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Joaquin Turina (1882-1949)
Las Musas de Andalucia
La Oracion del Torero
Turian was a formidable Spanish composer. He was born the son of a painter of Italian descent and encouraged by his family to study medicine. He soon abandoned medicine to study music. Turina's early music education was in his hometown of Seville, where he studied both piano and composition. Eventually in 1902 in Mdarid, he enrolled in the Real Conservatoriao Superior de Musica where he becamse a dedicated piano student of Jose Trago. In 1905, Turian moved to Paris to become a composition student of d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum. Although his friends and fellow composers Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albeniz provided him suggesions for his compositions, Turina claimed to have learned most of his technique from the impressionists Debussy and Ravel. However, de Falla urged Turina to use Spanish popular music and folksongs in his music. Clearly, Turina illustrates the local atmosphere of his native Andalucia with his use of folk idiom, as heard in Las Musas de Andalucia. Another example of his programmatic writing is heard in La Oracion del Torero (The Bullfighter's Prayer), which was originally written for lute quartet; the piece retained its popularity and Turina later orchestrated it in 1925.
-- program notes by Laurien Jones