Manuel de Falla

Spanish composer

• Born: November 23, 1876
• Birthplace: Cádiz, Spain
• Died: November 14, 1946
• Place of death: Alta Garcia, Argentina

Falla, a preeminent composer of Spanish nationalistic music, combined elements of Impressionism with themes and folk melodies of his national and personal style. His art is rooted in the folk songs of Spain, in the purest historical traditions of Spanish music.

Early Life

Manuel de Falla (FAHL-yah) was born in Cádiz, Spain. Both of his parents were natives of Cádiz, but his father’s family was of Valencian origin while his mother was of Catalan extraction. He was taught by his mother to play the piano, and at age eleven he played a piano duet arrangement (with his mother) of Joseph Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ, which is performed annually in Cádiz on Good Friday.

At age seventeen, Falla began studying and analyzing the scores of Richard Wagner, the famous German opera composer. From these scores, combined with instruction in the basic elements of harmony, Falla began composing chamber music, or works for small groups of instruments, which were often performed for small audiences in the home of a local amateur musician named Viniegra. Falla began piano studies about this time with José Trago, but Falla wished to be a composer, not a virtuoso pianist. As musical renovation was at a very low ebb in Spain, Falla wanted to study in France. Lacking funds to travel, he turned to Felipe Pedrell, an aging composer, who in his early life had worked energetically for a national revival of Spain’s musical culture. Falla studied with Pedrell in Madrid for about three years, accepting in principle the doctrine of his instructor that each nation should base its music on the native folk song. Falla relied, however, more on the spirit than on the letter of Pedrell’s doctrine, incorporating into his music hints of folk melodies rather than literal quotations.

In 1904, the Academy of Fine Arts at Madrid announced that a prize would be awarded for the best lyrical drama by a Spanish composer. Falla hoped to win the prize, not only for the sake of recognition among Spanish musicians but also for the prize money, which would help him someday realize his goal of visiting France. Falla won the prize the following year with his two-act lyric opera La vida breve (life is short) and at the same time competed for the Ortiz y Cusso Prize, open to all Spanish pianists. In spite of his own doubts, he was unanimously awarded first prize in 1905. Finally, in 1907, he was able to travel to France.

What began as a seven-day excursion extended into a seven-year sojourn. Falla found his lengthy visit to Paris all he had hoped it would be. He was befriended by some of the greatest Impressionist composers of the day, including Claude Debussy, Paul-Abraham Dukas, and Maurice Ravel. From Debussy, Falla learned to exploit the inherent values of Andalusian popular music.

Life’s Work

Spain had not produced many great composers, but Falla was certainly one of the few. He gained his reputation through a rather small list of compositions, when compared with the listings of other composers. There is no mistaking the fact that he was a Spaniard, for his music is full of the traditional warmth and exciting rhythms of that country, based on its flamenco dances and songs. His best-known music comes from two ballets, El amor brujo (1915) and The Three Cornered Hat (1919), but what gained for him a reputation as a composer was one of his earliest works, the opera La vida breve (1905).

A large portion of Falla’s music is cast in the Andalusian idiom, which is a style of music from southern Spain based on the Phrygian mode. Built on a scale pattern from low E to third space E, without the use of sharps or flats, the Phrygian mode denotes a series of pitches appearing as a variation of the minor scale, changing the position of the half step intervals. Falla’s instrumental technique is conditioned often to the effects of Spain’s national instrument, the guitar. The full measure of Falla’s contribution to modern music can be appraised in his ability to replenish his inspiration at the vital sources of life and art: namely his heritage, his passion for music, and his creative abilities.

Falla was to animate with the full force of his genius the Andalusian melodic construction in his composition Noches en los jardines de España for orchestra and piano, which he began in 1908. Also in 1908, Falla’s Four Spanish Pieces were performed by Ricardo Vines; Falla himself performed the pieces in London in 1911. The crowning point of Falla’s European experience came on December 30, 1913, in the performance of his previously mentioned lyric opera La vida breve on the stage of the Opéra-Comique, a very fashionable and exciting Parisian theater where Falla’s music was received with great enthusiasm. In 1914, he returned to Madrid, where in the following year his ballet-pantomime El amor brujo debuted at the Teatro Lara.

In 1916, Falla completed his symphonic impression for orchestra and piano, Noches en los jardines de España, immediately placing himself as the foremost living Spanish composer. After several trips throughout Europe involving conducting and performing as soloist in many of his own works, Falla moved to Granada in 1922. There he organized the festival of cante hondo, an early nineteenth century highly emotional and tragic song cultivated among prisoners, which in turn may have had an Asian background. Sometime after this festival was organized, the song was adopted under the name cante flamenco by the Roma (Gypsies), who made it even more expressive. In 1928, while living near the Alhambra of Granada, Falla began work on a vast composition for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra entitled L’Atlántida , based on an epic by the Catalan poet Jacinto Verdaguer. From the initial stages of this grand work, it was clear that Falla’s creative vitality had impelled him to work within a larger form than he had hitherto attempted. Frail health, several composition students, and the Civil War of 1936, however, made it impossible for him to complete this intense composition.

The music of Falla is completely Spanish in feeling and expression. All the characteristics of popular Spanish music are to be found in his music. He is not, however, considered to be of the school of folklore composers. The number of examples wherein Falla directly quotes from folk-tune sources can be counted on one hand, and, yet, he is considered to be one of the best of the nationalistic composers. Nationalism in music is based on the idea that the composer should make his work an expression of national and ethnic traits, chiefly by drawing on the folk melodies and dance rhythms of his country and by choosing scenes from his country’s history as subjects for operas and symphonic poems. Falla was able to achieve this authentic yet personal reconstruction through the process of assimilation rather than imitation. The significance of Falla’s work is that he was able to renew the long-interrupted tradition of Spanish music by achieving the passion of past and present through the living medium of personal inspiration.

Falla’s melodies move generally within a small compass. The cante hondo style of melodic construction appears in most of his compositions, often sounding over an internal pedal-point, or continuously sounding pitch. This technique suggests the sound of the guitar, an instrument of typical Spanish folk music, and an instrument that Falla held in great esteem. Falla’s melodies are also intense and concentrated, rather than flowing and expansive. Points of lyrical climax are achieved through emotional intensity of the melodic line. Having no Spanish precedent to follow, the techniques of orchestration in Falla’s music seem to be influenced by the modern French school of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy in subtle orchestral effects and expression. Yet his instrumentation is essentially individual, with clear demonstration of his musical genius. Falla never expresses his orchestral texture in a heavy manner, but instead he prefers to contrast his instruments rather than blend them. Some passages of his music give a slight impression of polytonality, which is the use of different key or tonal centers within the orchestral construction. This seems often disconcerting to traditionally trained listeners. In spite of these occasional twentieth century idioms, however, the music of Falla is unmistakably reminiscent of the Spanish countryside, the Roma, and the folktales of the Castilian (northern Spanish) and Andalusian (southern Spanish) people.

Falla’s earlier works are primarily for the piano. These pieces are some of his most easily recognized as “Spanish” by the average listener, and reflect an atmosphere that is predominantly Andalusian. In later works, the listener is forced to consider that Falla is no longer as Spanish as in earlier music because of his gradual change in style from Andalusian to Castilian rhythms and folk melodies. In truth, however, Falla completes a total synthesis of the Spanish style in the combination of styles. By incorporating northern and southern Spain, Falla composed music for many different performing forces: piano and chamber works, opera, ballet, orchestral pieces, solo concerti, works for guitar, and compositions using chorus and orchestra.

In 1938, despite his ill health, Falla was named president of the Institute of Spain, which had been created by General Francisco Franco’s regime. Falla was unable to attend the inauguration assembly in Burgos because of his poor health, and the oath of office was administered to him at his home in Granada by the minister of education. In 1939, Falla moved to Alta Gracia, in the province of Cordoba, Argentina, where he lived until his death on November 14, 1946.

Significance

Falla, who combined the attributes of a scholar and a mystic with a deep human sympathy and sensibility, is probably the most representative Spanish composer since Spain’s Golden Age. Many of his pieces had a profound impact on the younger or lesser known composers of Spain, such as Joaquin Turina and the Impressionist Federico Mompou. Ernesto Halffter is probably Falla’s most celebrated student. Halffter attributes a great education in both impressionistic and nationalistic music to Falla. Other composers little known outside Spain who have shared the influences of Falla are José Maria Usandizaga, Jesus Guridi, and Conrado del Campo y Zabaleta.

Falla’s compositions breathe the air of Spain and allow the listener to be carried off to a land of excitement, exotic beauty, and constant simple pleasure. His music is full of wit and vivid use of instrumental tone colors. His harmonies are mixtures of the rich chords of Debussy and Ravel, and the predictable chords of Spanish guitar music. More than any other characteristic, the music of Falla is mostly melody and accompaniment clear, direct, and to the point, with much of the music based on Spanish dance rhythms and folk tunes. Nearly all of Falla’s works achieved polished precision, and each responds precisely to the demands of its genre, although the instrumental resources are small in most instances. The ambitious L’Atlántida for chorus, soloists, and orchestra received a posthumous performance in 1961 in a version completed by Falla’s pupil Halffter. Rather than the flashy imitation of Spain that is so common in the works of other composers, Spaniards say that Falla’s music captures the essence of the real Spain.

Bibliography

Chase, Gilbert. The Music of Spain. 2d ed. New York: Dover, 1959. Chase breaks the Spanish music styles into small descriptive groups, such as solo songs and music for guitar. Falla’s music is discussed in each category and compared with similar works by Falla and other composers.

Fraser, Andrew A. Essays on Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1930. A discussion of twentieth century music in essay form, describing Falla’s nationalistic style in music.

Harper, Nancy Lee. Manuel de Falla: His Life and Music. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2005. This biography examines Falla’s character in relation to other composers and to his music, and it discusses how Falla created his music.

Hess, Carol A. Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898-1936. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Using Falla’s career, Hess traces the modernist movement in Spain in relation to the events of the Spanish Civil War.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. A highly praised biography examining Falla’s personality, his religious devotion, and the creation of his music.

Palmer, Christopher. Impressionism in Music. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974. Palmer discusses impressionist characteristics and describes how Falla uses these in his reconstruction of Spanish folk music.

Pannain, Guido. Modern Composers. Translated by Michael R. Bonavia. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1933. A brief synopsis of the life and works of Falla with emphasis on his contributions to modern music.

Salzman, Eric. Twentieth Century Music: An Introduction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. This book provides a brief description of Falla’s most popular works and discusses his ability to use French-inspired composition techniques in his Spanish music.

Slonimsky, Nicolas. Music of Latin America. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1972. A discussion of twentieth century Latin music in general describing the use of instruments, folk tunes, and the like. It also provides a comparison of Falla’s work to the work of other composers of his time. This text is organized by nationality rather than by chronological dating.

Trend, John Brande. Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929. This book about the life of the composer details his works and contributions to twentieth century music.