Silenced Keys to Literary and Musical Interplays between Lorca and Falla

Nelson R Orringer

doi:10.5070/d82235951

Abstract

Author(s): Orringer, Nelson R. | Abstract: Between 1920 and 1936, Spanish composer Manuel de Falla and his friend and folk-music pupil Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish poet and playwright, wrote many of their best-known works, all affected by the other artist. The many interconnections between them exceeded the printing space available to the author for his 2014 book on those links. The present article puts those silenced finds into print for the first time. Falla´s 1908 piece “Andaluza” attempts to express the soul of Andalusia by imitating rhythms, modalities, melodies, adornments, and folk cadences of that southern Spanish region. The work, together with others by Falla, inspires at least two poems and two poetic dialogues by Lorca: the two “Rider's Songs” from the 1924 anthology Canciones or Songs and two short allegorical dialogues of 1925 gathered into Poema del Cante Jondo or Poem of Deep Song. While all these analogies between Falla's music and Lorca´s poetry center around a variety of male Andalusian archetypes, still other likenesses between the two artists show up in Falla´s compositions examining feminine innocence and the two Lorca poems “Two Girls,” two studies on Andalusian woman's purity from Poem of Deep Song.

Highlights

Music motivated García Lorca to write, and he regarded poetry as musical performance
They provided an ideal laboratory situation for a link between letters and music: in 1920 the most famous Spanish composer moved to the same city, Granada, where there resided the youth who was to become the most famous Spanish poet
Lorcas two “Riders Songs” from the anthology Songs or Canciones (1924). Resemble one another in their mystery: both take place at night, both through their titles link their verses to folk music, both show concern with death which Lorca associates with the Andalusian people, both incorporate, like Falla, rhythms associated with galloping horses, and both appear included in a section of poems with a title resembling Falla's: “Andaluzas.” in the “Riders

Summary

Introduction

Music motivated García Lorca to write, and he regarded poetry as musical performance. The work, together with others by Falla, inspires at least two poems and two poetic dialogues by Lorca: the two “Rider's Songs” from the 1924 anthology Canciones or Songs and two short allegorical dialogues of 1925 gathered into Poema del Cante Jondo or Poem of Deep Song.

Results

Conclusion