Although Falla owed much to a formative sojourn in Paris, where he learned from colleagues such as Debussy, Ravel, and Dukas, his music remained firmly rooted in Spanish traditions, both folk and classical. Moreover, the majority of his most important scores are for the theater—zarzuelas, ballets, operas, and incidental music. It was the two-act opera La vida breve that served as his introduction in Paris, and the sounds of his homeland were never long out of Falla’s creative imagination; the principal work of his Paris years was the Siete canciones populares españolas.

Falla left Paris at the beginning of World War I. The first work he wrote back in Madrid was El amor brujo, a gitanería of dances, songs, and spoken texts. (“Love, the Magician” is how the title is usually translated into English, but brujo can be an adjective as well as a noun, changing the meaning to “Love Bewitched.”) The great flamenco dancer Pastora Imperio, whose mother Rosario “la Mejorana” Monje (also flamenco royalty) suggested an Andalusian legend for the subject, commissioned the work. Gregorio Martínez Sierra and María de la O Lejárraga García, with whom Falla collaborated on several projects, wrote the scenario and texts, and the piece premiered at the Teatro Lara in Madrid in April 1915.

Falla’s music was well received, some grumblings about French influence notwithstanding, but the production was a modest success. Falla then rearranged the work, expanding the instrumentation and revising the scenario for performance in 1916 (it shared the program with the premiere of Nights in the Gardens of Spain). This larger orchestration served as the basis for another ballet version, first performed in concert in Paris in 1923, then as a ballet in 1925.

The tale in its final version concerns Candelas, a young widow haunted by the ghost of her jealous husband. To free her from his unwanted attention, Candelas and her new lover, Carmelo, must exchange a kiss of perfect love. In a series of dances, the ghost first frightens the couple (Dance of Terror), Candelas tries to exorcise it (Ritual Fire Dance), and then her friend Lucia seduces it. While the ghost is distracted by Lucia, Candelas and Carmelo kiss, and then mock the ghost in the final dance.

Falla was studying cante jondo, the deep song of Andalusia, as he was writing El amor brujo, and every musical aspect of the work reveals the influence of his study. Falla did not quote actual folk songs, relying instead on his knowledge of the idiom to create original folk-inspired art.

This is not the prettified orchestral Iberiana illustrated by many famous French and Russian scores, but rather an earthy distillation of native impulses. Although a vivid work of theater, El amor brujo is as much a series of intense musical reflections on the power of love as it is sheer storytelling. As the composer Charles Koechlin wrote in a review, “Purity of line in the writing, simplicity amid richness, and unexaggerated originality simply leap forth from this work.”

—John Henken