Just before Manuel de Falla left Paris to return to Spain in 1914, he completed his harmonizations of Siete canciones populares españoles for voice and piano using natural overtones to accompany the melody notes rather than traditional modal scales. Violinist Paul Kochanski (1887-1934) worked with Falla to transcribe six of the songs for violin and piano, leaving out the Seguidilla murciana. Since then, the songs have become the most famous of any of Kochanski's transcriptions, and many transcriptions for other instruments also have been made of the songs (including the Seguidilla). Kochanski's work was entitled Suite populaire espagnole, and that same title has been used for most of the other arrangements as well. The ordering of the songs in Kochanski's arrangement did not follow Falla's original score, but many performers prefer to restore Falla's numbering. Kochanski's suite begins with El paño moruno (The Moorish Cloth), to which Kochanski added pizzicato figures. The next songs, Nana (a lullaby) and Canción, are both based on popular published tunes. Jota is Falla's own work in the style of folk dance music from Aragon; for this song Kochanski uses pizzicato chords as if to imitate castanets. The most famous of the songs by far is Asturiana, a lament from northern Spain, played on muted strings. The final Polo is again an original Falla piece in the style of a folk dance, sometimes described as gypsy- or flamenco-like.

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