The archive of the Fondazione Istituto Liszt of Bologna helds three unpublished autographs of the Cádiz-born composer Manuel de Falla:
- A letter to Ricardo Viñes
- A postcard addressed to George Jean-Aubry
- A dedicatory document, with a fragment of musical score.
In this article, the documents are dated and interpreted within the artistic and personal life of Manuel de Falla, on the basis of researches made at the Archivo Manuel de Falla in Granada.
The letter and the postcard are analysed within the artistic and cultural relationships Falla had mainly with Paris, in the context of the aesthetic, political and cultural Spanish avant-garde of the first half of the Twentieth century.
The dedicatory document gives four bars of El retablo de Maese Pedro, where Falla quotes the Canción del fuego fatuo, from his earlier ballet Amor Brujo: this self-quotation is interpreted as a ‘musical password’ left by Falla to the unknown recipient of the dedicatory document.