Homenaje (pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy)

Manuel de Falla, the Spanish composer of this piece, was evidently a big fan of guitar. Consider this quote he wrote in 1933 in the prologue to Emilio Pujol’s Guitar School method book series:

It is a marvelous instrument, as austere as it is rich in sound, and which now powerfully, now gently, takes possession of the soul. It concentrates within itself the essential values of many noble instruments of the past, and has acquired these values as a great inheritance without losing those native qualities which it owes, through its origin, to the people themselves.

Yeah, that’s heady, but it’s beautiful and I love it.

Despite his fondness for the instrument, de Falla only ever wrote a single piece of music for it—Homenaje. It is a tribute to Claude Debussy which de Falla wrote in 1920, two years after Debussy passed away. Despite it being a short and somber piece, it is packed full of exquisite textures, colors, and harmonies. It’s a true microcosm of the richness of his much larger works.

Homenaje was one of the early “serious” pieces I learned when I started learning classical guitar in earnest. This recording dates back to 2015, when I was about a year or so into my classical guitar deep dive.