Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) was a modern Spanish composer whose music had one foot in Impressionism and the other in neo-Classicism, sometimes making it difficult to categorize. Most admired for his colorful ballets Love, the Magician (from which the popular Ritual Fire Dance has been extracted as a concert staple), and The Three-Cornered Hat, Falla's oeuvre was nonetheless quite small for an artist of his stature. Falla's idiom was always tonal, though often colored with exotic scales and lush harmonies that were derived from Andalusian folk music and the influence of Debussy. Late in life, he was strongly influenced by Stravinsky. ~ Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide