Manuel de Falla, Noches en los jardines de España, title page of the first edition
Emerging in the 19th century in nearly all of Europe were specific national styles inspired by their countries’ own folk music. This development came to Spain only relatively late, and it was French composers, curiously enough, who were initially successful with works atmospherically Spanish – we think of Georges Bizet’s Carmen or Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. It was not until about 1880 that the public and critics became aware of equivalent works by native Spaniards, from Pablo de Sarasate via Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados to Manuel de Falla.
Are you also one of those manuscript hunters on the Internet? It is, indeed, almost incredible how many music autographs have become freely accessible there these recent years. Whether we visit composers’ pages like 
