Introduction
In 1914 the famous gypsy flamenco dancer Pastora Imperio expressed to De Falla the desire to expand her repertoire with a gitanerìa: a pantomime of dance and song inspired by gypsy legends.
De Falla used a libretto by Gregorio Martínez Sierra. The first performance, which took place in Madrid in 1915, was a complete failure. In 1916 he reworked the piece, making numerous cuts and eliminating the singing part almost entirely. This new version was much more successful with both critics and audiences.
Manuel De Falla
In 1924 De Falla further reworked the piece by transforming El Amor Brujo into a ballet, which is how the piece is mostly known and performed today. Eventually, he wrote a fourth version for solo piano, which became a favorite of many pianists – Artur Rubinstein just to name one.
Manuel De Falla – An analysis of La Danza Ritual del Fuego
In case you don’t have it at hand, here’s a quick link to the score.
La Danza ritual del Fuego – which translates to The Ritual Dance of Fire – is apparently necessary to cast off the ghost of Candela’s husband. Candela is the main female character of the ballet.
Candela performs the Ritual Fire Dance causing the ghost to appear. She dances with the ghost but as they whirl around faster and faster, the ghost is drawn into the fire, vanishing forever.
Thanks to its obsessive rhythm and charming melody, it made its way into the symphonic repertoire as a standalone piece. Structure-wise it’s A-A1 plus a coda.
Let’s look at this closely: the piece starts with little cracklings of fire in the trills of the violas and then the clarinets. The double basses color the sound with their harmonic on E; and so does the first horn, with an added closed sound on bar 4; the cellos anticipate the stomping rhythm with a single pizzicato on bar 1 and bar 4.
In the following 8 bars the crackling intensifies, letting out small flames: the cellos place their pizzicato on every downbeat, moving the dynamic from piano to sforzato underlining the crescendos of the violas and clarinets.
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Technical tip
These first bars offer you a chance to break the patterns in a very easy but effective way. Use the swells to move outwards and inwards, remaining at waist level because of the orchestration.
Two bars before rehearsal number 24 raise your arm towards the oboe player, connect, and give a clear pulse on the downbeat of one before 24
For a full technical analysis, look up the video in the repertoire section
Another set of 8 bars adds more layers to the sound, as the fire grows: 2 horns and timpani on the second beat of the bar; the cellos play each beat on a C minor arpeggio; and the piano makes its appearance, doubling both lines.
We finally get introduced to the first melodic idea, played by a solo oboe. De Falla plays with tonality, hinting towards F minor but then sticking an A natural at the end of the bar.
Notice also the triplets of 16th, referencing the Spanish musical tradition, the flair of the flamenco, and the flames of the fire once again.
There’s another very interesting aspect of what we’ve seen so far: the structure. We have 24 bars of rhythmic introduction before the theme comes in on a pickup bar. The theme has this quality of almost improvisation and at first hearing, it appears to break the structure, moving accents here and there. But if you look at the bass line, it’s always obsessively the same, spanning over 16 bars.
This overlapping of layers continues in the next phrase, which from 16 is extended to 18 bars. The theme is repeated, played now by the flute and the violins, while the orchestration thickens: the trumpets join in, the timpani have rolls every other bar, the cellos turn from pizzicato to arco.
But I want to point the attention to one detail in particular: the theme has triplets of 16th; the right hand of the piano plays quadruplets of 16th; the clarinet and oboe play triplets of 8th notes on the same pitches. This layering of rhythms is used to increase the tension and the drama of the music. When the piccolo and oboe join the main line, there’s also a natural crescendo created by the orchestration instead of a change in dynamic.
Thanks to all of this, when we get to rehearsal number 26, the pianissimo becomes even more effective.
It seems like we’re going back to the opening bars, with the trills of the violas and the clarinets but after 8 bars the obsessiveness of the rhythm comes back, more focused: it’s not spread out in an arpeggio but it’s pounding every beat with an offbeat response of the right hand in the piano.
The second melodic idea bursts in, in a fortissimo molto marcato of the first violins doubled by the horns. Notice that it still fits an 8 bars phrase.
Repeated in piano by the flutes, this idea makes use of that triplet of 16th we heard earlier, so typical of the flamenco tradition. We find it in the first violins part as well, closing this phrase.
Incidentally, De Falla was no stranger to the musical tradition of his country as well as to the techniques typical of the flamenco, such as the rasgueado, plenty of which can be found in his Siete canciones populares españolas.
This whole piece has another typically Spanish flavor in the harmony: the minor chord on a lowered second degree resolving on a major chord – like A minor to B major.
Technically we could see in this a derivative of the Neapolitan sixth chord.
But let’s not dwell on the influences of different musical streams over the centuries.
The rhythm transfers to the first violins and flute, depicting the stomping feet movements once again. Alternating soft and loud dynamics, in a twirl of contrasting emotions, De Falla drives us back to the beginning: the trills come back in the violas, enriched this time by an answer on the second beat by the flutes. The rhythm is tightened also by the change in the timpani line.
This A1 section is a repetition of the A section – except that the rhythmic line at rehearsal 33 leads into the coda: the dance is getting more and more frantic. The 16th turn into triplets
and land on a succession of upwards and downwards scales
until only the stomping is left to close the piece.
Technical tip
The ending of this piece requires a tight stroke with a very short rebound. I would avoid using full arms for the chords: they are too quick and there’s too many of them to keep up without slowing down. Just the forearm is enough, as long as you keep the pulse.
For a full technical analysis, look up the video in the repertoire section
In conclusion
De Falla, who draws copiously and with exquisite knowledge from the historical repertoire of Spanish music, has given us one of his most beautiful pieces with his Amor Brujo, full of melodies and tempo changes. La Danza Ritual del Fuego is probably its most popular standalone piece: a thrill both for the audience, and for the orchestra – not to mention the conductor 😉
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