Manuel de Falla

Born in Cádiz, he studied in Madrid with José Tragó and with Felipe Pedrell; La vida breve won a national competition in 1905. The Paris years, 1907 to 1914, placed him beside Debussy, Dukas and Ravel. The Seven Popular Spanish Songs date from 1914, the year of his return from Paris. El amor brujo, Nights in the Gardens of Spain and The Three-Cornered Hat were followed by the puppet opera El retablo de maese Pedro and the Harpsichord Concerto. From 1920 he lived in Granada, where with Federico García Lorca he organised the Cante Jondo competition of 1922. He left Spain in 1939 for Argentina and died there in 1946. The Three-Cornered Hat began in 1916 as a pantomime for a small group of players, with a libretto attributed to Gregorio Martínez Sierra but written by María Martínez Sierra, and reached the Madrid stage the following year as The Corregidor and the Miller's Wife; when Diaghilev heard it he asked for a ballet, Falla adapted and rescored the pantomime for the ballet. The Ballets Russes gave it in London in 1919 with sets and costumes by Picasso and choreography by Léonide Massine. La vida breve, written in his twenties, travelled to Nice and Paris, and a dance in its second act was expanded on the advice of his friend André Messager.