Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla (review)

Carol A. Hess's latest investigation into the life and works of Manuel de Falla presents many polemical issues, and reveals a deep knowledge of the politics of Spain's Silver Age (c.1898–1936), a period of quest for a new national identity. Less radical than her prize-winning Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–1936 (Chicago and London, 2001; see my review in Music & Letters, 84 (2003), 322–4), her new monograph explores some of the topics, often contradictorily discussed, in earlier biographies, for example Falla's political stance during the Spanish Civil War, his relationship with women (including rumours of homosexuality and misogynistic tendencies), his public image as ascetic and saintlike, and his self-imposed exile to Argentina. Hess also considers the extent to which Falla and his music became embroiled in the film and popular music scenes of the 1930s and 1940s, taking up the idea that Falla's music, like the ambiguous man that he was, was viewed either as 'ground-breaking' in erudite circles (which it was) or as 'high class pop' music (p. 292 n. 15) accessible to the masses around the world (still evident today). Emphasis on Falla's strong Catholic beliefs and deeply human emotions perhaps gave rise to a change in the book's title, which originally was listed as 'Self and Circumstance—The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla', echoing the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset's statement 'I am I and my circumstance' (p. 1). In this review I concentrate on these and one or two other important questions.

Hess examines on many fronts the enigma that was Falla, with his innate indecisiveness, sensitivity, temerity, and resulting contradictory nature. She acknowledges Stravinsky's comment about Falla's 'manifestations of humor'; Falla's complaints about publishers' unauthorized alterations to his own compositions, while he had no qualms about adapting Chopin's; his love of a good practical joke even when it was on him; his neurosis while making daily decisions yet maintaining a steadfast religious faith as a basis of his life; his political swings from liberalism to 'halfhearted' support of the Right during the Spanish Civil War; his ascetic monk-like lifestyle while composing 'some highly sensual music'; and his meekness in killing a cockroach, while accepting 'the human costs of Civil War' (p. 4). Hess adopts the stance that the evidence speaks for itself: 'The numerous testimonials about Falla, whether conflicting or consistent, whether proffered by others or by himself, are constant reminders of the difficulty of isolating certain attitudes as representative when they may in fact be only transient' (p. 298). Eventually she is able to give satisfactory answers to some of these enigmas, particularly the knotted web of Falla's political position during the Spanish Civil War, while others, such as his sexual preference, remain unanswered.

Falla's stylistic excursions into salon music and zarzuelas, wagnerismo, Albéniz-like Spanishness, French impressionism, miniatures, andalucismo, neoclassicism ('his true voice', p. 291), 'Webernistic' influences, and universalism are all observed by Hess, who follows up with the question: 'Might he have taken up serialism had Atlántida not consumed him?' (loc. cit.). While this path might seem to be the logical one for Falla to follow, her question is fallacious and, for Falla, entirely out of character, especially when so much evidence from his own writings, his correspondence with his colleagues, and his interaction with the 'Grupo de los Ocho' (a group of eight Spanish composers, similar to the French 'Les Six') makes it clear that he could not possibly abandon tonality or yield to German musical hegemony. For him, tonality was tantamount to faith. He could, however, stretch it to its limits (flirting with the concept of serial techniques in Fanfare on the Name of A.R.B.O.S., adapting it to his own magical number, 7, instead of Schoenberg's twelve...