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ABSTRACT
While still in his teens, Federico García Lorca (born June 5, 1898), Spain's foremost playwright and poet of the twentieth century, aspired at becoming a professional musician. His penetrating analyses of provincial musical life are followed in this article with characterizations of his New York and Havana musical encounters. Manuel de Falla, his lifetime devotee, wrote a fervent letter to Havana friends, praising Lorca to the skies.
In Cuba Lorca teamed with Adolfo Salazar, who had been his protagonist since 1921. Falla pleaded for his life several hours too late, after his assassination August 18, 1936. The present essay goes beyond all previous chronologies of Lorca's "musical moments" by virtue of the detailed attention given to their environmental context.
I GRANADA BEGINNINGS
THE PRIVILEGED life of Federico García Lorca, Spain's supreme modern era poet and playwright, spanned the interval between the Spanish-American War and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Born June 5, 1898, at Fuente Vaqueras, Granada province, he was the first son of a wealthy landowning native of Fuente Vaqueras, Federico García Rodríguez (b. 1859). The poet's mother Vicenta Lorca Romero, whose father died during her childhood, received her elementary education in a nun's school for poor girls. Bent on herself becoming a girl's primary school teacher, she enrolled in the Women's Teachers' Training College at Granada in 1888 and upon graduation in 1892 was assigned to the girls' elementary school at Fuente Vaqueras. Childless, recently widowed Federico García Rodríguez married her on August 27, 1897. The poet's siblings, born at Fuenta Vaqueras June 1, 1902 and April 14, 1903, were Francisco and María de la Concepcion (Concha). Isabel was born at Granada October 24, 1909.
In the autumn of 1909 the future unrivaled poet and playwright began six years of piano lessons with a native of Granada, who was harmony teacher in the local conservatory, Antonio Segura Mesa (1842-1916 [May 26]). The composer of orchestral works and of a zarzuela with lyrics by José Portero Requena, Dos Telegramas,1 premiered in the local Teatro Isabel Católica on February 15, 1877, Antonio Segura laid the foundation of what adolescent Federico dreamed of developing into a lifetime career.
Granada's most distinguished nineteenth-century musical visitor had been Glinka, supported there by his...