ABSTRACT
Like many of his Spanish and Parisian contemporaries, Manuel de Falla displayed a keen interest in aspects of Greek culture. This curiosity extended to its Classical, Byzantine, folk and modern Hellenic manifestations and was at times instigated by contacts with artists of Greek descent. However, Falla was unique in attempting to incorporate these influences into his evolving constructions of Hispanic musical nationalism. In his exploration of Greek cultures, Falla emphasized what he perceived to be the multiple layers of historical and cultural contact between Spain and Greece. Drawn to questions of Orientalism and Exoticism that linked the peripheries of the Mediterranean in European Romantic thought, Falla speculated on possible relationships between Byzantine chant, Greek folk music and flamenco. Compositionally, he was inspired by evocations of antiquity and Greek music prevalent in fin-de-siècle Paris—particularly in the music of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray—and in post-war neoclassical works. Falla’s interest extended to evocations of Greece in literature and the visual arts, particularly in the context of Catalan Modernisme and Noucentisme, and in the neoclassical and Monumental works of Picasso. These Hellenic echoes are present throughout Falla’s music and culminated in what could be termed the Greco-Iberian phase of the late 1920s, which coincided with the conception of Atlántida.
