Manuel de Falla, Spain’s most famous composer, was reticent by nature and uneasy being caught in the limelight
Manuel de Falla was the first Spanish composer to gain international recognition, and his music, although heavily influenced by classical and romantic composers, popularised the heady sound of traditional Spanish folk music.
Falla was born in Cadíz on November 23, 1876, to a middle-class family that encouraged his precocious musical talent. In 1899, he began his career as a composer by writing zarzuelas (Spanish operetta) in order to raise money for his family, who had recently suffered financial hardship. But he found zarzuelas unfulfilling and began studying with composer Felipe Pedrell (1841–1922). Under Pedrell’s influence, he was to compose a true Spanish opera, La vida brève, neither zarzuela nor in the well-known Italian style.
Unable to find a producer for the opera in Spain, Falla moved to Paris where success finally came in 1907 when it was staged by the Opéra-Comique. While in Paris, Falla came under the influence of DEBUSSY and his next orchestral work, Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1916), owes much to the great Impressionist’s style.
In addition to his orchestral work, Falla also wrote incidental music for the theatre. Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes, heard some of Falla’s incidental music and commissioned him to write a ballet. The result, first staged in London 1919, was the popular and humorous The Three-Cornered Hat.
That same year, Falla’s parents died, and he returned to Granada to care for his sister. In the 1920s, in Granada, Falla met the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, and the two men discovered that they shared an interest in the tradition of the Spanish small-scale theatre. In order to exploit their shared interest they collaborated on a puppet opera El Retablo de Maese Pedro (1923), which was based partly on Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
The puppet opera, more than any previous work, drew on traditional Spanish folk music. But in this piece Falla also uses the harpsichordfor the first time.Falla featured the instrument in his next major work, the Harpsichord Concerto (1926). Inspired by the music of Scarlatti, the concerto continued to highlight Spanish folk music but within a classical setting.
Manuel de Falla, Spain’s most famous composer, was reticent by nature and uneasy being caught in the limelight
In the 1930s, the political situation in Spain became increasingly unstable, and at the outbreak of civil war in 1936 Garcia Lorca was executed by the fascists. After the war ended in 1939, Falla, uneasy with the fascist victory, fled to Argentina. During his final years there he composed only a few pieces, focusing most of his failing energy on Atlántida—a complicated work that he described as a “scenic cantata” exploring the influence of Catholicism on South America. Falla died on November 23, 1946, leaving Atlántida unfinished.
Jane Prendergast
SEE ALSO:
FOLK MUSIC; IMPRESSIONISM IN MUSIC; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
James, Burnett. Manuel de Falla and the Spanish Musical Renaissance (London: Gollancz, 1979);
Demarquez, Suzanne, trans., Salvator Attanasio. Manuel de Falla (New York: Da Capo Press, 1983).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Harpsichord Concerto;
Nights in the Gardens of Spain;
The Three-Cornered Hat; La vida breve.