El amor brujo ('Love the Magician') was composed between November 1914 and April 1915, at the instigation of the gypsy singer and dancer Pastora Imperio, who asked Falla and Sierra for 'a dance and a song'. The original version, scored for mezzo-soprano and small instrumental ensemble, was given for the first time on 15th April 1915 by Imperio and her company under Moreno Ballesteros, at the Teatro Lara in Madrid, but it was not a success. The Press actually criticised the score for its lack of Spanish character; an astonishing assertion when one considers that, although no folk tunes as such are used in it, the music was radically influenced by the Andalusian soleares, seguiiriyas, polos and martinetes which Rosario la Mejorana, Pastora's mother, had sung to Falla.

Other performances followed in Barcelona, but in 1916 Falla re-scored it for a normal theatre orchestra (but with an important piano part), in which form it received successful concert performances (with and without the songs) in Madrid. This revised version was staged for the first time on 22nd May 1925, when the ballet was produced at the Trianon-Lyrique Theatre in Paris, with the composer conducting Spectacles Bériza. The scene is a gypsy camp Candelas is in love with Carmelo, but is haunted by the ghost of her dead lover, a dissolute but fascinating gypsy whose memory threatens her hopes of finding happiness with Carmelo. Pantomima portrays a dance by Candelas' friend Lucia, in an attempt to distract the ghost's attention from Candelas so that she and Candelo can embrace and break the spell.

The dance itself is a seductive Cádiz tango in 7/8, begun, in the ballet, by the orchestra's principal cello; it is prefaced by a dramatic reference to the ghost's theme and followed by a coda which suggests that the spell is beginning to weaken. Canción is the 'Song of love's sorrow', in which Candelas expresses her frustration in cante jondo style. Both excerpts are played here in transcriptions for cello and piano arranged by Charles Schiff.

Writer: Robin Golding