A Single Sheet of Notepaper

Born on Cadiz in Andalucia in 1876, Manuel de Falla was a diffident and reserved figure. Over the course of his long life - seven decades - he composed relatively little: one of his biographers points out that the entire list of his compositions could be written on a single sheet of note paper. He reached his artistic maturity at the time of Spain's so-called "Silver Age", with the emergence of Lorca, Bunuel, Miro and Dali, when artists were fully engaged in a debate over national identity. Manuel de Falla sustained this debate in his music and can be seen as the pre-eminent Spanish composer of the 20th Century. In this programme Donald Macleod explores Manuel de Falla's early work, until his departure for Paris in 1907.