Falla's harpsichord concerto that foreshadowed Nyman and Reich

Falla invented minimalism with a harpsichord in 1926

In 1926, Manuel de Falla composed a harpsichord concerto that, seen in hindsight, contains the manual of musical minimalism: relentless repetition, dry texture, zero concessions to easy emotion. Falla's method was to take old music by Antonio de Cabezón, strip it of ornament and turn it into a hypnotic rhythm. Fifty-six years later, Michael Nyman repeated the trick with Purcell for the soundtrack of The Draughtsman's Contract: fragment, repeat to exhaustion, wrap it in an obsessive texture. The same recipe, two composers, two centuries.

From the Spanish Renaissance to minimalism without detours

Falla did not stumble upon minimalism by chance. His harpsichord concerto borrows material from Cabezón and strips it to the bone: no grandiloquence, with a harpsichord as the absolute protagonist. That is exactly what was later credited as genius to Nyman and Steve Reich. Critics labelled Falla's work "mystical and neoclassical", a catch-all category that has prevented us from seeing its true nature. Nobody disputes the minimalism of Reich's Psalms; nor Arvo Pärt's. Falla, who got there first, was pigeonholed as spiritual.

The awkward kinship between Falla and Nyman

The comparison is no whim. Nyman took music by Purcell, fragmented it and repeated it to create an obsessive, dry atmosphere, identical to Falla's gesture with Cabezón. The difference is that Nyman arrived in 1982 and Falla in 1926. Minimalism, as a labelled movement, was born in New York in the sixties. But its Spanish roots, the ones Falla planted, remain unacknowledged in the textbooks.

The matter sparks a quiet debate: why is the Andalusian remembered as a neoclassicist while the Anglo-Saxons are hailed as the fathers of minimalism? The answer probably has more to do with the art market than with music. But the fact stands: a harpsichord and a Spanish composer beat the prophets of repetition by half a century.