Spain’s preeminent 20th-century composer, Manuel de Falla, was born 150 years ago. Albert Ehrnrooth explains how he forged a national musical identity that resonated far beyond his nation’s borders.

Manuel de Falla

Entering Manuel de Falla’s monk-like bedroom in his house museum in Granada is a moving experience. Shelves and a nightstand overflow with medicines, tins, brushes and dumbbells – remedies for a lifetime of real and imaginary ailments. Yet this health anxiety and preoccupation with cleanliness is understandable when one learns he lost two siblings, one in infancy and another to cholera at age seven. Moreover, his father probably succumbed to the Spanish flu.

Falla was an introverted man, described by Stravinsky as “modest and withdrawn as an oyster”, who never found a...