A suite from El Amor brujo (Love the Magician) — Manuel de Falla

Introduccion y Escena (Introduction and Scene) –

En la Cueva: la Noche (In the Cave: Night)

El Aparecido (The Apparition) –

Danza del Terror (Dance of Terror)

Pantomima (Pantomime)

Danza rituel del Fuego (Ritual Fire Dance)

El Amor brujo – or “Love, the Magician” as it is known in English – originated as a flamenco ballet for the famous Andalusian gypsy dancer and singer, Pastora Imperio. Initially, Falla and his poet collaborator Martinez Sierra were to provide no more than a song and a dance for her but, stimulated by the flamenco music and the gypsy folklore they heard from the dancer and her mother Rosaria la Mejorana, another flamenco performer, they agreed to write a whole one-act ballet with song.

The story of the ballet is based on one told them by la Mejorana. The gypsy girl Candelas is haunted by the memory of her dead lover, whose ghost has the frustrating habit of coming between her and her new suitor, Carmelo, whenever he approaches her. The answer to the problem, Carmelo decides – remembering that his late rival was as faithless as he was jealous – is to distract him from his vigilance by a decoy in the shape of a beautiful young gypsy girl called Lucía. The ghost is, in fact, seduced by Lucía’s dancing, which gives Candelas and Carmelo chance to exchange “the perfect kiss” and so break the spell of the past.

At its first performance in Madrid in 1915, while it pleased the gypsy performers who took part in it, the ballet did not please the public, who complained, incredibly, that the music was not Spanish enough. However, after some revision and expansion of the originally small-scale orchestral proportions, the score proved successful – with or without the vocal numbers but never without the Ritual Fire Dance – as a concert piece. And, after some revision of the scenario for a production in Paris in 1925, the ballet began to find favour too, not least because of the part played by another gypsy dancer, La Argentina.

It could be that what displeased the audience at the first performance of the ballet in Madrid was the absence of actual Spanish folk material in the score. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine orchestral music more Spanish than that of El Amor brujo – and not only in the dances, the sounds and rhythms of which are derived from traditional sources. Even the Introduction, with its modal harmonies and its vigorous dotted rhythms is typical flamenco. The time and place of the Scene, on which the curtain rises, are precisely defined – not least by means of a solo oboe’s echo of cante jondo towards the end – as night in a gypsy encampment in Andalusia,.

The Apparition of the dead lover, a short but vividly atmospheric episode with sinister bitonal harmonies on muted trumpet and strings, provokes the Dance of Terror, which is based on a dance said to have origins similar to those of the Italian tarantella. Its panicky rhythms have no effect in exorcising the ghost, however. So the next step – in the ballet, that is – is the Ritual Fire Dance, which in this concert version of the score is reserved until the end. So the next piece on this occasion is the Pantomime where, after a recall of the music from the introduction, Lucía performs her dance of seduction – a voluptuously scored Cadiz tango, which proves to be a temptation that the ghost cannot resist.

Derived from an old gypsy forging song traditionally associated with the warding-off of evil spirits, the Ritual Fire Dance is an inspired piece of writing. The eerie as well as the fiery aspect of the scene are suggested by the trills on clarinet and violas, the superstitious as well as the work function of the song by the heavily percussive ostinato on the piano in an uneasy harmonic relationship with the oboe’s dancing garrotin melody and brief but forceful interjections from lower brass.