Mystery in Madrid

When frail, nervous Spanish Composer Manuel de Falla died two years ago in voluntary exile in Argentina, he left behind some fiery and famous works: the lyric drama La Vida Breve, the ballets El Amor Brujo and The Three-Cornered-Hat But most of his friends said: "He died too soon; he died without finishing his master piece."

They seemed to be wrong. Last week, a different story was making the rounds in Madrid.

A scholarly, mystic man who led a life of celibate solitude, De Falla began work in 1928 on a great oratorio for soloists chorus and orchestra, based on the Catalonian epic poem, La Atlantida, by Jacinto Verdaguer. When De Falla's Atlantida was finished, he used to tell Argentine friends, he wanted the first performance to be in Buenos Aires.

Then he died and there were squabbles over where to bury him--in Argentina, said his anti-Franco friends; in Spain, said the Spanish embassy. The Franco government won, and De Falla's sister Maria hustled back to Spain with a sackful of his belongings. Since then, she has lived in seclusion with her surviving brother German in the sleepy Andalusian village of San Fernando, jealously guarding a shabby bag which contains La Atlantida--comp-leted down to the last note.

The world might have to wait a while to hear it. Last week, after Madrid's tabloid Informaciones had exhumed the story, music-and mystery-loving Madrilenos were taking their choice of two suggested explanations. The prosaic one insisted that Maria was hanging on to Manuel's last music because she and German were quarreling about minor details of Manuel's will. The more poetic theory: just before his death, Manuel had told Maria that the role of God in La Atlantida must be sung by one who was absolutely pure in heart and Maria, now a wrinkled, white-haired 62, felt that there is no such man in the world today.

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