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WILHEM LATCHOUMIA
Falla’s first major work was for his own instrument. The
Cuatro piezas españolas
(Four Spanish pieces) – the title is purely indicative, rather than a nationalist
manifesto of any kind – may be viewed as a coda to the
Iberia
of Albéniz. Falla
completed them in Paris after Albéniz had given him a preview of some of the
pieces from the first books of his collection. This revelation prompted him to
take out of cold storage and revise two pieces already written in their entirety in
Madrid in 1906,
Aragonesa
and
Cubana
, and stimulated him to compose twomore,
Montañesa
and
Andaluza
, immediately afterwards, during the month of February.
Even in 1906,
Aragonesa
was already inspired by the
Recuerdos de viaje
of Albéniz.
While the themes of
Aragonesa
derive from an imaginary folklore, the main
theme of Cubana quotes a genuine
guajira
– music from the Caribbean of the
kind previously popularised by Gottschalk. The masterpiece of the set, and one
of Falla’s masterpieces
tout court
, is
Montañesa
, subtitled ‘Paysage’ (Landscape).
It is modelled almost note for note on the great impressionist piece Albéniz
wrote before
Iberia, La Vega
. Bell effects, spatialisation of timbres, a poetic space
revealing a landscape of great subtlety, soon with the diversion of an ironic little
ditty – in fact a quotation of an anticlerical song! – that swiftly vanishes in its
turn from the harmonic horizon. With its rhythmic ardour,
Andaluza
has the
assertive character of a true finale. It both evokes and stylises the
cante jondo
, as
if we could actually see a woman dancing the flamenco and a cantaor singing;
and, above all, it presents a thoroughly innovative harmonic vocabulary. Ricardo
Viñes premiered the four pieces at the Salle Érard in Paris on 27 March 1909. They
earned the composer a contract with the publisher Durand, to whom he was
recommended by Dukas, Debussy and Ravel, no less, all three of them captivated
by the splendours of the set and the discretion and modesty of its creator.