The Composer’s Last Sigh

Abstract The devout Catholicism of modernist composer Manuel de Falla meant that he was courted by conservative forces throughout the 1930s. At the outset of the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalists sought to leverage his international renown to lend their cause cultural respectability. He strove to avoid being identified as the regime’s cultural-political emblem, and this was a factor in Falla’s decision to travel to Argentina in 1939. This chapter examines the possibility of Falla’s changing stance towards the war being informed by French Catholic intellectual Jacques Maritain. It also presents a new political interpretation of the Homenajes, the orchestral suite Falla produced from earlier works in 1938–39 to be premiered in Buenos Aires. Finally, the four concerts of Spanish music presented by Falla in Buenos Aires in 1939, which were sponsored by Franco’s New State, were subverted by Falla to reinforce his pro-French and progressive vision of Spanish music.