PILAR ALVA-MARTÍN Y RUBÉN FDEZ. AGUIRRE

This recital offers a journey through the artistic universe of Manuel de Falla and the connection between the French aesthetic he encountered during his stay in Paris and the mature creative period he later developed in Granada.

During his Paris years (1907–1914), Falla came into contact with composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, whose influence was decisive in the refinement of his musical language: the harmonic subtlety, the search for new sonorities, and the poetic evocation that characterise many of his works were largely born out of that artistic environment. It was also in Paris that he composed some of his most celebrated works, among them *Siete canciones populares españolas*, completed in the final months of his stay in the French capital, where Spanish folk tradition is transformed into music of extraordinary subtlety and modernity.

In 1920, Falla decided to settle permanently in Granada, a city that would deeply shape both his life and his work. His arrival was closely linked to the musician Ángel Barrios, who introduced him to Granada’s cultural circles and helped his integration into an artistic and intellectual milieu of enormous vitality. There, he became friends with figures such as Federico García Lorca.

Granada meant far more to Falla than simply a place of residence: in the city he found a space of introspection, spirituality, and creation that profoundly transformed his aesthetic. In his beloved *Carmen de la Antequeruela*, where he lived with his sister María del Carmen from the end of 1921 onwards, the composer developed a period marked by expressive refinement and an increasingly essential, distilled style. It was in his first months in Granada, in fact, that he composed *Homenaje pour le Tombeau de Claude Debussy*, a work dedicated to the memory of the French composer and a symbol of the enduring bond between the Parisian world and the Andalusian sensibility that defined his music.