any previous research: Falla y París and Tesoro Sacro Musical. Revista de

Investigación y Ensayo by Mariano Pérez Gutiérrez .

• Practical experience of conducting Manuel de Falla’s music, including El Amor Brujo, La

Vida Breve, El Sombrero de Tres Picos and Noches en los Jardines de España, so as to gain my own

vision of his music as a conductor. As yet I have not conducted the piece in which is focus of this

dissertation in concert; however, the experience with the other three works has given me a clear

picture of how Noches en los Jardines de España should be performed.

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• An analysis of Noches en los Jardines de España, with the aim of identifying in this work

the influence of elements both from Andalusian folk music and from the impressionistic style of

Claude Debussy. Rather than adopting a traditional musical analysis of the score, the intention is to

identify and present certain stylistic elements that exist within the music so as to be able to realise

the piece as faithfully as possible to Falla’s original intentions in performance.

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2. Manuel de Falla and Paris

Manuel María de los Dolores Falla y Matheu was arguably the most important Spanish

composer of the 20th century. Born in Cádiz, Spain, on 23rd November 1876, he died in Alta Gracia,

Argentina, on 14th November 1946. He began piano lessons with his mother, Maria Jesús Matheu,

and then continued with a local teacher; by the age of ten he was attending chamber concerts in

Cádiz.

By the mid-1890s Falla, now firmly resolved to become a composer, had begun working

with Alejandro Odero, a student of Marmontel and Enrique Broca, who taught harmony and

counterpoint at the local conservatory. He would spend long intervals in Madrid studying the piano

with José Tragó, a student of Georges Mathias affiliated with the Madrid Conservatory,

where Falla eventually enrolled.

The year 1900 found him living in the capital, Madrid, with his family, whom he was

obliged to support by giving piano and harmony lessons. Despite an early failure with a zarzuela, a

Spanish musical and dramatic genre which contains both spoken and sung scenes, Falla’s first

Madrid period clarified and gave substance to his musical priorities. He was much impressed by

Louis Lucas’s treatise L’acoustique nouvelle (1854), a discussion of the natural generation of

consonance and dissonance, which gave theoretical justification to his loyalty to tonal structures. In

Madrid he also began his association with Felipe Pedrell, the Catalan composer, critic, teacher and

musicologist, who moved to the capital from Barcelona in 1902. Like Pedrell’s other students

(Granados, Albéniz, Vives, Lluís Millet and Roberto Gerhard) Falla held Pedrell in high regard.

In 1905 the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando sponsored a competition for a

Spanish opera, which Falla won with La Vida Breve. This was the first of his explorations of

Gypsy cante jondo (‘deep song’). As in subsequent works, he set himself the challenge of elevating

traditional Gypsy music to the highest level of art while preserving its primordial essence. Though

part of the prize was to have been a public performance of the winning opera, no authorisation for a

performance of La Vida Breve at a Spanish theatre ever materialised. Frustrated with the musical

institutions in Spain, in 1907 he accepted an offer to tour France as an accompanist. (Franco 2001:

371–374).

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As Falla told his biographer Alexis Roland-Manuel (1891–1966), a French composer and

critic born in Paris, „he decided very soon inside himself that he should go to study in Paris“.3 In the

summer of 1907 he was able to realise his dream, presenting himself very successfully with La Vida

Breve. This work, in which Falla tries to evoke Granada, opened to him the doors of the artistic

world in Paris. „Debussy and Dukas were very impressed by the Spanish composer’s piece and

offered him their support from the very beginning“.4

After the initial tour he decided to stay on in Paris, where would live for seven years. He

was very attracted by French music, especially by the music of Claude Debussy, with whom he was

to have a very good relationship. Proof of this is his Homenaje pour le Tombeau de Claude

Debussy, his only piece for solo guitar, composed by Falla in 1920 as a tribute to his fellow

composer and friend who had died in 1918. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, however,

Falla was obliged to return to Spain. Nevertheless, he always maintained his contact with Paris,

making frequent trips to the French capital for the premières or concerts of a number of his pieces,

and to be present at the tributes rendered to him by the musical and cultural elite of Paris.

But what had been happening in Falla’s life before 1907? When he was 9 years old he had

started to take piano lessons with Eloísa Galluzo, but at that time he felt himself more called to the

vocation of a writer than to that of a musician. This is confirmed in a letter written to his biographer

Roland-Manuel, in which he states „my vocation, despite the love I felt for some music, was

literature“.5 But with adolescence his real passion would appear. In the same letter written to Roland

Manuel in 1928 Falla wrote about his new passion, the art of composing, with which he fell in love

when he was 17 years old. „... From that moment some kind of power made me leave everything to

dedicate my life to composition. That vocation was so strong that I was even afraid because of it...“6

In 1900 Falla decided to move permanently to Madrid where, because of his family’s

financial straits, he made contact with the world of the Spanish Zarzuela. Even as a Spanish

composer, however, he was not really attracted to the genre. „The composers of Zarzuelas wanted

only to compose very fast so as to get an early performance and to be easily understood by the

public.“ (Falla 1988: 85). Only one Zarzuela composed by Manuel de Falla was performed, Los

Amores de la Inés, premièred at the Teatro Cómico de Madrid on 12 April 1902.

3 Part of a document on display in an exhibition organized by the Manuel de Falla Archive (MFA) in Granada, Spain. 4 Part of a document on display in an exhibition organized by the MFA. 5 Letter from Manuel de Falla to Roland-Manuel. December 1928. MFA 7521. 6 Letter from Manuel de Falla to Roland-Manuel. December 1928. MFA 7521.

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While still in Madrid, in 1905 Manuel de Falla got his first taste of success as a professional

musician. First of all he won the Ortiz y Cussó piano prize, awarded by the Madrid Music

Conservatory, and then in November of the same year the Real Academia de Bellas Artes awarded

him the Opera prize for La Vida Breve, with libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw, which Falla had

entered into the competition. But the latter success had a sting in its tail, one which made Manuel de

Falla think seriously of leaving Spain; for despite winning such a major prize with La Vida Breve, in

the event it proved impossible to première the opera in Spain. Partly as a result of this, in 1907 he

moved to Paris, attracted by its status as one of the world’s great cultural centres.

2.1. Manuel de Falla moves to Paris

„In the sonorous garden of France are cultivated every plant and every flower. The best of

each school and the best of each creator genius are carefully grafted on to every tree of that garden,

where even the most modest flower has something special compared with that cultivated in other

gardens.“7 In such terms did Falla write about France in the Preface to a work by Georges Jean-

Aubry (1882–1950), French music critic and translator.

Falla had started to learn French when he was 10 years old. He always dreamed of Paris and

never abandoned the study of the French language (Roales-Nieto 1988: 86). This suggests that

Manuel de Falla already felt some kind of attraction for French culture from a very early age. In

terms of his musical education it is of interest to note that as a student Falla studied harmony and

counterpoint with Alejandro Odero, a disciple of the French pianist Antoine François Marmontel

(1816–1898) and a student of Pierre Zimmermann. This is of importance because it suggests that

from his very early studies of harmony there was already some influence from French music.

Furthermore, Falla took piano lessons in Madrid from José Tragó, who brought to Madrid the

wonderful technique he had learnt in Paris from Georges Mathias. In addition, there were many

people around him who were connected in some way to France. My own experience suggests that

teachers and professors tend to value their experience as students very highly, both in terms of the

teachers who influenced them and the places where they studied. In the case of Manuel de Falla –

though this can, of course, be no more than conjectural – it is quite possible that this early exposure

to French music and musicians, albeit indirect, might have helped create in his own mind a great

interest in France for his future development as a composer.

7 Pérez Gutierrez, Mariano Falla y París. Unpublished biography. MFA. Page 11.

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Before his move to Paris one of the pieces Falla studied was Debussy’s Danses Sacrée et

Profane, scored for two harps and stringed instruments; from Madrid he wrote to the French master

a letter8 full of requests for advice about its interpretation. According to Jean-Aubry, this

demonstrates that „Manuel de Falla was one of the first pianists in Spain to demonstrate a curiosity

and interest in modern French music“.9

Manuel de Falla’s compositional style underwent significant development once he had left

Spain and begun to come into contact with more music from outside his own country. Before the

Spanish composer moved to Paris, in fact, his knowledge of contemporary music outside Spain was

limited; however, along with other factors of a personal nature, it was his experience of a small

number of modern French works, including L’apprenti Sorcier by Dukas and Debussy’s Danses

sacrèe et profane, that confirmed his desire to study in France. The move to Paris was undoubtedly

one of the most momentous decisions of his entire life. That he himself recognised this almost as

soon as he arrived in the French capital is clear from a letter of December 1913 to his friend

Salvador Viniegra (1862–1915), a Spanish historical painter and patron of the arts born in Cádiz, to

whom he wrote:

„As time goes on I am more and more happy with my decision to leave Madrid. There was

no future for me in Madrid“ [...] „Without Paris, I would be a lost person in Madrid, having a dark

life, living miserably giving some lessons and keeping the award for the score of my opera as a

family keepsake“.10

He continues in the same letter to write about his first meeting with Dukas, in a passage

which spells out some of the reasons for which he had moved to Paris:

„I had my first great satisfaction in Paris shortly after my arrival when I visited Dukas here.

In that visit I tried to show Dukas the reasons for which I came to Paris: to work and to study so as

to get to know the technical procedures of the modern French school“.11

It is clear from this letter that Manuel de Falla recognised his need to leave his own country

in order to develop himself as a composer and musician. In Spain it was as if he were stuck, his

musical options limited to the narrow ones offered by his native land; it was as if he were looking

for something that he could not find there. In his search for a new path to follow he found what he

8 This letter is not conserved in the MFA. 9 Pérez Gutierrez, Mariano Falla y París. Unpublished biography. MFA. Page 18–24. 10 Letter from Manuel de Falla to Salvador Viniegra. December 1913. MFA 7755. 11 Letter from Manuel de Falla to Salvador Viniegra. December 1913. MFA 7755.

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wanted in the French music he was playing on his piano, especially in the compositions of Claude

Debussy. He seems to have felt a profound connection to this music; though new to him, he sensed

in some way that this was the path that he had wanted for some time to take himself, but for which

he had been unable to find the key. Thus it was that he concluded that in order to develop as a

composer he needed to visit Claude Debussy and to experience everything that was happening

artistically speaking in the French capital.

2.2. Two personalities of major importance: Joaquín Turina and Claude Debussy

Manuel de Falla moved to Paris in 1907, remaining there until 1914 when the outbreak of

World War I meant that he had to return to Spain. These seven years spent living in the privileged

environment of the city widely considered to be the cultural centre of Europe offered him the

opportunity not only to develop himself as a musician but also to meet artists from all sorts of

different cultures. As Nancy Lee Harper wrote in her book Manuel de Falla. His Life and Music, the

composer had not had much contact with foreign composers until his arrival in Paris:

„Save for a childhood encounter with Saint-Saëns, and the correspondence with Debussy mentioned above, Falla did not come into contact with any foreign composers until his arrival in Paris in 1907. It was during the next seven years, however, that most of his lifelong friendships with other European composers were initiated. This was furthermore the period of their most intense fraternization.“ (Harper 2005: 251)

When Manuel de Falla arrived in Paris he found a city with a great variety of artistic

movements of all kinds. Of primary interest to a study of Falla is, of course, what he found in terms

of musical trends. At the beginning of the 20th century contemporary Parisian musical life centred

around two distinct schools or movements. On one hand there was the conservative school, whose

centre was the Schola Cantorum led by Vincent d’Indy, an educational institution founded in Paris

in 1894 as a society for the dissemination of religious music; here the curriculum had a strong

antiquarian and musicological bias, encouraging the study of late Baroque and early Classical

works, Gregorian chant, and Renaissance polyphony (Pasler 2001: 206). On the other hand there

was the new movement known as Impressionism, led by Claude Debussy; related to late 19th

century French painting this was, in fact, Debussy’s extension of the new musical ideas in vogue at

the time, and one which would have a major impact on the future of French Music. (Morgan 1999:

56–67)

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Falla’s move in 1907 to the most important European cultural city of the time was a major

decision which was to have a great influence on both him and his music. This is the reason why it is

important to understand the relationship between Manuel de Falla and the two musicians who, in

their different ways, had a great influence on the Spanish composer while he was in Paris: the

Spanish composer Joaquín Turina, one of the representatives of the conservative school, who in his

works retained elements from the music of the Spanish folklore, and Claude Debussy, icon of the

new French musical movement.

2.2.1. Joaquín Turina and Manuel de Falla

The Spanish composer Joaquín Turina was born in Seville in 1882, though his family

originally came from northern Italy. Music played a large part in his life from his early childhood.

He soon became well known in Seville as a composer and, from 1897, as a pianist. His early

successes prompted him to go to Madrid with the intention of arranging to have his opera La

Sulamita performed. This proved an impossible ambition for an unknown provincial composer;

Turina, however, gradually became better known in artistic circles, and his friendship with Falla

influenced his ideas on the proper character of Spanish music. In October 1905 Turina moved to

Paris, studying piano for a time with Moritz Moszkowski as well as composition at the Schola

Cantorum under d’Indy, though it was hard to escape the influence of Debussy and other

antagonists of the Schola. (Gómez 2001: 264–265)

Prior to Turina’s move to Paris in October 1905, two years before Falla arrived in the city,

the two composers had already been in regular contact; indeed, it is in one of the letters sent by

Turina to Falla in 1906 that we first learn of Manuel de Falla’s intention to move to Paris. In this

letter Turina says he would „celebrate the arrival of Falla in the French city“ and at the same time

he told him about his first contacts, studies and activities in Paris. Turina wrote about his „studies of

composition at the Schola Cantorum with Auguste Sérieyx“, a pupil of Vincent d’Indy at the time.12

In a letter to his girlfriend Obdulia Garzón of 2nd July 1907, Turina writes that Falla had

already decided to follow the path that he had taken two years earlier and move to Paris. (Pérez

1983: 5) It would have been natural if, at the outset, Falla had followed in the footsteps of Joaquín

Turina; in fact, however, musically speaking they took different paths, though they would maintain

a very good relationship with each other. Thus we find Falla and Turina both in Paris, located in two

12 Letter from Turina to Falla. February 1906. MFA 7703.

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different orbits and in musically opposed camps, but with one very important factor in common:

their nationality. Their Spanish origins, indeed, would remain evident in the music of both

composers. Though their shared nationality might at first sight appear trivial, an event involving

both composers and another compatriot suggests otherwise. This event, which took place in Paris on

3rd October 1907, is documented in the writings of Turina, who explains how his music changed

from that day onwards. For Turina the meeting he had with Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albéniz after

the première of his Quintet for strings and Piano op.1 was of the utmost importance. The scene is

described as follows:

Turina said that when everything was ready to begin the concert they saw a person rushing in, a fat man with a black beard wearing a very big hat. After the concert had started the fat man asked another member of the audience if the composer of the piece was English. The answer was that he was not English but Spanish, from Seville“. At the end of the performance the fat man and his companion, a very thin man, came to meet Turina. The fat man was Albéniz and his companion Manuel de Falla. Thirty minutes later they were walking together down the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Finally they decided to have a beer together in a bar and a glass of champagne. The three Spanish composers, all in Paris, talked about Spain and about how they needed to make big efforts on behalf of Spanish music. They felt they had the obligation to show Spanish music to the rest of Europe in the best possible way. Turina left the place with new ideas and said that he would never forget that scene. (Pérez 1983: 8)

As a conclusion to this story we may note that Isaac Albéniz was a very important influence

on both Turina and Falla, the first to promote the idea of retaining their common Spanish roots

whatever compositional avenues they ventured down. As mentioned above, Turina and Falla, in

fact, followed different paths. While the former adhered to the principles of Vincent d’Indy’s Schola

Cantorum, the latter followed the new movement championed by Claude Debussy, the music of the

so-called French Impressionism; both, however, reveal their Spanish roots in their own

compositions. Two examples of this Spanish element in pieces from the composers’ Paris years will

suffice. Joaquín Turina’s Sonata Romántica (Op. 3, 1909) is an early work that retains some of the

influences that Turina absorbed during his period in Paris but which also incorporates elements

from his native Andalusia (the piece is based around the popular Spanish melody „El Vito“13), while

7 Canciones Populares Españolas (7 Spanish Popular Songs), completed by Manuel de Falla in

1914, consists of seven songs from different parts of Spain.

13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRs2NWCP3yU

16

2.2.2 Claude Debussy and Manuel de Falla

When used in music, the term Impressionism, originally related to late 19th century French

painting, is closely related to the music of Claude Debussy. In music, indeed, the association

between Impressionism and innovation is largely restricted to the French composer and those whose

music was influenced by him. Whether the name Impressionism is appropriate or not is a matter for

debate, but the term is now well established for the music of this style. (Whittall 2001: 30–31)

At the end of the 19th century Paris was the cultural centre of Europe. Painting and poetry

were moving away from 19th century Realism and positioning France in a new artistic period.

Music, however, did not share in this movement, but remained largely under the influence of

German aesthetic principles. That said, before the 19th century was over signals of a new and

independent direction did begin to appear in French music, so that as time progressed the

development of music would take different paths in France and in Germany. The figure primarily

responsible for the establishment of the new direction taken by French music was Claude Debussy,

and it was his extension of the new ideas circulating in France that were to have the greatest impact

on the future of French Music. (Morgan 1999: 56–67) In this new vision of music the composer was

not looking for a real representation of nature. What the composer was looking for was „the

mysterious correspondence between Nature and the Imagination“. (Whittall 2001: 30–31)

It was in the figure of Claude Debussy that the new style of composition that appeared in

France at the end of the 19th century found its most successful exponent. The new techniques to be

found in his works include, amongst other things, the use of different kinds of scales and rhythms

with varied changes of accent to give a sense of vagueness. Composers promoted the use of big

blocks of chords and developed the art of orchestration to try to find the greatest variety of colours

in their music. (Crocker 1986: 476–480) In an attempt to understand better the principal means used

by Claude Debussy and others who followed his example, it is useful to analyse the techniques

adopted from the point of view of three different aspects: melodic, harmonic and textural/timbral.

With regard to melody, the traditional concept of melody often proves inappropriate to

describe the concept of melody and the construction of melodies in this style. Rather, melody is

constructed on the basis of the appearance of several small motives, normally based on one or

several intervals, whose repetition creates a line that can be recognised during the development of

the piece. This is not, however, the only technique used by Debussy and his followers to create a

melody: the use of the arabesque should not be overlooked. According to the New Grove Dictionary

of Music and Musicians arabesque is a term apparently introduced into Europe during the moorish

17

conquest of Spain, first applied to architecture and painting to describe an ornamental frieze or

border. In music we can describe it as an elaboration by gruppetti, scale figures and so on, of the

theme itself which was to lead to the variation techniques of the 19th century. (Brown2001: 794–

795) Arabesque is the term used by Debussy for a melodic line created by very fast undulations of

the music as it tries to find, according to the composer, new expressions of life and freedom.

(Morgan 1999: 56–67) Another very important aspect relating to melody is the use of different types

of scales in the music of Claude Debussy, particularly the dorian, phrygian, lydian and mixolydian

modes. In addition to these diatonic modes, the hexatonic and pentatonic scales are not unusual.

(Persichetti 1995: 11)

In terms of harmony, a very important characteristic is the use of parallelism, with parallel

intervals, triads, seventh chords and larger triadic structures creating ambiguity and the loss of a

sense of tonality. Chords may appear as a textural component against which the melodic line moves

quite freely, and harmony is often used as a static element to produce colour effects in the sonority.

An important resource is the use of static chords without the third or the fifth. (Crocker 1986: 476–

480) Tonal ambiguity is very common in this style. Sometimes we may find passages with non-

functional harmony which end with a very clear cadence; at other times we may find the key of a

passage by examining its harmony, while the melody does not bear any relation to the tonality thus

determined. The use of repetition is also a good means with which to find or establish a tonal centre,

with pedals used as an important resource. (Morgan 1999: 56–67)

Texture and timbre are very important aspects in Debussy’s music and have a great influence

on the dramatic impact of a piece. The use of accompaniments consisting of single pedal tones,

homophonic textures and radical changes of register are the most important factors creating tension,

while the use of ostinatos (a melodic idea repeated immediately and frequently in the same voice) or

of parallelism in the music are among the means of moulding the texture of a piece. (Morgan 1999:

56–67) Also very important is the exploration of different tone colours to create a great variety of

timbres in the music. Various different instrumental and vocal resources and techniques could be

mentioned here, but as examples let us take the use of harp harmonics, muted cymbals, or the

sonority created by a chorus singing with closed lips. (Whittall 2001: 30–31)

Turning now to Claude Debussy, the leader of the new movement that appeared in French

music at the end of the 19th century, we find ourselves faced with one of the most important

musicians of his time. A friend of Manuel de Falla, his harmonic innovations had a profound

influence on generations of composers. In his only complete opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, Debussy

made a decisive break from Wagner and all he stood for; and in his works for piano and for

18

orchestra he created new genres, revealing a range of timbre and colour which indicated a highly

original musical aesthetic. (Howat 2001: 96–119) The originality of Debussy’s musical style is

something that Manuel de Falla had admired before his move to Paris. We noted above that Falla

wrote to the French master from Madrid enquiring about the interpretation of the latter’s Danse

Sacreé et Profane as he sought to make his own arrangement of the harp parts for the piano;

Debussy’s reply to this letter is preserved in the Manuel de Falla Archive in Granada.14

One of Manuel de Falla’s first priorities in Paris was to meet Claude Debussy face to face.

That Falla managed to do this was due in part to another French composer who would play an

important role in his future stay in Paris, Paul Dukas (1885–1935). Dukas was, in fact, the first

musician of note that Falla met in Paris. The reason for their first meeting was so that the Spaniard

could show the French composer his own work, La Vida Breve, and to ascertain his opinion of it.

Initially Paul Dukas was unsure whether there would be anything of any real interest in the music of

this young Spanish composer; after reading through the piece, however, he was very attracted by the

music and formed the opinion that the young Spaniard’s compositions would be very successful in

France. The two formed a close friendship, and subsequently it was Dukas, a friend also of Claude

Debussy, who opened the door to the first meeting between Falla and the French master. After their

meeting Debussy would become one of the young Spaniard’s most important advisers – indeed

perhaps the most important one – in matters of composition. (De Persia 1991: 24) The best proof of

the strength of Falla’s regard for Debussy as both musician and friend is the piece Falla composed

and dedicated to him after his death. Pour le Tombeau de Claude Debussy was published in the

special musical supplement dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy in La Revue Musicale.

Originally a piece for guitar (the only work Manuel de Falla ever composed for the instrument), it

was included in the suite Homenajes and subsequently adapted for piano. Of the encounters of the

two composers during Manuel de Falla’s sojourn in Paris Debussy’s wife said that „she never saw

her husband as enthusiastic as he was with the Spanish composer or, as Debussy use to call him, „le

petit spagnol tout noir“. (Pérez Unpublished)

In the person of Claude Debussy, Manuel de Falla found a new friend and forged a

relationship that was to be a major factor in the development of his own music. Falla was an

admirer of Debussy’s music, and he had in his personal library a large collection of Debussy scores,

which can be seen in the Manuel de Falla Archive in Granada, some of them bearing numerous

annotations in Falla’s hand. The scores in the archive with remarks by Manuel de Falla include

Pelléas et Mélisande, Danse sacrée et Danse profane, La mer, Ibéria, Prélude á l’après-midi d’un

14 Letter from Debussy to Falla. January 1907. MFA 6898.

19

faune, Nocturnes, Quatuor, Sonate pour flute, alto et harpe, Sonate pour violon and piano, Trois

chansons de Charles d’Orleans, Estampes, Deux arabesques pour le piano, Children’s Corner and

Préludes pour piano.

This is a large corpus of works, and one from which Manuel de Falla would derive a lot of

information in the development of his compositional style. There is one feature in Falla’s

annotations to Debussy’s scores that is of particular interest, namely the frequency with which Falla

notes questions of sonority and how these are created: clearly the creation of different sonorities by

the judicious combination of different groups of instruments and the careful spacing of chords in

distinct instrumental sections was something to which Manuel de Falla paid special attention.

Orchestration was, indeed, one major aspect of composition that the Spanish composer wished to

develop in France. Many of the manuscripts of Falla’s own works in the Archive Manuel de Falla in

Granada contain plenty of corrections made by the composer himself, suggesting that he was

initially not always convinced about his first thoughts. Jaime Pahissa, writing about the première of

La Vida Breve in Paris in 1913, notes: „Falla went again to see Debussy and Dukas (before the

première) to ask their advice about orchestration, for he was very unsure of himself owing to his

inexperience in this field of composition…“ (Pahissa 1979: 59–60)

Falla was a privileged composer who for seven years lived in the orbit of some of the finest

artists in Europe and who could count as a friend Claude Debussy, icon of one of the movements

that would mark the future of French music. It is difficult to ascertain the frequency of contact

between the two composers during Falla’s seven years in Paris. In the Archive Manuel de Falla in

Granada there are only nine extant letters from Debussy to Falla; of these, the only one relevant to

our research is the one mentioned above, in which Debussy sent some suggestions to Falla relating

to the performance of Danse Sacreé et Profane. Their relationship during Falla’s sojourn in Paris,

however, was to prove fundamental in the influence that the music of Debussy was to have on the

development of Falla’s compositional style.

20

3. The influences of flamenco singing and Debussy’s music in Manuel de Falla’s Noches en los Jardines de España

Noches en los Jardines de España is the last piece Manuel de Falla began to compose in

Paris. In this chapter I will consider this work of Manuel de Falla, analysing it to identify, on one

hand, the resources and techniques related to the music of flamenco singing that are used by the

composer in this piece and, on the other, characteristics of the music of the French composer Claude

Debussy. The aim is to ascertain whether the influence of Debussy on Manuel de Falla was so

profound that his music would have not been the same without Paris, as is suggested by Suzanne de

Marquez, for example: „The French influence that is so profound in Manuel de Falla at that time is

clearly visible in a piece such as Noches en los Jardines de España. According to Jankélévitch, who

was a French philosopher and musicologist, Noches en los Jardines de España would not have that

splendour without the existence of Rhapsodie Espagnole by Ravel and Iberia by Claude Debussy“

(Demarquez 1986: 94) – or, conversely, whether the influence of Debussy’s compositional style on

the music of Manuel de Falla was not in fact so relevant as is sometimes claimed.

Falla arrived in Paris with his work La Vida Breve; by the time he returned to Spain he had

not composed a large number of works, but he had collected a vast quantity of musical experiences

which would guide him in developing his career as a composer on his return to Spain, where he

arrived with an almost finished piece that would become one of his best-known works, Noches en

los Jardines de España. Falla began to compose this piece in Paris in 1909 and completed it in

Sitges (near Barcelona) in 1915; at the première in Madrid in 1916 the conductor was Enrique

Fernández Arbós and the pianist José Cubiles.

In order to understand Falla’s initial intentions in composing this work it will be useful to

focus first of all on the inspiration behind it. The first movement, entitled En el Generalife, is

clearly inspired by the gardens of El Generalife situated in La Alhambra of Granada. It is important

to realise, however, Falla only visited Granada for first time in March 1915, fully six years after

starting to compose the piece. What, then, were the sources from which Falla found the inspiration

to recreate the Gardens of Spain? In the Archive Manuel de Falla there is a letter from the composer

to his family which provides a clue: „Regarding the gardens, we have to find a way to bring them

here, by train perhaps...“15 These gardens Falla is asking his family about are actually a book of

paintings by the Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol Jardins d’Espanya. This book consists of 40

15 Letter from Falla to his family. January 1909. MFA 7808.

21

pictures, of which seventeen are dedicated to Granada, including four to La Alhambra and El

Generalife. These paintings were presumably one of the inspirations behind the composition of the

piece, in which Falla wanted to recreate the sensations he felt when he saw the pictures of a city he

did not know yet but already loved and wanted to discover for himself (in La Vida Breve, which he

had begun to composed in 1904, he tries to recreate life in Granada). As we listen to the music of

Noches en los Jardines de España the music evokes feelings of the darkness, intimacy and mystery

of the gardens, feelings which are also awakened in some of Rusiñol’s paintings.

We can find one more inspiration related to Granada in María Martínez Sierra’s book

Gregorio y Yo. Medio Siglo de Colaboración. In this she mentions: that „...Falla was not feeling at

his best... While walking around he passed a Spanish library where he saw a book entitled Granada,

(Guía Emocional), which he bought, thus creating in himself the desire to compose.“ (Martínez

1953: 123–124) Though this sounds a very simple story, its veracity can be demonstrated by two

fundamental facts. First of all, the book, Granada, (Guía Emocional), is in the personal library of

the Spanish composer in the Archive Manuel de Falla of Granada.16 Secondly, the book does indeed

include a chapter dedicated to El Generalife, the title of which, as in Noches en los Jardines de

España, is none other than En el Generalife.

The real key to understanding what Manuel de Falla wanted to recreate in his piece,

however, is the text that appears on the programme note for the première of the piece on 9th April

1916, of which there are three copies in the Manuel de Falla Archive in Granada):

„The author of these Symphonic Impressions believes that if he has managed to achieve the goal he set himself when he composed the work, the title alone should be sufficient as a guide when listening to the piece.

Although in this work, as should always be the case, the author followed a determined plan from the tonal, rhythmical and thematic point of view, a detailed analysis of the musical structure of the piece would alter the goal for which the piece was written. This goal was simply to evoke places, feelings and sensations. [...]

As in most of the composer’s works (such as La Vida Breve or El Amor Burjo) the thematic part of this piece is based on the rhythms, modes, cadences and ornamental figures characteristic of Andalusian popular singing. Such music is not often used in an authentic manner, as here, imitating in a stylized form the popular instruments.

It is important to take into account that these nocturnes were not composed to be descriptive, but rather to be expressive. This is not

16 Martinez Sierra, Gregorio. Granada, (Guía Emocional). MFA 2131.

22

merely music about parties and dancing: pain and the mystery also have an important part in this composition“17

Though the author was of the programme note was anonymous, it is likely that the text was

written by the Spanish composer himself as the same text was used in several subsequent concerts

after the première, including those on 29th April 1916 at the Cádiz Theatre, 13th December 1918 at

the Price Theatre of Madrid, 28th March 1924 at the Philharmonic Society of Madrid, and on 8th

February 1927 at the Olympia Coliseum of Granada.

The paragraph in the above programme note that refers to the thematic part of the piece is

very important and must be taken into account in order to approach as closely as possible the

interpretation Falla wanted. That he specifically mentions Andalusian popular singing is highly

significant for performers when playing Noches en los Jardines de España. For me, as a conductor

and the author of this research, it is also significant that he compared this work in terms of its

themes to El Amor Brujo and La Vida Breve, both pieces that I have conducted. Knowing from

practical experience as a conductor the most effective means of achieving the best possible result in

these two latter works is useful; from Falla’s own comparison of the three works in his programme

note, it is clear that in his mind the style of the music in performance should be quite similar in the

three pieces.

Having dealt briefly with the background to the work, we may now focus our attention on

the piece itself in an attempt to reach a more complete understanding of Noches en los Jardines de

España.

The piece is divided into three movements:

1. En el Generalife

2. Danza lejana

3. En los Jardines de la Sierra de Córdoba

At first sight the work appears to be cast in the traditional form of a three-movement piano

concerto – fast, slow, fast, with the typical cadenzas for the soloist placed in the first and last

movements. The harmonic structure of the work, with the three movements having a clear harmonic

connection between them might also appear to suggest the traditional piano concerto. However, as I

17 Programme note from the premier on the 9th April 1916 of Noches en los Jardines de España. MFA 1916.

23

shall demonstrate, Noches en los Jardines de España is only related superficially, if at all, to the

traditional structure of the piano concerto.

The full title of the work itself, Noches en los Jardines de España: Symphonic Impressions

for Piano and Orchestra is possibly misleading. Though the piano is apparently ascribed a very

important role in the title of the piece, if we look at the music it is clear that the piano cannot be

considered as a solo instrument in a traditional concerto style. It is rather more accurate, in fact, to

consider the piano as a leading instrument inside the orchestra.

As far as the tempo relationship between the three movements is concerned, any apparent

similarity to the concerto is no more than superficial. Tempos change within the individual

movements quite frequently; and the second and third nocturnes are connected by the

instruction Attaca subito, so that the pianissimo close of the Poco animato of the second nocturne is

followed immediately by the fortissimo of the ensuing Vivo.

In the first movement, En el Generalife, we find an introduction by the orchestra which will

appear again after that presented by the piano, and at rehearsal number 20 we find a recapitulation

of the theme that brings back the original key signature of the beginning of the movement. Again, at

a cursory glance the movement appears to be organized along the lines of a traditional first

movement of a solo concerto; in fact, however, this is not the case. Though the movement may be

divided into three sections (exposition, middle section and recapitulation), the relation between the

sections in terms of tempos and character, the thematic relations (the whole movement is based on

the development of the first motive), the way the soloist is used (as a lead instrument, but treated as

one more instrument of the orchestra without cadenzas and virtuoso passages) and, of course, the

quiet end of the movement all serve to break the connection with traditional first-movement

concerto form.

The structure of the second movement is not connected either with the typical slow

movement sonata form often found in concertos. A new theme is introduced, presented first by the

orchestra and then by the piano, but this is not subsequently developed in a traditional manner.

Rather there is a musical progression that increases the tension as the movement progresses, with

several changes of tempo before the main theme reappears (score number 14) in a kind of

recapitulation that leads to the calm before the Attaca subito eruption of the third movement.

As in many piano concertos, the third and final movement is cast as a rondo. In this case,

however, we find once more an absence of any specifically virtuoso passage for the piano, while the

24

character of the end of the piece, as the tempo slows and the sound dies away, is not at all typical of

the close of a traditional piano concerto.

In terms of harmony, the main characteristic to be found throughout the piece is the

ambiguity so characteristic of the music of Claude Debussy. The use of different scales and modes

to create different tonal centres at different moments – and even different tonal centres in the

different lines at the same moment – is characteristic of the work. A good example of this is the

beginning of the piece: while the key signature and the bass give a clear tonal centre in C# minor,

the melodic line presented by the harp and the violas moves around the note D#, simultaneously

creating a different centre at the same time. It is also worth noting how the Phrygian mode or a

variant of it, the Andalusian mode (which will be explained below), is very often used throughout

the work.

As far as thematic material is concerned, we may note here one important connection that is

clearly present throughout the three movements. The first motive presented at the beginning of the

piece by the violas and the harp will serve to generate the motives of most of the melodic lines that

will appear during the work. The variation of the motive created by the movement of a second up

and down will be the most important starting point for the thematic development of the piece.

When performing the piece careful attention should be paid to Falla’s very detailed way of

indicating articulations and dynamics. This is an important characteristic of the music of the

Spanish composer and is related to his desire to imitate the rhythms and contrasts of the Flamenco

singing style.

One further important characteristic is the evident connection of the piece with the

programmatic manner of musical composition. As mentioned above, the first movement, En el

Generalife, is based on the garden close to La Alhambra in Granada. The second of the three

nocturnes of Noches en los Jardines de España is entitled Danza Lejana (The dance from far away).

The title does not say very much about the location of the place which inspired Falla to write this

second nocturne; the beginning of the movement, however, is a good example of what Falla wanted

to express with the title. As we listen to the music we can imagine very easily a dark atmosphere

where the flutes and cor anglais represent the dance that is under way in the distance, far from

where we are. The third movement, En los jardines de la Sierra de Cordoba, is, like the first, again

clearly located, this time in the gardens of the Cordoba’s mountain range. In this third movement

Falla presents the clearest reference to flamenco singing in the piece, as the rondo-like structure

clearly intersperses the chorus with an imitation of flamenco singing style. In connection with the

25

programmatic sense of the piece, we should not overlook the word „Nights“ in the title; the piece

moves mostly in an atmosphere of darkness, creating for the listener a nocturnal atmosphere.

Neither should we forget that in the programme note for the première Falla mentions that the piece

was composed to evoke places, feelings and sensations.

Much of Manuel de Falla’s music is related to the music of Spanish folklore from Andalusia.

However, it is clear that in the music of any composer different influences are to be found at various

stages of their lives as composers. At this stage in his life the Spanish composer clearly felt attracted

by the new music that had begun to appear in France at the end of the 19th century, especially by the

music of Claude Debussy. He decided to go to France to find out why he was attracted to this music

and also to discover how to combine his music, based primarily on the flamenco singing, with that

particular style of French music. The result was the creation of something that would be known as

Falla’s French period. As Nancy Lee Harper claims, „It would be difficult to overstate the import of

Falla’s seven years in Paris. The influences exerted on him during this period led to the

transformation of his musical language and intentions.“ (Harper 2005: 255–256)

It is this combination of styles in Manuel de Falla’s compositional methods that I shall to

analyse in the following pages so as to ascertain whether the influence of the music of Claude

Debussy, generally described as French Impressionism, was actually reflected in the style of Falla’s

music during his stay in Paris. There can be no doubt that Falla was influenced by the behaviour of

French people and, of course, by French arts and music. The question we must ask, however, is

whether this influence is really reflected in his music? According to the lawyer Santiago Arimón,

the French influence in the music of Manuel de Falla was considerable: „Falla, always so fortunate,

so inspired, so colouristic, has not been so in this work. He is obsessed by the modern French

school, it attracts him, he cannot escape its influence. And clearly, it is impossible to write Spanish

music while thinking of Debussy and Ravel... There is an absolute lack of Spanish soul... [El Amor

Brujo] could just as well be Hungarian, Italian or Russian. (Hess 2001: 58)

Before embarking on my own analysis, which considers a number of extracts from the work

in order to gain a better understanding of how it should be performed, it is interesting to refer to a

letter in the Archive Manuel de Falla in Granada in which Manuel de Falla writes to the Swiss

conductor Ernest Ansermet, giving him some important advice for performing the piece:

„... I would like very much to be in Geneva to listen the piece conducted by you. I will permit myself to give you some suggestions as follows:

26

1st Nocturne:

At the beginning, the melodic line near the bridge, and the harp very near the bridge to imitate the sound of the guitars. When the piano enters the chords of the instruments with a little accent and perdendosi.

At rehearsal number 5, quaver equal to quaver in all the rhythmical changes. It is very important that every player observes all indications of accents and dynamics.

2nd Nocturne:

Violas and Cellos with mute at the beginning

At rehearsal number 3, exaggerate the crescendo and diminuendo of the strings.

At rehearsal number 8, pizz. molto marcato and forte in the first violins.

At rehearsal numbers 10 and 11, be careful with the numbers of players who should play.

At rehearsal number 12, follow the dynamics. Ascending lines crescendo and descending lines diminuendo.

At rehearsal number 14, the bassoon should play quite prominently but dolce.

At rehearsal number 19, crescendo and stringendo gradually.

3rd Nocturne:

At rehearsal number 24, again the bassoon quite prominent.

At rehearsal number 25, horns should observe the diminuendo markings.

At rehearsal number 27, observe all the variations in the dynamics and tempos, and after that, in the Allegro moderato marc strongly the horns and the pizzicati: forte the first time and piano the second time.

At rehearsal number 41, to achieve the entrance of each instrument without accelerating the tempo is important.

At rehearsal number 42 and 43, be careful with the changes of tempo.

In the largo at rehearsal number 45, begin with pianissimo subito.

Sorry my friend with all my gratitude for your collaboration...“18

18 Letter from Falla to Ernest Ansermet. Madrid October 1916. The original document is in Geneva. In this work we used a photographed copy in the MFA, which is shown in the unpublished document by Yvan Nommick La interpretación de las Noches: Una carta de Falla a Anserment.

27

The conclusion we can draw from both the programme note used in the première of the

piece and the letter Falla wrote to the Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet is that Falla based the music

of Noches en los Jardines de España on the music of the flamenco from Southern Spain. I

mentioned above that most musicologists claim that Noches en los Jardines de España is the

composer’s most Impressionistic piece; however, from the data presented at the beginning of this

chapter (Chapter 3) it is clear that Falla focused his intentions on trying to imitate the feelings and

sensations of Spain – indeed, there is no mention at all of France or of Impressionism. In Falla’s

letter to the Swiss maestro, in fact, almost every suggestion has the goal of imitating better the

sound of the flamenco singing. He speaks for example about the use of playing strings very near the

bridge to imitate the sounds of the guitar and about the importance of the accents to emphasise the

very rhythmical character of the music. He also mentions the importance of the diminuendos of the

horns to maintain the rhythmical character of the music and speaks about the importance of playing

all the dynamics and accents which will give the music the feelings of contrast so characteristic of

the flamenco singing. As a conductor I would therefore conclude that to perform Noches en los

Jardines de España as the composer intended it is very important to try to imitate the sonorities

Falla wanted for this music, knowing that when he was composing the piece he was trying to

imitate the sounds of Andalusia. Of course we should not overlook the fact that he lived for 7 years

in Paris and was influenced by the music there, but, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, this French

influence is not so strongly reflected in the piece as is sometimes claimed.

The remainder of this chapter considers a number of extracts from the piece, focusing on

one hand on the influence of flamenco singing and on the other on the influence of the music of

Claude Debussy in Noches en los Jardines de España. The goal of this analysis is to help the

performer to discern the best way to play this music so as to achieve the result that Falla intended

for his piece.

3.1. The influence of flamenco singing in Noches en los Jardines de España

It is impossible to speak about the music of Manuel de Falla without giving major

importance to the music of Spanish folklore of Andalusia. This music is a fundamental part of

Falla’s work, and an understanding of his music is not possible if we are not able to recognize that

within his works there are always elements of the music of flamenco singing. I use the term

„elements“ because in Manuel de Falla’s music pre-existing melodies from Spanish folklore do not

28

appear; rather, he creates new melodies using the rhythms and the colours used in the music of

Spanish folklore (an exception in this respect is his work Siete Canciones Populares Españolas).

Siete Canciones Populares Españolas was completed by Manuel de Falla in 1914 and

consists of seven songs from different parts of Spain: Paño Moruno (from Murcia in the south-east

of Spain), Seguidilla Murciana (based also on music from Murcia), Asturiana (from Asturias in the

north of Spain), Jota (from Aragón in the north-east of Spain), and Nana, Canción and Polo (all

based on music from Andalusia); in the first three songs of the set the original melodic lines are

almost entirely preserved. (Seitz, 1995: 245–264)

If we focus our attention on the influence of folklore in the music of Manuel de Falla, it is

reasonable to conclude that the development of Falla’s oeuvre began with his use of a style based on

the music of the folklore of Andalusia. After this he proceeded to follow the Spanish national

school, which at that time was under the guiding influence of Felipe Pedrell and Isaac Albéniz;

Noches en los Jardines de España appears as the fullest expression of the rather stylized use of the

national folk influence on Falla. This assertion does not contradict the claim, made above, that

Noches en los Jardines de España is Falla’s most Impressionistic work, nor is the historical fact that

it was the last work he started to compose in Paris, for the piece is also full of elements from folk

music. Spain always played an important part in the music of Manuel de Falla and, as Nancy Lee

Harper commented, „There is a tendency for music historians to confine their discussion of Falla’s

work under the heading „Spain“. To some extent this is understandable: he was intensely proud of

his nationality, and almost all of his music is clothed in the colours of his country and its culture.“

(Harper 2005: 247)

Manuel de Falla’s music contains elements from the music of Spanish folklore, particularly

from the colours and rhythms of the music of flamenco singing. In this context the term „Flamenco“

applies specifically to a particular body of cante (song), baile (dance) and toque (solo guitar music),

mostly emanating from Andalusia in southern Spain. It is also known as cante andaluz, cante gitano

or cañi (‘Gypsy song’) and cante hondo (‘deep song’). Despite the varied conjectures concerning its

origin, consensus confines the early history and development of cante flamenco to southern

Andalusia, where the Gypsies began to settle in the latter half of the fifteenth century (Katz 2001:

920–925). As will be demonstrated below in the analysis of certain passages from Noches en los

Jardines de España, the colours and rhythms to be found in Falla’s music have their origins in

flamenco singing. Some of the principal resources defining flamenco singing are the following:

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a) Harmony:

- The use of the Andalusian mode. The Andalusian mode, Andalusian scale or flamenco

mode is a variant of the mode on E (or the Phrygian mode). First of all the I chord in that scale can

appear with the third raised by a semitone. It is also possible to change the second degree of the

scale. Thus we have a mode on E in which it is possible to find variants in the second or in the third

degree of the scale. (Persichetti 1995: 4–10)

Phrygian mode

Andalusian mode

- The use of the Andalusian Cadence (I/VII/VI/V in the minor mode), or the use of the

Flamenco Candence (IV/III/II/I in the minor mode). (Fernández 2004: 75–83)

Andalusian Cadence in A minor

Flamenco Cadence in E mode

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b) Melody and sonority:

- The songs almost always begin with an introduction consisting of some guitar strumming,

often with a percussion instrument, which could be a flamenco box drum. (Fernández 2004: 20)

- The use of microtonalism is very characteristic of flamenco music; microtones appear in

appoggiaturas and flourishes, giving flamenco music its special beauty. (Fernández 2004: 60) The

repetition of one note several times or of some small motives is very often used in the creation of

the melody in flamenco music. Falla spoke about that in an interview:

„While Falla never employed microtones in his music they, per se, they do exist naturally in the cante jondo singing such as is found in El Amor Brujo or Siete Canciones Populares Españolas. In an interview in the Daily Mail, Falla spoke about this topic on 18 July 1919: ... the folksongs of my native Andalusia derive from a much subtler scale than can be found in an octave of twelve notes. All I can do in my day is to give an illusion of these quarter-tones by superimposing chords of one key on another“. (Harper 2005: 190)

c) Rhythm:

- Flamenco music frequently alters the rhythm, alternating binary and ternary accentuation.

This alternation always occurs within a cycle of twelve beats, where the accents are divided into

two groups of three beats and three groups of two beats, positioning the accent on the first beat of

each group. In this sense there is something very typical in the Buleria, one of the different types of

flamenco song, where the alternation between binary and ternary rhythm appears, alternating for

example a 3/4 with a 6/8. (Fernández 2004: 31–53)

These are some of the characteristics of flamenco song. We will now demonstrate the

influence of the harmony, melody, sonority and rhythm of these typically Spanish sounds on Falla’s

music by considering some examples from his Noches en los Jardines de España.

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3.1.1. Harmony

As mentioned above, the use of the Andalusian mode and the Andalusian cadence is very

characteristic in flamenco music. Very near the beginning of Noches en los Jardines de España,

before rehearsal number 1 in the score, there appears a passage with a very clear example of the

Andalusian mode in the original E mode. (ex. 1)

Example 1: First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

If we continue to rehearsal numbers 5 to 6 of this first movement, En el Generalife, and if

we pay attention to the harmony, we will notice that this passage is written in the Andalusian F#

mode and includes in the piano part inflected notes such as E# to obtain the characteristic interval of

the main motive which is present at the very beginning in the Harp and Violas. (ex. 2)

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Example 2: First movement: Noches en los Jardines de España

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3.1.2. Melody and sonority

We mentioned above three characteristics of flamenco: cante (song), baile (dance) and toque

(solo guitar music). I will now present some examples of how Falla introduces the sonority of these

resources into his orchestral music, specifically in Noches en los Jardines de España.

At the very beginning of the work we hear the main motive, which will be present

throughout the entire piece. The most important characteristic of this motive is the semitone

interval. At the beginning of the movement we find two practically similar phrases (bars 1–4 and

bars 5–8), with the texture of melody plus accompaniment, the melody played by the Harp and the

Viola „solo sul ponticello“ while the rest of the strings, together with bassoons, horns and trumpets,

provide the harmony. This clearly imitates the sonority of the guitar, first because the harmony,

played in short notes with pizzicati in the violin and double bass, is, in my opinion, an attempt to

imitate arpeggios played on the guitar. As conductor, I would encourage the strings playing these

short pizzicati to try to get a resonance after each note so as to imitate the resonance of the strings of

the guitar when it is play with arpeggios. Secondly, the melody played „sul ponticello“ by the viola

also recalls the sonority of the guitar in some flamenco passages. In the following youtube link we

can appreciate very well the sound of the guitar that Falla wished to imitate.19 (ex. 3) In

performance it would be excellent to highlight this guitar sonority by trying to imitate the sound of

the guitar as closely as possible.

19 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2x58jaW3Y4

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Example 3: First Movement: Noches en los Jardines de España

35

If we continue to the passage between rehearsal numbers 5 and 6 of this first movement, En

el Generalife, we find more examples of sonorities which might remind the listener of music from

southern Spain. In this passage (see the youtube link) we find all the different sonorities that Falla

wished imitate, including the typical sound produced by flamenco dancers with their shoes on the

floor.20 First of all the arpeggios in the piano part recall the playing of the guitar in flamenco music,

while the music that appears on the remaining instruments in a very rhythmical manner is like the

sound produced by flamenco dancers with their shoes on the floor. (ex. 4) In this passage, in fact,

the woodwinds and harp have an accent at the beginning of every group of notes, while the strings

have a little diminuendo in each group. This is an attempt by Falla to imitate the percussive sound

of the shoes of the dancer on the floor, and for this reason we should be careful to play the

beginning of each group in a very percussive way and then to pull back the sound very rapidly to try

to imitate the typical resonance of flamenco.

20 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbadDj9KF1s

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Example 4: First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

37

38

Now let us turn to the passage between rehearsal numbers 16 and 17. Once again the music

here recalls the Spanish music of Andalusia. It starts with a very rhythmical passage combining

binary and ternary metres over eight bars; here we should try again to imagine and imitate the shoes

of the dancer on the floor as an introduction to the guitar, here imitated by the piano; two bars later

comes the singer, played first by a solo viola, and then by solo cello followed by the first violin

solo, with the characteristic intervals of the second. (ex. 5) In this singer-player imitation I would

ask the players not to be too fastidious in maintaining the intonation through the duration of each

tone, in imitation of the fluctuation of the voice of a flamenco singer.

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Example 5: First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

40

At the opening of the second movement, Danza Lejana, we find the violas imitating a

flamenco singer singing around the note A above the rhythmical feeling created by the pizzicati in

double basses and cellos. (ex. 6) Once more the violas should not be too exact with their intonation

or with the rhythm of the groups of seven notes, but should try instead to imitate the way a

flamenco singer might perform such a passage.

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Example 6: Begining Second Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

At the beginning of this second movement we can see in the score rhythms of semiquaver

triplets serving as flourishes, something very typical in the music of Southern Spain (see an

example of this in Example 7 below). For me as a conductor, it would be very important to keep a

sense of calm in this rhythm and to give importance to every note. I have noted that non-Spanish

musicians sometimes appear to think that this kind of group of notes should be played very fast as

an adornment to the music, but actually the contrary is the case: the notes should be played in

tempo, taking care to show that all three notes are important inside the group, and not only the first

one. If we move forward to five bars after rehearsal number 4 (ex. 7) we will notice that the

character of the music changes owing to the entrance of the piano. Actually the music here is

created by the same patterns as before, but with a new characteristic, namely the percussive piano

imitating once more the sound of the flamenco dancer with the shoes on the floor, called in Spanish

taconeo. Here in another youtube clip is a good example of taconeo flamenco.21

21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhn0rOCdRvw

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Example 7: Second Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

Now let us move on to the third movement, En los Jardines de la Sierra de Córdoba. As we

suggested above in the general analysis, this movement is in a kind of Rondo form, alternating a

chorus with the appearance of the imitation of the flamenco singing. At rehearsal number 25 in the

score we can appreciate the piano imitating the guitar in two different ways: while the right hand

imitates the riffs of the guitar, the left hand has the function of guitar strumming, in conjunction

with the semi-trill of the first note of the right hand in each bar. (ex. 8)

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Example 8: Third Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

If we turn our attention to rehearsal number 28 in the score, we find a passage that calls to

mind the Petenera or the Polo. (ex. 9) The Petenera22 or the Polo23 are two further varieties of

flamenco singing with a rhythmical structure quite similar to the flamenco itself. This typical

rhythm is known as „de amalgama“ or „hemiolia“. It consists of a bar of 12 beats divided into two

parts: 6/8 and 3/4. The melody is sung (in this case the voice is imitated by the piano) with a clear

rhythm at the beginning of each phrase, but the end of each phrase is freer, with some rapid scales

sung melismatically, normally either to the final vowel of the verse or voiced by the vowel „a“. This

free end of the phrase is call as „quejío“, which may be translated as a cry. (Fernández 2004: 103–

123) To create this „quejío“ feeling, I think the orchestra should play in tempo, keeping the

rhythmic feeling of the base to aid the piano, which should be not very precise with the rhythm,

playing rather with a rubato feeling to create the picture of the freedom of a flamenco singer.

22 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao9_AW3rXIo 23 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVjFCF2b8cw

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Example 9: Third Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

45

46

If we move now to the passage beginning at rehearsal number 39, the piano part begins by

imitating a guitar solo in preparation for the entrance at rehearsal number 40 of the upper voice of

the divided cellos; seven bars later the piano imitates a human voice singing. (ex. 10) I would

suggest that when imitating the guitar the pianist should not play the grace notes too fast, so as to

achieve very clearly the sound of every string of the guitar; later, when imitating the voice, the

pianist should again not be over-precise with the rhythm, thus giving the feeling of the vocalist’s

freedom.

Example 10: Third Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

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3.1.3. Rhythm

As mentioned above, one of the most important characteristics of the rhythm in flamenco

music is the alternation between binary and ternary accentuation. We can find examples of this

characteristic feature in Noches en los Jardines de España. We have already noted in example 5

above (rehearsal number 16) how the section starts with a very rhythmical passage combining

binary and ternary for eight bars as an introduction to the guitar (as played by the piano). (ex. 5)

If we continue to the third movement, En los Jardines de la Sierra de Córdoba, and look at

the passage beginning at rehearsal number 25, we may note with regard to the rhythm how even the

time signature does not alter the feeling that what we have here is three bars in 3/4 followed by two

bars in 6/8. (ex. 11)

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Example 11: Third movement Noches en los Jardines de España

A clearer example of this is to be found in the score at rehearsal number 44, where the

change of time signature from binary to ternary, 3/4 to 9/8, is explicitly marked. (ex. 12)

Example 12: Third Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

Another example of this combination of binary and ternary feeling may be found in the

passage beginning at rehearsal number 38. (ex. 13) The time signature is 6/8 but to make a correct

interpretation in my opinion we should feel the bars marked with a red colour as 3/4. It is most

important to give very clear accents on the first beat on bars marked with a red colour and on both

beats on bars marked with a blue colour so as to highlight this change of rhythm.

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Example 13: Third Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

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The above are some of the examples in Noches en los Jardines de España where we can see

reflected the music of Spanish folklore from the south of Spain. The rhythm, the sound – often

including the Andalusian mode – and the use of the piano to imitate the sonority of the guitar are

some of the most important effects Falla uses in his music to create a special atmosphere

reminiscent of the sonority of Andalusian music. As performers we should pay special attention to

finding where in the score Falla wished to imitate these elements of Spanish folklore so as to

achieve as clearly as possible an imitation of the sonority, the strongly accented rhythms, the

freedom of the flamenco singer, and so on.

Manuel de Falla’s use of the music of folklore in his works is part of his identity as a

composer: it is not something that he started to adopt when he moved to Paris. It might be supposed

that he wanted to imitate his friends Debussy and Ravel, for example, in their use of the piano to

imitate the strumming of a guitar; we can assert, however, that this is not the case, because we know

that Falla had already made use of these effects in pieces that he had composed before his sojourn in

Paris. He had already used that guitar trick in pieces that were already completed or that were

retouched in Paris, such as „La Vida Breve“ or „Cuatro Piezas Españolas“. As Mariano Pérez

Gutierrez said, „Falla had, musically speaking, gipsy blood, and he tried to include and make

manifest a predominantly popular element.“ (Pérez 1987: 44–47)

3.2. The influence of Debussy’s music in Noches en los Jardines de España

As demonstrated in subsection 3.1 above, Noches en los Jardines de España is a piece full

of resources from the music of flamenco singing. We also noted above that when he began to

compose the piece his main intention was to imitate the sonorities and colours of the gardens of

Spain, as the title of the piece indicates. Alongside the Spanish elements, however, there is also

evidence of the influence of the music of Claude Debussy, which imparts to the piece some special

colours. My aim in this next section is to undertake a similar analysis to the one in the previous

section in order to discover the influence of Debussy in this, the last work that Falla started to

compose in Paris. To this end I will look for similarities between the harmony, melody and texture

of Noches en los Jardines de España and the major orchestral work composed by Claude Debussy

between 1903 and 1905, La Mer.

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3.2.1. Harmony

As suggested with regard to the music of Claude Debussy in Chapter 2, this style of

composition frequently attempted to achieve a sense of vagueness in the music by adopting the use

of large blocks of chords to produce an effect of colour in the sonority. One very important

characteristic is the use of parallelism, with parallel intervals, triads, seventh chords and larger

triadic structures. Another very significant aspect is the use of scales, particularly the dorian,

phrygian, lydian and mixolydian modes, to which the hexatonic and pentatonic scales may be added

as not unusual.

If we take the second movement of La Mer, Jeux de vagues, at rehearsal number 20 in the

score we may note the parallel movement in the scales of the harps and in the melody of the horns.

If we pay attention to this we will discover that the composer is using in both cases, harps and

horns, a whole-tone scale. (ex. 14)

Example 14: Second Movement La Mer

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Staying with the second movement, Jeux de vagues, if we go back to rehearsal number 16

we find a melody on the cor anglais which will subsequently be transposed some bars later to a

different tonal centre and given to the oboe (figure 17). This passage is written using the Lydian

mode. (ex. 15)

Example 15: Second Movement La Mer

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Noches en los Jardines de España is basically a modal work in which we will find

considerable use of the Aeolian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Andalusian modes and, to a lesser

extent, of the whole tone scales. We also find the occurrence of parallel chord progressions, using

mixtures of different modes. This way of organizing the harmony of the music is related to the

harmonic ambiguity characteristic of the music of Claude Debussy, and this ambiguity is at times

very evident in when listening to Noches en los Jardines de España. If we wish to find a good

example of this, we may go to the passage of the first nocturne En el Generalife between rehearsal

numbers 16 and 17. (ex. 16) In subsection 3.1.3 we described this passage as a rhythmical

introduction quite similar to the introduction in a flamenco song, but we did not consider at that

point how the harmony is organized. Here we can observe a modal movement with the relation of a

third between the tonic of the different modes used by Falla. It starts with Phrygian in B modulating

to the Andalusian D mode and finally transposing to F# in the Andalusian mode once more. At the

same time we may note the parallel movement of perfect fifths up and down in contrary motion.

While performing such passages with their clear modal sonority, which directs our thinking to the

music of Claude Debussy, we should not forget at the same time the importance of the rhythm;

bearing both in mind, we may achieve the right balance between the harmony, closer to the music of

French Impressionism, and the rhythm, closer to Spanish Flamenco.

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B Phrygian

D Andalusian

F# Andalusian

Parallel mixtures

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Example 16: First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

To create a tonal centre one of the most important resources for the music of Debussy was

repetition. In La Mer we can see a very clear example of this at the beginning of the second

movement, where we find a static structure constructed by the notes C#, G# and F# in the strings,

which creates a tonal centre around these notes. (ex. 17)

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Example 17: Beginning Second Movement La Mer

Now let us look at the very beginning of Noches en los Jardines de España. If we consider

the melody played by the harp and the violas, we find a tonal centre on the note D# owing to the

repetition of this note during this passage. (ex.18) This example was mentioned above. This does

not mean that the tonal centre of the whole passage is D#. The piece clearly opens in C# minor, as is

confirmed in the time signature; this particular melody, however, is created around the note D#, thus

suggesting another tonal centre for the melodic line and creating the kind of ambiguity in the

harmony so characteristic of the music of Claude Debussy.

Example 18: Beginning First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

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3.2.2. Melody

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the use of repetition was an important resource to

create a melodic line in Debussy’s compositional style. In Chapter 2.2.2 above I wrote: „The

concept of melody in the traditional sense is often not appropriate to describe the concept of melody

and the construction of melodies in this style. Rather, melody is constructed on the basis of the

appearance of several small motives, normally based on one or several intervals, whose repetition

creates a line that we will recognize during the development of the piece.“

In La Mer we find a collection of small motives that will appear during the piece to give a

melodic sense to the work through their development. I will demonstrate two examples of this.

If we take the beginning of the piece, we can identify a motive consisting of a rising major

second with the rhythm of a semiquaver followed by a dotted quaver in the cellos. (ex. 19) This

motive will be repeated during the piece. A clear example is to be found in the horns at rehearsal

number 45 of the third movement. (ex. 20)

Example 19: Beginning First Movement La Mer

Example 20: Rehearsal number 45 Third Movement La Mer

A second example of the development of a small motive appears again in the first and third

movements. Compare the motive of the bassoons and horns at rehearsal number 14 in the first

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movement (ex. 21) with the motive of oboe, cor anglais, bassoons and horns that appears in the

third movement at rehearsal number 46, creating a little melody of its own. (ex. 22)

Example 21: First Movement La Mer

Example 22: Third Movement La Mer

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Let us now turn to Falla’s Noches en los Jardines de España and focus at the beginning of

the piece on the first four notes that appear in the harp and in the violas. (ex. 23) This is an example,

already presented above, of a little motive whose repetition will create a sense of melody

throughout the piece, especially during the first movement which is built round the development of

this little motive . If we go, for example, to rehearsal number 12 and look at the lines of the

clarinets, violins and violas we will see that this is a variation of these four first notes from the

opening of the piece. (ex. 24) A further example is to be found in the second movement at rehearsal

number 3 in the piccolo and piano lines. (ex. 25) These are merely two examples of the

development of the first little motive; Noches en los Jardines de España is a piece full of similar

examples of this technique.

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Example 23: Beginning First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

Example 24: First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

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Example 25: Second Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

In this subsection concerning melody in the music of Claude Debussy and the influence of

this on Falla, we should not forget the Arabesque. As I stated in Chapter 2, this is the name the

French composer used for a melodic line created by very fast undulations of the music as it tries to

find, according to Debussy, new expressions of life and freedom. With regard to this aspect of the

63

music, one example will suffice. Consider the use of the piano by Manuel de Falla between

rehearsal numbers 3 and 4 in the first movement of Noches en los Jardines de España (ex. 26).

Example 26: Score Number 3 First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

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3.2.3. Texture

As stated in the Chapter 2.2.2, texture and timbre are very important aspects in the music of

Claude Debussy and have a great influence on the dramatic impact of the music. I would like now

to highlight the importance of the different sonorities of the orchestra in the music of Manuel de

Falla. Claude Debussy’s style of composing placed a new emphasis on instrumental colours,

seeking more variety and more rapid changes in colour. If we pay attention to the orchestration in

Noches en los Jardines de España we can see that the orchestra Falla utilises in this piece is larger

than the orchestra he utilizes in the pieces he had composed previously, owing to the addition of the

harp, celesta, three drums, cymbals and triangle.

Very characteristic of the sonority of the music of Debussy is the use of harp glissandi, as we

can appreciate, for example, in bars 135 and 136 of the first movement of La Mer (ex. 27); in Falla

we find something similar both on the harp and the piano at rehearsal numbers 15, 24 and 25 of the

first movement of Noches en los Jardines de España. (ex. 28)

Example 27: Bars 135 and 136 First Movement La Mer

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Example 28: Score Number 15, 24 and 25 First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

66

It is also important to note the use of the high register of the piano, very characteristic of the

music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The high notes in the piano part at rehearsal numbers

3 and 5 of the first movement of Noches en los Jardines de España (ex. 29) produce that special

sonority which recalls the sound of water and which, in this way, is related to several pieces

composed for this instrument by composers who followed the compositional style of Claude

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Debussy. We may find an example of this, for example in Reflets dans L’Eau from Images by the

French composer (ex. 30).

Example 29: Score Numbers 3 and 5 First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

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69

Example 30: Passage of Reflets dans L’Eau from Images by Debussy

One further characteristic we may note in the sonority of this style is the combination of

long altered chords with a very rapid line of music. In this respect we can see examples in La Mer,

bars 155 to 159 of the second movement, (ex. 31) and Noches en los Jardines de España, from

rehearsal number 13 of the first movement, (ex. 32) where the piano and the harp respectively play

a very fast line of music accompanied by slow chords in the rest of the orchestra. Even though this

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is a very important feature of the music of Debussy, however, as a conductor I would remind the

players during these long held chords not to lose the sense of rhythm, a very important

characteristic of the music of the Flamenco, and to be very precise with the internal rhythm so as to

maintain it in the passages that follow.

Example 31: Second Movement La Mer

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72

Example 32: First Movement Noches en los Jardines de España

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Here I have presented a number of examples where we can appreciate the influence of the

music of Claude Debussy in Manuel de Falla’s Noches en los Jardines de España. Although these

examples demonstrate that the influence of Impressionism is real, as a conductor I would claim that

this influence is not so important for the development of the piece. Of course, in many moments

these resources impart a special colour to the piece; nevertheless, I would still maintain that the

piece is fundamentally based on the music of Spanish folklore and tries primarily to imitate sounds

which conjure up images of Andalusia. In performance it is on these elements that we should focus,

while at the same time, of course, not ignoring those resources that Falla uses in the piece which

serve to create those special sonorities reminiscent of the music of the French Impressionism.

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4. Conclusion

Manuel de Falla, a Spanish composer whose compositional roots lie in the folk music of

southern Spain, decided in 1907 to move to Paris, where he stayed for seven years while improving

his compositional skills. The available letters and other documents suggest many reasons why he

might have decided to move to France: the desire to change and improve his way of life; the

frustration that his opera La Vida Breve was not premièred in Madrid; his attraction to the music of

Debussy and his consequent wish to meet him; his desire to get to know the city that was

undoubtedly the cultural capital of Europe at the time; and so on. Whatever the reasons, the fact is

that he moved to Paris and that his experience there impacted both on him and on his music.

My own experience as a Spaniard who decided to move to Tallinn at the age of 23 and who

remained in Estonia for seven years suggests that people move because they are looking for

something – in my case something related to music. However, people who do this develop not only

in terms of the particular thing they are searching for; their personalities also undergo development

and change, especially when the place they move to is very different from their own place of origin.

However, it is also true that even when people change or develop as a result of such an experience,

many things in their personalities remain unchanged. These are the things that are, as it were, in our

blood. In my case, ever since I was a child I have had a great love for Spanish folk music; even after

seven years spent living in Tallinn I this passion remains with me, and I try as much as possible in

my career as an orchestral conductor to include music related to Spanish folk music in my own

programmes.

To prove conclusively that without the influence of Paris Manuel de Falla would have been

as great a composer as he is considered now is, in my opinion, impossible; what is beyond doubt,

however, is that thanks to the experience of France – not only musical influences, but also personal

experiences – Falla developed a particular musical language that would not have been possible in

other circumstances.

The development of Manuel de Falla’s music underwent a natural process of evolution in

which the composer, whose compositional roots were based in the music of the folklore of southern

Spain and who spent seven years of his life in Paris, introduced into his music certain elements

belonging to the new musical movement led by Claude Debussy, thus making his music richer in

aspects such as harmony and melody and, more especially, in terms of its sonority and texture.

75

Other aspects, notably considerations of musical form, lie outside the scope of this research.

When we analyse the harmony of Noches en los Jardines de España we can appreciate the

relationship between the use of modal harmony in Debussy’s style of composing and in the music

based on flamenco singing. Naturally, Manuel de Falla developed his use of modal harmony during

his Paris years, enriching it with the techniques and resources he gained through the influence of the

music of Debussy. We can appreciate, for example, his striving after a sense of vagueness in his

adoption of the use of large blocks of chords to produce an effect of colour in the sonority, his use

of parallelism, with parallel intervals, triads, seventh chords and larger triadic structures, and his use

of scales such as the dorian, phrygian, lydian or mixolydian modes. That said, however, a careful

analysis of Noches en los Jardines de España reveals that the mode Falla uses most in this work is

the phrygian mode which, as we have explained, is related to the Andalusian mode used in flamenco

singing.

In terms of melody, sonority and texture we can appreciate that many of the techniques and

resources used by Falla in Noches en los Jardines de España are similar to those of Debussy. First

of all, the repetition of little motives as an important resource to create a melodic line – note, for

example, the first four notes which appear in the harp and the violas in the first movement of the

piece whose repetition will create a sense of melody throughout the work; and secondly we should

not forget the use of the Arabesque. With regard to the texture, and paying attention to the

orchestration of the piece, we may note that the orchestra Falla utilizes in this piece is larger than

that used in his earlier works. Very characteristic also is Falla’s use of a large number of divisi in the

strings, as well as his use of muted strings and of the sonority of harp glissandi, all techniques very

characteristic of the music of Claude Debussy. In terms of sonority we should also mention Falla’s

use of the high register of the piano to depict the sound of water, a device also very characteristic of

Debussy’s music. One further feature that we may note with regard to the kind of sonority that

influenced the music of Manuel de Falla is the combination of long altered chords with a very rapid

line of music.

However, despite all these resources and techniques typical of Debussy’s style of

composition that Falla uses in Noches en los Jardines de España, I firmly believe that it is more

important to realise that the piece is full of techniques which try to imitate flamenco singing. Cante

(song), baile (dance) and toque (solo guitar music) are resources that are to be found throughout the

work. This kind of imitation is a very important aspect in the relation between the Spanish folklore

of southern Spain and the music of Manuel de Falla. We may note, for example, that the piece is full

of imitations of the riffs and strumming of the guitar. As regards the cante, we can appreciate how

76

Falla creates melodies in some instruments that imitate flamenco singing, with a clear rhythm at the

beginning of each phrase but a freer end to each phrase, with some rapid scales sung melismatically.

The use of microtonalism is also very characteristic of flamenco music, and Falla tries to imitate

this with very fast passages around one note which, in my opinion as a conductor, should be not

performed with absolute precision as regards intonation if we wish to create a true imitation. We

should not forget, either, the imitation of the rhythmical sound of the shoes of the dancer on the

floor, as Falla achieves this feeling in the music by writing some free melodies accompanied by a

group of instruments playing in a very rhythmical manner. It is important that we recognize these

resources and, in performance, that we help the music to sound as similar as possible to these

sonorities that the composer wished to imitate.

In terms of rhythm, we can find passages in Noches en los Jardines de España in which the

rhythm is not very clear, giving a sense of vagueness typical of Impressionism; at the same time,

however, Noches en los Jardines de España is full of passages where binary and ternary are

combined in a very clear manner, recalling the rhythm of flamenco singing as one of the most

important rhythmic characteristics of flamenco music. Sometimes Falla indicates these changes of

rhythm very clearly by changing the time signature; at other times we as performers have to find

this feeling in the change of the rhythm, even when the time signature does not change.

The main body of this thesis consists of an analysis of Noches en los Jardines de España in

which we present some extracts to ascertain the relative influence of flamenco singing and of the

music of Claude Debussy respectively in this, the last piece that Manuel de Falla was to begin

composing in Paris. The goal of the research is to find the best way to interpret the work. I refer in

this work to some letters and unpublished documents from the Archive Manuel de Falla which I

have used as an aid to understanding the reasons for which Falla decided to move to Paris and also

– and more importantly – in an attempt to identify the precise musical intentions of the Spanish

composer while composing Noches en los Jardines de España. As always, the final goal is to

achieve as conductor and performer the best possible interpretation of Falla’s work in the manner

most faithful to his intentions.

There is no doubt that Paris had a decisive influence on the music of Manuel de Falla.

Amongst other things, he was able to make new contacts with the cultural world in what was at the

time Europe’s most important cultural centre, where he met many leading proponents of the various

contemporary cultural movements; he was also able to find ways to enrich his music and

disseminate it more widely. I believe that in Paris Falla’s artistic sensibility found everything that

was necessary for his music to develop. However, in my modest opinion, Paris was not so crucial to

77

the Spanish composer as to change totally his method of composing music. While Paris and the

influence of Claude Debussy helped Falla to forge the language he wanted for his music, the

nucleus of his music nevertheless remains the folklore of southern Spain, which he was

subsequently able to enrich thanks to the influence of the French composer. For the conductor this

understanding is very important in performing the music of Manuel de Falla. It is clear that when

performing the music from Falla’s Paris period we should take note of those aspects of it that

borrow from the style of Claude Debussy. However, fundamental to a proper understanding of

Falla’s music is the realisation that it is based primarily on the folklore of southern Spain, and thus

we should strive in performance to try to imitate the colours, rhythms, ways of singing a melody,

and so on that come originally from Flamenco singing.

The musical language of Manuel de Falla is universal, in the sense that it is very well-known

and appreciated throughout the world; without Paris, Falla’s language would have been as universal

as it is now, but this is something that is impossible to demonstrate or to prove. Overall I would

describe Manuel de Falla as a Spanish composer whose music is based firmly on the flamenco

singing of Spain but who spent an important period of his life in Paris, where he was able to

develop his skills as a composer on the example of the music of the new style of composition

represented first and foremost by the person of Claude Debussy. During his Paris period Manuel de

Falla was undoubtedly the most Impressionistic of Spanish composers; nevertheless his music

always remained firmly rooted in the folklore of southern Spain.

78

Bibliography

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Casanovas, José 1976. Manuel de Falla, Cien Años. Barcelona: Ediciones de Nuevo Arte.

Collins, Chistopher Guy 2002. Manuel de Falla and his European Contemporaries: Encounters, Relationships and Influences. Tesis Universal. Manuel de Falla Archive in Granada.

Crivillé i Bargalló, Josep 2004. Historia de la Música. El Folklore Musical. Madrid: Alianza Musical.

Crocker, Richard L. 1986. A History of Musical Style. New York: Mcgraw-Hill.

de Falla, Manuel 1972. Escritos sobre Música y Músicos. 3rd. Edition. Espasa Calpe S.A. Colección Austral nº 950.

de Falla, Manuel 1988. Felipe Pedrell (1841–1922). Published by La Revue Musical (February 1923) in Escritos Sobre Música y Músicos. Introducción y notas de Federico Sopeña. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, col. Austral, nº53, 4th edition.

Demarquez, Suzanne 1986. Manuel de Falla. Labor S.A. Barcelona.

De Persia, Jorge 1991. Manuel de Falla. Diálogos con la cultura del s.XX. Dedicated to the opening of the Archive in Granada.

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Franco, Enrique 2001. Falla, Manuel de. – The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 6, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers, pp. 371–374.

Gómez Amat, Carlos 2001. Turina, Joaquín. –The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 19, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers, pp. 264–265.

Hess, Carol A. 2001. Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–1936. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Hess, Carol A. 2005. Sacred Passions. The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla. New York: Oxford University.

Katz, Israel J. 2001. Flamenco. – The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 8, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers, pp. 920–925.

Malipiero, G. Francesco 1983. Manuel de Falla. (Evocación y correspondencia). Universidad de Granada.

Marco, Tomas 2001. Albéniz, Isaac. – The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 1, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers, pp. 202–204.

Martínez Sierra, María 1953. Gregorio y yo. Medio Siglo de Colaboración. Mexico: Biografías Gandesa, pp. 123–124.

Morgan, Robert P. 1999. La Música del Siglo XX. Madrid: Ediciones Akal.

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Morrison, D. Naumann 1960. Influences of Impressionist Tonality on Selected Works of Delius, Griffes, Falla and Respighi. Based on the Concept Developed by Robert Mueller. Ph.D. dissertation. Indiana University.

Nancy Lee Harper 2005. Manuel de Falla. His Life and Music. Unites States of America: Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Nichols, Roger 2001. Debussy, Claude.– The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 5, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers, pp. 292–314.

Nommick, Yvan 1997. La Vida Breve entre 1905 y 1914: Evolución Formal y Orquestal. Granada. Archivo Manuel de Falla, pp. 11–18.

Orledge, Robert 2001. Indy, Vincent d’. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 9, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers, pp. 220–225.

Pahissa, Jaime 1979. Manuel de Falla, his life and works. Hyperion press.

Pasler, Jann 2001. Indy, Schola Cantorum. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 22, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers, pp.206.

Pérez Gutierrez, Mariano 1983. Falla y Turina hermanados en el París de sus sueños Barcelona: University of Melbourne.

Pérez Gutiérrez, Mariano 1987. La temática popular en la etapa parisina de Manuel de Falla. Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla.

Persichetti, Vincent 1995. Armonía del Siglo XX. Madrid: Real Musical.

Roales-Nieto, Amalia 1988. Manuel de Falla et Paris. Madrid: Madrid University.

Seitz, Elisabeth Anne 1995. Manuel de Falla’s years in Paris, 1907–1914. Boston: Boston University.

Whittall, Arnold 2001. Impressionism. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 9, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers, pp. 30–31.

Unpublished sources. Manuel de Falla Archive in Granada, Spain

Martinez Sierra, Gregorio. Granada, (Guía Emocional). MFA 2131.

Nommick, Ivan. Noches en los Jardines de España: Génesis y composición de una obra. Unpublished biography.

Nommick, Ivan. La interpretación de las Noches: Una carta de Falla a Anserment. Unpublished biography.

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Part of a document on display in an exhibition organized by the Manuel de Falla Archive in Granada, Spain.

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Printed program of the premier on the 9th April 1916 of Noches en los Jardines de España. MFA 1916.

Letter from Joaquín Turina to Manuel de Falla. February 1906. MFA 7703.

Letter from Claude Debussy to Manuel de Falla. January 1907. MFA 6898.

Letter from Falla to his family. January 1909. MFA 7808.

Letter from Manuel de Falla to Salvador Viniegra. December 1913. MFA 7755.

Letter from Manuel de Falla to Roland-Manuel. December 1928. MFA 7521.

Scores

Debussy, Claude 1966. Reflets dans l’Eau. Fortepianowe.

Debussy, Claude 1997. La Mer. New York: Dover Publications,INC.

Falla, Manuel de 2010. Noches en los jardines de España, Impresiones sinfónicas para piano y orquesta. Madrid: Manuel de Falla Ediciones.

Internet Links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYCiyNbDmRM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MS332sS7cA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2x58jaW3Y4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbadDj9KF1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhn0rOCdRvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao9_AW3rXIo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVjFCF2b8cw

81

Töö lühikokkuvõte

Käesolev töö „The influences of Spanish Folklore and French Impressionism on the work of

Manuel de Falla Noches en Los Jardines de España“ („Hispaania folkloori ja prantsuse

impressionismi mõjud Manuel de Falla teoses „Ööd Hispaania aedades“), mis on kirjutatud

doktorikraadi taotlemiseks Eesti Muusika- ja Teatriakadeemia doktoriõppe loomingulise harus, on

pühendatud Hispaania lõunaosa rahvaliku muusika ja prantsuse impressionismi mõjude uurimisele

Manuel de Falla loomingus seitsme aasta jooksul (1907–1914) tema Pariisis elatud perioodil. Töö

autor on keskendunud Manuel de Falla teosele „Noches en los jardines de España“ („Ööd Hispaania

aedades“), mille komponeerimist ta Prantsusmaa pealinnas alustas.

Töö autor on veendunud, et uue kunstivoolu – impressionismi – mõju kajastub helilooja

selle perioodi loomingus olulisel määral. Kuni Manuel de Falla Pariisi minekuni oli tema muusika

tugevalt mõjutatud lõuna-hispaania folkloorist, kuid siis tema käekiri muutus. Manuel de Falla

Pariisi kolimise ajal oli see linn kultuuriliselt vahest kõige tähtsam Euroopas – helilooja tutvus siin

kultuurimaailma suurte isiksustega, kes teda ühel või teisel viisil mõjutasid ja kõik see kajastus

tema muusikas. Orkestridirigendina on töö autor seadnud eesmärgiks uurida olukorda, millesse

Manuel de Falla sattus, kui ta oli otsustanud asuda elama Pariisi; samuti uurida asjaolusid, mis

võisid mõjutada tema loomingut, et sellest lähtuvalt saaks interpreteerida Manuel de Falla teost

„Noches en los jardines de España“ võimalikult ehedalt. Töö autor usub, et selline uurimus võib

väga oluliselt muuta teose interpreteerimise viisi.

Konkreetse teose käsitlemisel keskendub autor kahele olulisele aspektile: ühelt poolt lõuna-

hispaania rahvalikule muusikale, millele hispaania helilooja looming 1907. aastani otseselt toetus ja

teiselt poolt uuele muusikavoolule, impressionismile, mis sündis Prantsusmaal XIX sajandi lõpul ja

mille eestvedajaks oli Claude Debussy.

Oma väidete põhjendamiseks on autor uurinud järgmisi asjaolusid:

1. Kõigepealt on autor püüdnud selgitada Manuel de Falla Pariisi siirdumise põhjusi.

2. Teiseks on autor püüdnud uurida kahe muusikavoolu mõju Manuel de Falla loomingule

Pariisis, kus ta ühelt poolt oli tihedas kontaktis Schola Cantorumi ühe juhtiva liikme Joaquín

Turinaga ja teisalt Claude Debussyga, kes kõige paremini esindab impressionismi prantsuse

muusikas.

3. Tundes kõiki esitatud asjaolusid, mis Fallat tema seitsme Pariisi-aasta jooksul võisid

mõjutada, on töö autor kõige olulisema punktina keskendunud teose „Noches en los jardines

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de España“ analüüsile, otsimaks ühelt poolt, milline on olnud hispaania folkloori ja teisalt

prantsuse impressionismi mõju, toetudes konkreetsetele näidetele teosest. Kas otsustav oli

prantsuse mõju, nagu võiks oletada, või on Falla muusika tugisambaks jätkuvalt hispaania

folkloor?

Olles saanud oma ooperi „La vida breve“ komponeerimise eest 1907. aastal Madridis

preemia, otsustas Manuel de Falla kolida Pariisi. Hispaanlasest helilooja veetis Pariisis seitse aastat

kuni Esimese maailmasõja puhkemiseni 1914. a. ning naasis siis oma sünnimaale.

Manuel de Falla omakäeliste kirjutiste põhjal teame, et ta tundis end Pariisis esimesest

hetkest hästi, leides seal muusikalise keskkonna, mida ta oma arenguks vajas. Esimest korda elus

tundis hispaania helilooja erilist sidet avarama kultuuriga, kuna ta polnud varem oma kodumaalt

lahkunud ja seega rikastasid kohtumised rahvusvaheliselt tuntud isikutega ning nende

tundmaõppimine tema kui loovisiku arengut. Näitena võib tuua katke tema kirjast sõber Salvador

Viniegrale, milles ta ütleb: „... mul on järjest suurem heameel, et ma otsustasin Madridist lahkuda,

sest seal polnud minu jaoks mingit tulevikku...“ ning „Mu esimene suur kordaminek pärast Pariisi

saabumist oli Dukas’ külastamine. Selle esimese visiidi ajal sain Dukas’le tutvustada oma Pariisi

tuleku eesmärke: töötada ja tundma õppida prantsuse moodsa kooli tehnikaid, sest leidsin nad olevat

kooskõlas minu muusikatunnetusega...“

Falla peamiste mõjutajatena on töös käsitletud kahte isikut: Joaquín Turinat ja Claude

Debussyd. Turina tähtsus ei tulene selles kontekstis mitte eelkõige tema seosest Vincent d’Indy

poolt juhitud Schola Cantorumiga, vaid tugevatest seostest hispaania muusikaga tema enda

loomingus. Manuel de Falla oli teatavasti prantsuse impressionismi suur poolehoidja, see oli aga

täielik vastand Schola Cantorumi konservatismile, mille esindajaks oli Joaquín Turina. Need kaks

hispaania heliloojat, kes elasid Pariisis ühel ja samal ajal, soosisid täiesti vastandlikke muusikalisi

voolusid, olles sellele vaatamata head sõbrad ja esindades muusikas kõike hispaaniapärast, mida

nad pidasid väga omaseks ja millest nad loobuda ei raatsinud.

Arvatavasti oli just Claude Debussy see, kelle pärast Manuel de Falla Pariisi sõitis. Debussy

oli oma aja tähtsamaid heliloojaid, kelle innovatiivne stiil eristus radikaalselt Wagneri omast ning

avaldas omakorda suurt mõju järgnevatele heliloojate põlvkondadele. Debussy ja Falla tutvumisel

mängis tähtsat rolli prantsuse helilooja Paul Dukas. Debussyle avaldas sügavat mõju Manuel de

Falla ooper „La vida breve“, ning nende tutvumisest alates sai Debussyst Falla tähtsaim nõuandja ja

aegamööda ka suur sõber. Mõistetavalt mõjutas see muusikaline ja isiklik kontakt Manuel de Falla

hilisemat loomingut, milles kohtame impressionistliku muusika kõiki tehnilisi uuendusi, koos

erinevate helilaadide kasutamise, rütmika ja väljenduslaadi eripäradega. Muuhulgas kasutab hilisem

Falla suuri akordiplokke, püüdes luua orkestratsioonis võimalikult palju värve.

83

Töö põhiosa keskendub Manuel de Falla teose „Noches en los jardines de España“

analüüsile, milles püütakse näidata, milline on selles lõuna-hispaania rahvaliku muusika ja

prantsuse impressionistliku stiili elementide mõju, eesmärgiga otsida teed teose parima võimaliku

interpretatsiooni poole.

Analüüsis võetakse esmalt vaatluse alla hispaania rahvaliku muusika kolm aspekti:

harmoonia, meloodia ja kõlapilt ning rütm. Harmoonia puhul tuuakse mitme näite varal välja seosed

andaluusia helilaadiga (früügia-sarnane laad teise ja kolmanda astme võimalike alteratsioonidega)

ning nn andaluusia kadentsi tähtsus. Meloodia ja kõlapildi osas keskendutakse flamenko-muusika

kõlapildile, mida Manuel de Falla selles teoses imiteerib, eristades kolme aspekti: laulu, tantsu ja

kitarrikasutust. Tuuakse mitmeid näiteid, kuidas helilooja imiteerib kitarri erinevaid sõrmitsemis-

tehnikaid, kombineerides seda flamenkotrummide ja -tantsijate rütmifiguuridega ning flamenko-

muusika lauljate melismaatilise laulmisviisiga. Mis puudutab rütmi, siis tuuakse näiteid eelkõige

flamenko-muusikas tavalisest kahe- ja kolmeosalise meetrumi vaheldumisest. Flamenko-muusika

elementide kasutamine on üks Falla muusika identiteedi tunnustest, mida ta ei hüljanud ka pärast

oma seitset Pariisi-aastat.

Teisalt keskendutakse impressionismi mõjudele Falla teostes, tuues näiteid samuti teosest

„Noches en los jardines de España“ ja võrreldakse neid näidetega Claude Debussy teosest „La

Mer“. Siin on vaatluse all peamiselt harmoonia, meloodika ja faktuuri aspektid. Mis puudutab

harmooniat, siis käsitleb autor impressionistlikule stiilile väga omast tonaalset ambivalentsust ning

paralleelliikumisi kasutavaid suuri akordiplokke. Samuti leiab võrdlemist vanade diatooniliste

helilaadide kasutamine Claude Debussy teoses „La Mer“ ja uurimisaluses töös „Noches en los

jardines de España“. Käsitledes meloodikat, keskendab autor tähelepanu traditsioonilise meloodia-

kontseptsiooni kadumisele, esitledes uut kontseptsiooni impressionistlikus stiilis, mis baseerub

üksikutest intervallidest moodustatud lühikestel muusikalistel motiividel, mille kordused loovad

terves teoses tajutava meloodilise liini. Falla muusikas leidub ka kiirete lainetustena kujundatud

meloodialiine, mida Debussy nimetab arabeskiks – seda leidub sageli nii tema muusikas kui ka töös

uuritavas Falla teoses.

Tähtsaima aspektina, mis peegeldab prantsuse impressionismi mõjusid Falla teoses, on töös

vaatluse all faktuurikäsitlus. Esmalt näidatakse, kuidas Pariisis komponeerides muutus Falla

orkestreerimislaad rikkalikuma värvipaleti suunas. Samuti viidatakse kõlavõtete kasutamisele, mis

on väga omased impressionismile, nagu näiteks harfi glissandod või klaveri kõrge registri

kasutamine. Impressionistlikule stiilile väga iseloomulikuks faktuurivõtteks võib pidada ka suurte

akordiplokkide kasutamist kõrvuti kiiresti liikuvate meloodialiinidega.

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Näidetele toetudes jõuab autor järeldusele, et impressionismi ja Debussy muusika mõju on

Manuel de Falla teoses „Noches en los jardines de España“ on küll ilmne, ent mitte nii valdav nagu

oleks võinud eeldada. Manuel de Falla loomingu ja ühtlasi teose „Noches en los jardines de

España“ interpreteerijana nendib töö autor teoses kajastuvaid impressionismi mõjusid, ent peab

samal ajal esitamisel ülimalt oluliseks rõhuasetust lõuna-hispaania rahvaliku muusika elementidele,

millel see muusika olulisel määral baseerub, eriti flamenkostiilist pärit rütmide, kõlavärvide ja

laulmismaneeri imiteerimisele. Töö autor usub, et just folkloorne aspekt on Falla loomingus

määrava tähtsusega ning see oleks leidnud laia tunnustuse ka ilma Pariisis veedetud perioodil

kogutud muljeteta ning prantsuse impressionismi olulise ja viljaka mõjuta.