España

Chabrier spent several months in Spain in 1882, writing home about the dances he heard in Andalusia and taking down jota and malagueña rhythms in his letters. España, finished the following year, was the result; he described it at first simply as a fantasia for orchestra. Charles Lamoureux conducted the premiere in Paris on 4 November 1883 and repeated it immediately, and the dedication is to him. Chabrier had spent most of his working life as a civil servant at the Ministry of the Interior and had resigned only three years earlier.