El amor brujo (trans. "Love, the Magician") is a theater work by the Spanish classical composer Manuel de Falla. It showcases flamenco, the music of the Gitanos who traditionally form Spain's underclass. When it premiered in Spain in 1915, it proved controversial: some Spanish critics applauded Falla for celebrating the music of a marginalized culture while others attacked his mixing of classical and popular idioms. Since then, El amor brujo has intrigued arrangers and artists. It has been repeatedly reshaped, rearranged, and repackaged, either by Falla himself or by artists ranging from the concert pianist Artur Rubinstein to the super-showman Liberace or to various jazz and pop arrangers. El amor brujo has also figured in soundtracks, whether frothy movie musicals from the 1940s, somber accounts of recent Spanish history, or films on anti-Black racism, including one by Spike Lee. In Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo, author Carol A. Hess explores the ways in which music, class, and race are intertwined in this composition's unusually rich history.

Carol A. Hess is the author of two of the most important books ever published on Falla, Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898-1936 (2001) and Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla (2005). I consider her to be the leading expert on Falla, but in addition to the breadth and depth of her knowledge, she is also a talented writer with a literary flair. * Walter Aaron Clark, University of California, Riverside *
A remarkable book: insightful, penetrative, and beautifully written too...thoroughly accessible...questions received wisdom and posits new explanations. * Chris Collins, Musical Times *
A sophisticated biography...a valuable contribution to the growing body of scholarship on twentieth-century Spanish music. * Michael Christoforidis, University of Melbourne *
Hess has suggested intriguing new ways of listening to Falla's music, opened up questions that will not soon be answered about his place in his culture...uses reception history to break down critical roadblocks. * James Parakilas, Journal of the American Musicological Society *
May it set a precent for twenty-first century music studies. * Richard Taruskin, University of California, Berkeley *

Carol A. Hess teaches at the University of California, Davis, where she is a Distinguished Professor of Music. She has received numerous awards for her research on music of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world. A Fulbright lecturer, she has taught in Spain, Chile, and Argentina. Her most recent book, Aaron Copland in Latin America: Music and Cultural Politics, appeared in early 2023.