Joaquin Turina
Joaquín Turina Pérez (Seville, December 9, 1882-Madrid, January 14, 1949) was a Spanish composer and musicologist who represented nationalism in the first half of the 20th century. Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albéniz and he composed the most important works of Impressionism in Spain. His most important works are Fantastic Dances and The Rocío Procession .
Biography
Joaquín Turina was born in Seville on December 9, 1882. His father, Joaquín Turina y Areal, was a costumbrista painter, and his mother, Concepción Pérez, sang in the women's choir of their brotherhood.
Since he was little, he was known as a child prodigy. At just four years old, he improvised virtuously on the accordion that one of his maids had given him.He had the opportunity to receive his first music classes at the Colegio del Santo Ángel and was in charge of accompanying the girls' choir.
He studied high school at the San Ramón school and began piano studies with Enrique Rodríguez. Evaristo García Torres, chapel master of the Cathedral of Seville, was the one who taught him much of the knowledge of harmony and counterpoint that the composer put into practice in his artistic works.
Turina kept very good memories of her mentor Evaristo García. With these words he showed his affection for his teacher: "He had a talent superior to that of Eslava." Or also:
"Let me remind myself of the most dear memory of D. Evaristo, my first master, whose works, something Italian, but of ingenuity and admirable purity, I keep copied by my hand as a precious treasure of the most venerable of priests and musicians."Joaquin Turina
Turina began as a professional musician through a piano quintet that she had formed with a group of friends. The group called itself La Orquestina. They performed at parties and meetings and it was the first platform with which Turina could start as a performer and composer.
It was on March 14, 1897 when, in the Piazza room in Seville, Turina officially presented herself to the public. The presentation was given at a recital organized by the Quartet Society. She interpreted a Fantasy on Rossini's Moses by Sigismundo Thalberg. This event received very good reviews from the local press, which recognized and highlighted the success and virtuous improvement of the work. Due to the great reception from the public and the press, a month later, another performance by the Sevillian composer took place in the same place. This time he experimented with composition for keyboard and chamber ensembles. His first orchestral work is Coplas al Señor de la Pasión , written for the Brotherhood of Pasión and premiered in the Church of El Salvador with a small orchestra of twenty musicians, a men's choir, tenor and baritone, conducted by the author. The great interest he felt in classical music prompted him to create his first opera at the age of fifteen, La Sulamita , based on a book by Pedro Balgañón. He had a great desire to excel and every time he wanted to create works of a higher category.
Turina began medical studies, but decided to retire and dedicate himself professionally to music with his aforementioned teacher, García Torres. This warns him of the need to move to Madrid. His father supported him at all times, even financing his studies and declaring in his will the wish that his daughter should use his money to continue his artistic career.
Finally, in 1902, he moved to Madrid and began his studies with José Tragó. Turina, after arriving in the Spanish capital, goes to the Teatro Real to listen to a symphony concert on Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. The orchestral concerts were the ones that most passionated the composer, even above the opera and the zarzuela. Turina's father, very devoted to his son's artistic career, tries to pull strings so that his son's opera, La Sulamita , can be premiered at the Teatro Real. But it was not successful and he was never able to premiere his opera. On March 14, 1903, he performed before the Madrid public at the Ateneo, with works by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner and three of his own works that have now disappeared: The dance of the elves, Variations on popular songs and Gran polacca. In Madrid he did not give composition classes, but he did improve his piano level.
In 1903 his parents died and, following his teacher's advice, he moved to study in Paris. Joaquín Nin, a good friend of his and a great connoisseur of Parisian musical life, advised him to teach classes with the German maestro Moritz Moszkowski. But it seems that the classes do not convince Turina, since he himself wrote to his girlfriend telling her: "Apart from advancing somewhat in the technique of fingering scales, I learned little else".
From this situation, he began his composition studies with Vincent D'Indy, at the Schola Cantorum, which he alternated with his performances as an interpreter of his own works. On April 29, 1907, he presented himself to the Parisian public at the Salle Aeolian. He appeared solo with his Poem of the Seasons . He was very well received and a week later, in the same room, he premiered his Quintet in G minor with the Parent Quartet. The work was so successful that it was awarded an award at the 1907 Autumn Salon. An anecdote about this event is that Turina himself confesses that the conversation he had with Albéniz and Falla that same day was really the prize he won. He describes the conversation with the two Spanish geniuses as "the most complete metamorphosis of his life." In that conversation, Albéniz advised him not to write any more French-influenced music and to dedicate himself entirely to Spanish and Andalusian popular singing.
“In Paris I perfected all the compositional studies, and then, always studying, I came to love more and more a profession in which you are always learning...”.J. Turin
In this Parisian stage, the Sevillian composer begins to leave the environment of the Schola Cantorum and begins to give way to songs, very characteristic rhythms of Andalusia.
In 1908 he married Obdulia Garzón and two years later the first of their five children was born. In 1909 Isaac Albéniz died. Turina, in memory of his friend, adapts a Spanish theme: El Vito . The result is his op. 3 for piano, which he titles Romantic Sonata . The work was interpreted by himself in October of that same year.
In 1913 he completed his training period at the Schola Cantorum. But the outbreak of the First World War forces his departure from Paris and Turina's definitive return to Madrid where he established his residence.
On October 10, 1914, he premiered the lyrical comedy Margot, op. 11, with a libretto by the couple formed by Gregorio Martínez Sierra and María de la O Lejárraga, who would be his usual collaborators in the plays Christmas (1916), La adultera penitente (1917) and Jardín de Oriente (1923).
In 1919, Turina joined the French Quartet as a pianist; and, later, of the Madrid Quintet. He worked as a conductor, where he achieved great success, leading performances of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1918). In 1929 he signed an agreement with the publishing house Unión Musical Española for the composition of piano works.
In January of the following year, at the Ateneo de Madrid, a concert of young Spanish musicians takes place. The protagonists are Falla and Turina. His repertoire focused on symphonic music, chamber music, songs and, above all, works for piano, which are the most abundant within his artistic production. They hired him as concertmaster at the Teatro Real on the same dates that, as a composer, he premiered the Fantastic Dances, the Sevillian Symphony, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Jardín de Oriente, The Bullfighter's Prayer and Trio No. 1.
During this period he also dedicated himself to teaching. He teaches composition at a private level and later at the Madrid Conservatory.
During the 1920s and 1930s, he frequently visited Barcelona and Catalonia and associated with several Catalan artists, critics and intellectuals, such as Manuel Clausells, Joan Lamote de Grignon, Eugenio d'Ors, Oleguer Junyent, Frank Marshall, Rafael Moragas, Jaime Pahissa and Santiago Rusiñol. He also collaborated with various musical institutions, such as the Da Camera Music Association, the Barcelona Municipal Band or the Pau Casals Orchestra. As a result of this relationship, he composed Evocaciones, a set of three piano pieces that became a tribute to Catalonia and included a sardana. On October 23, 1928, together with Pau Casals, he premiered the transcription for a cello and piano «Maundy Thursday at midnight» (from the Seville suite) at the Palau de la Música Catalana.
During the Spanish civil war, which began in 1936, he was protected by the British consul, declaring Turina as administrative staff of the consulate. On Christmas 1937, Turina dedicates the incomplete manuscript of the work El Cortijo to the consul. He later completed it, receiving the thanks of the consul.
In 1935 he was named academic number of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and, in 1941, commissioner of Music. The tributes, recognitions and trips followed one another without ceasing. In 1917 he published the Abridged Encyclopedia of Music and in 1946 the Treatise on Composition , he was also the author of numerous articles, reviews and conferences. The last work in his catalog is the piano piece titled From my terrace which bears the opus number 104 and is dated 1947.
In the last years of his life he exploded his facet as a music critic. He participated in the newspaper El Debate , the newspaper Ya and also in the weekly Dígame .
The continuous illness that ended his life caused his musical production to decrease a lot, being able to compose only thirteen works in the last years of his life. After several weeks admitted to the hospital of Dr. López Ibor, Turina died at his home due to bronchopneumonia in Madrid on January 14, 1949.
Musical Features
Rhythmic aspect
The rhythms used by Turina in his compositions come, for the most part, from the Andalusian, flamenco or gypsy tradition. On occasions, it is also possible to find references to various traditional music from the rest of Spain such as the pasodoble, the zorcico, typical of the Basque Country, or the jota, typical of the territories that made up the former crown of Aragon.
The time signatures, both binary and ternary, that can be seen in his works are typical of these traditional Spanish forms: the alternation between 6:8 and 3:4 for bulerías, guajiras or peteneras, 5:8 for the zorcico or 2:4 for the pasodobles or the zambra (gypsy dance). The denomination of these forms is also used in the tempo indications of some of his scores.
Regarding the treatment of musical figures, the most characteristic features of Turina's work include the use of polyrhythms typical of the aforementioned traditional forms (simultaneating various syncopated rhythms with headless, amphibracal, anapestic or spondeal beginnings), the use of the Andalusian tresillo, the quarter note or eighth note dots (used to give religious or marching character) and the long trails of semiquaver notes that Benavente calls "comet tails", thus imitating flamenco guitar falsetas, slowed down by irregular syncopations.
Melodic aspect
The melody in Turina's works presents, like the rhythm, influences from the Andalusian, flamenco or gypsy tradition. For this reason, Benavente considers it necessary to establish a general scale that encompasses all of this based on the Phrygian mode, to which certain Gypsy or Arabic chromatic alterations are added (thus creating, for example, augmented second intervals) used as notes. by the way, embroideries, flourishes or jipíos. This ascending and descending scale, starting from the Phrygian mode of mi and with said alterations in parentheses, would consist of the following notes:
mi fa sol (sol #) la (si b) si do re (re #) mi re do si (si b) la (sol #) sol fa mi
In the melodic developments, Turina tends to rest on the I and V degrees of the Andalusian range. The most frequent intervals are those of the second and are rarely higher than the fifth, as the flamenco tradition dictates. However, these also present a clear tendency to increase progressively in the syncopated braking that closes the classic sixteenth note trails.
By means of alternating, combining and judiciously superimposing the rhythmic figures mentioned in the previous section, there is a clear taste for the insistence on the attack form, through a repeated ostinato at the beginning of the various motifs that make up each phrase musical, in imitation of some folkloric forms. Also noteworthy is the borrowing of melodies taken from Spanish popular songs and the construction of melodic turns by fourths, trying to imitate the sound of the open strings of the guitar.
Harmonic language
Turina's harmony, when limited to the major and minor modes, can be framed in a romantic tonal framework, with well differentiated tonic, subdominant and dominant functions, despite a certain nuance and sophistication of the techniques Impressionist composition. Turina's influences on the harmonic plane are not only limited to the Andalusian or Spanish sphere, but also include French Impressionism and the knowledge acquired at the Schola Cantorum in Paris.
From Impressionism it is worth highlighting the added notes or the appoggiatura without resolution to give the chord a certain color. In addition, the use of certain non-diatonic degrees is also recurrent, such as the II, III, VI or VII lowered one semitone or the IV increased in the same interval, augmented or diminished fifths, augmented sixth harmonies and anti-classical arrangements of the dominant or ninth chords, with the seventh on the bottom and the root a distance from the second, which can sound especially dissonant when dealing with major sevenths.
The modal scope arises when the composer tries to evoke Andalusian folklore, with his own cadences (among them the famous Andalusian cadence, such as the famous la sol fa mi, Am G F E), harmonized according to the typical flamenco guitar technique for the musical genre that gives it its name and also incorporating influences from French neomodalism by composers such as d'Indy and other exponents of the Schola Cantorum.
Work
Turina was a professional pianist, conductor, composition teacher, music critic, educator, lecturer, writer and photographer. Along with Manuel de Falla, Julio Gómez García, Óscar Esplá, and Conrado del Campo, he was the creator of contemporary Spanish symphony that started from the foundations laid by Isaac Albéniz. Turina's compositional work was extensive, cultivating in it different musical genres.
Honorary Distinctions
Throughout his life he obtained important recognitions.
- He was named in 1926 "Son Predilecto" of the city of Seville.
- In 1926 he won the National Music Prize for his work Threesome with piano. Op35.
- In 1941, he was appointed an academic number of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.
- In 1941, Commissioner of Music.
- In October 1942 he received the Gran Cruz de Alfonso X el Sabio at the Madrid Conservatory of Music.
To commemorate his memory there are streets, primary schools, secondary education institutes and professional music conservatories in Madrid that bear his name. There are chamber music festivals that are also known by the name of Joaquín Turina.
There is a great legacy about the life and work of Turina. In 2003 the printed manuscripts and part of the personal documentation were found. In 2007 the press clippings, concert programs and part of his personal library were organized. More than 6000 personal images and cards have been found. In total, the legacy of Joaquín Turina brings together nearly 10,000 digital files, which are part of the funds of the Juan March Foundation.