1 Homenaje (An Analysis of Manuel de Falla’s Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy) By Dušan Bogdanović Whenever I die, bury me with my guitar beneath the sand. Memento, Federico García Lorca 1 The Genesis of Homenaje Described in 1926 as a “melodically rather insignificant worklet” 2 , barely three minutes long, Manuel de Falla’s Homenaje remains one of the masterpieces of the guitar repertoire. Originally written for the 1920 issue of La Revue Musicale, this little piece was a Tombeau dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy, one of Falla’s dear friends and supporters during his stay in Paris (1907-1914), before the outbreak of the World War I. The two composers were connected by more than just stylistic affinity: as much as Falla owed to the Impressionist treatment of harmony and orchestral color, Debussy did to Iberian folk music idiom- and not only in his works that had overt Spanish influences. The more obviously Spanish pieces (such as Puerta del vino or Iberia) reveal even more influence of the folk idiom, particularly in their rhythmic profile and “oriental” modal approach. Manuel de Falla himself pronounced one of Debussy's “Spanish” pieces (La Soirée dans Grenade) the best pianistic reflection of Spain, this distinction being even more remarkable considering Debussy had never really been to Spain (except for one trip to San Sebastian) 3 . 1 Cuando yo me muera, enterradme con mi guitarra bajo la arena. Lorca, F. G., Memento, from Vigñetas flamencas, Collected Poems (edited by C. Maurer), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, p.145 2 Istel E., 1926, p.503 3 In his inimitable poetic language, this is how Garcia Lorca describes Debussy’s first encounter with the cante jondo: “At the Spanish Pavilion of the great Paris Exhibition of 1900, a group of Gypsies sang deep song in all its purity. They caught the attention of the whole city, but especially a young musician who was then engaged in the fight all of us young artists must carry on, the fight for what is new and unforeseen, the treasure hunt, in the sea of thought, for inviolate emotion. Day after day that young man went to hear the Andalusian cantaores. His soul was wide open to the four winds of the spirit, and he was soon made pregnant by the ancient Orient of our melodies. He was Claude Debussy.” (Lorca, G. In Search of Duende, A New Directions Bibelots, 1998, New York, p.9)