Manuel de Falla. By Jaime Pahisia. (Museum Press. 15s.) Tins
is the English translation of a book that appeared in Spanish seven years ago.
The author is a Catalan composer, now settled in the Argentine, and his friendship with Falla began in 1914 and ended only
with Falla's death in 1946. He deals more with the composer's life than with his music, filling in much of the background and giving considerable biographical detail which has hitherto not been easily available in English. His approach is not subtle and he is generally content to chronicle without explaining or commenting on the facts of Falla's life. Thus there emerges no very clear picture of the man, the key to whose character is still best sought in his music; nor does he relate Falla's music to that of his contemporaries, though he stresses his debt to the French composers with whom he became acquainted as a young man in Paris. .Falla's own writings were collected and published in Madrid, also in 1947, and these should certainly be translated into English as a pendant to
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