Federico Garcí­a Lorca

Federico Garcí­a Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. Garcí­a Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27.

In 1915, after graduating from secondary school, Garcí­a Lorca attended the University of Granada. During this time his studies included law, literature and composition. Throughout his adolescence he felt a deeper affinity for theatre and music than literature, training fully as a classical pianist, his first artistic inspirations arising from the scores of Debussy, Chopin and Beethoven. Later, with his friendship with composer Manuel de Falla Spanish folklore became his muse. Garcí­a Lorca did not begin a career in writing until his piano teacher died in 1916.

Garcí­a Lorca's first book of poems was published in 1921, collecting work written from 1918 and selected with the help of his brother Francisco (nicknamed Paquito). They concern the themes of religious faith, isolation and nature that had filled his prose reflections. Early in 1922 at Granada Garcí­a Lorca joined the composer Manuel de Falla in order to promote the Concurso de Cante Jondo, a festival dedicated to enhance flamenco performance. The year before Lorca had begun to write his Poema del cante jondo ("Poem of the deep song", not published until 1931), so he naturally composed an essay on the art of flamenco, and began to speak publicly in support of the Concurso. At the music festival in June he met the celebrated Manuel Torre, a flamenco cantador. The next year in Granada he also collaborated with Falla and others on the musical production of a play for children, adapted by Lorca from an Andalucian story. Inspired by the same structural form of sequence as "Deep song", his collection Suites (1923) was never finished and not published until 1983.