José Luis Turina

By Jorge Castro

Interview published in the Internet magazine Encima de la niebla (Above the fog) (January 2020)
https://encimadelaniebla.com/jose-luis-turina/


Question: At what point did José Luis Turina decide to dedicate himself to composition?
Answer: I am a late bloomer because dedicating myself to music was not in my plans when I was studying general education and high school. My musical vocation awakened in an unexpected way, without anticipating it, around the age of sixteen. I was studying at the institute where my father taught, the "Jaume Balmes" in Barcelona, and when I started upper high school (I liked music, but more so light music at that time) I joined the school's choir. I saw such a richness there that my vocation suddenly awakened with such an impressive force that when I finished high school and the pre-university course, I enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in Barcelona without having a clear idea of what career I wanted to pursue, and after three months, I left. I simultaneously enrolled in the Municipal Conservatory of Music of Barcelona and fully dedicated myself to advancing my musical studies as much as I could. I'm talking about starting with first-year solfège at 17! Since at that time it was possible to alternate official and free education, in three years I completed the five courses of solfège and the first course of harmony, and although I started very late, I finished the degree at the same age (around 28) as my peers who studied composition at the Madrid Conservatory. I wanted to be a violinist and completed six years of violin, but when you start an instrument like the violin at 16, you already know you won't be able to play it without having significant physiological problems, and I did have them, I had many issues with muscle contractions because the violin is a very complicated instrument, with a very unergonomic position, very "twisted", physically speaking. Realizing that I would have to leave the violin sooner or later led me to a more theoretical discipline, and although composition was not initially in my plans, I gradually became interested and started writing some pieces, and by the age of twenty-three, I was certain I wanted to be a composer. Now I am very glad I dedicated myself to composition, but it was somewhat fortuitous.

Q: As we all know, your grandfather was the great Joaquín Turina. Is carrying the Turina surname a heavy burden?
A: Of course, since it's my first surname, you can't hide it. I am very proud of my surname and value it greatly, but it's true that it demands a lot from you... I'm not going to say it doesn't open many doors for you, nor will I say it closes others, but it does make you be seen as "the grandson of", and that can sometimes be an advantage but also a disadvantage. At the beginning of my career, I questioned whether I should pursue this path being the grandson of such a great composer. It was a doubt I had, and initially it was difficult to bear, but right now, once you overcome that stage of a certain reluctance from the musical environment, let's say I am delighted. In the early stages of a profession, carrying an illustrious surname can be a burden, but the important thing is to overcome that stage; now we are two Turinas.

Q: Your father, José Luis Turina Garzón, is a painter. You are undoubtedly a family of artists.
A: None of my grandfather's five children became musicians. He didn't want any of them to follow that path. Interestingly, my grandfather's father had also been a painter. In my family, we have alternated between painters and musicians... My great-grandfather, Joaquín Turina y Areal, was a fairly important painter of the late 19th-century Sevillian school, my grandfather was a musician, my father a painter, I am a musician, and my brother Joaquín is also a painter. In the next generation, there are all sorts, let's say those are the two artistic branches that have most interested us as a family.

Q: In your works, there are many references to Chagall, Zóbel... how has painting influenced you?
A: Living with a painter makes you see painting in a very different way because it's not the same to attend an exhibition as to see how a painting is made. I spent a lot of time sleeping in the studio where my father worked because we were five siblings. We lived in a house that wasn't very big, so we had to be creative with space. At night, in the studio, a foldable bed would be opened, and I slept there for a long time. I remember once, when I was very young, I pushed the easel as I was going to bed (the bed was very close), and the painting with fresh oil fell on me. Imagine how long it took to get all that out of my hair! (laughs). So for me, the smell of turpentine is like Proust's madeleine; every time I smell it, it brings my entire childhood back to me. All this gives you a great closeness to painting, a material closeness. My father even took my brother and me to paint. For example, he would take us to the port of Barcelona, and we painted landscapes of boats. It was very nice, I really liked painting, and I was good at it, but my musical vocation weighed more. Later on, painting has had great importance in some of my works where I have used pictorial references, either about specific painters, such as the Exequias a la memoria de Fernando Zóbel, whom I met in Cuenca in the 1980s because I worked there, which is like a requiem after his death; the Dos cuadros de Marc Chagall for solo violin, based on two of Chagall's violinists; the Homenaje a Óscar Domínguez for viola and strings... And one of my first orchestral works is called Pentimento, which means repentance in Italian, because it is based on a pictorial phenomenon where the painter paints something, repents, paints over it, and with time, what was painted below resurfaces and is on a plane quite similar to the final painting. In that piece, I base it on this pictorial phenomenon to establish a kind of musical story where in an orchestral work, a string quartet suddenly emerges that was previously on the staff paper where I was composing the orchestral work.

Q: In addition to studying at the conservatories in Barcelona and Madrid, as we mentioned earlier, you also studied with Donatoni in Rome.
A: Yes, although I wasn't officially his student. I was a scholar in Rome at the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts, but due to a bureaucratic error, I wasn't enrolled in Donatoni's course. However, he didn't prevent me from attending his classes as an auditor and participating actively, so I consider myself a student of his because I attended his classes. I don't consider myself a student in terms of the usefulness of the teaching I received from him, because one studies and then what is useful or not depends on many factors. Over the years, you reflect and say: I am a student of Calés in counterpoint, of García Abril and Román Alís in composition, but I owe more to what I've analyzed from Bach, from Alban Berg... so who are you really a student of? In the end, a composer is somewhat self-taught, which is perhaps why I've never taught composition. I worked with Donatoni for a year, which was very interesting, but you will hardly find direct references in my music to what I learned from him. However, being in Rome led me to discover an Italian composer, Salvatore Sciarrino, who for me was like a guiding star that illuminated a certain moment in my life, and Sciarrino's influence can indeed be traced in my music (now less so, but it was very present); Donatoni's influence, not at all.

Q: In addition to composition, you have dedicated many years to management. What has your experience been in this field, and what differences do you find between contemporary Spanish music now and, for example, twenty years ago?
A: While my experience with the JONDE (Spanish National Youth Orchestra) has been very good, my experience with management has not been as much, to be honest. Especially in recent years, due to the crisis, we have entered a process of excessive bureaucracy and significant management complications, making me spend more time on administrative tasks than on artistic ones, which is supposed to be my main focus. Regarding contemporary music, the JONDE is probably the Spanish symphony orchestra that has paid the most attention to it, within its limited scope and proportionate to its activity compared to other orchestras. While the National Orchestra gives one concert a week, we do three symphonic meetings a year, so it's not comparable. But proportionally, we have likely paid more attention to contemporary music than the rest of the Spanish orchestras, and in that sense, I believe we have supported newly created music, especially young composers who have participated as guest composers or resident composers with the orchestra. The current situation is lamentable, and I’ll summarize it in one sentence: if I had to start my career now, I don't know if I would dedicate myself to composing, because the little attention given to contemporary music is pathetic. In fact, you can look at the monthly programming of the Auditorium: what you will see are soundtrack concerts and the like, or naturally concerts consisting solely of Beethoven's Fifth, Tchaikovsky's Pathétique, or Vivaldi's Four Seasons, meaning the most basic repertoire. Why? Because the obsession is to fill the hall. If you program high-quality contemporary music, the hall is not even one-tenth full. So, finding the balance is difficult. Orchestras want to increase the number of subscribers and ensure success. We're talking about orchestras, but the same thing happens with chamber music, though it's more noticeable with symphonic music because they have a more pressing issue, as it's very costly to maintain an orchestra, requiring a large number of people. Therefore, they must ensure minimum income since subsidies and public funds do not cover their activities, so they have to offer a repertoire that guarantees a full hall to cover expenses or even, when it's a private orchestra, to make a profit. Programming has turned into pure marketing. It's very sad, although despite everything, I haven't stopped believing in composition because I need to compose to feel at peace with myself. Especially in the last ten years, there has been a substantial change in the treatment and attention given to contemporary music by concert programmers; there is a worrying mental laziness. This is offset by the fact that there are still institutions, usually public like the CNDM, which maintains a stronghold, a spiritual reserve of contemporary music like the 20/21 cycle, which has taken over the legacy left by the Contemporary Music Diffusion Center and must continue to do so, as the State has to ensure this or at least not let it die because that would be tragic. A private entity will not do this unless it is very well-backed financially, which is not the case at present. I hope better times will come, but I don't know if I will see them.

Q: Last November, you were awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Conservatory of Music of Madrid (RCSMM). What does this award mean to you?
A: It was very touching because I have always maintained a strong emotional connection with the Conservatory, even though my time at the current Superior Conservatory was brief. My career, once I secured my position as a professor, began at the RCSMM, where I spent my years effectively teaching when the institution offered elementary, intermediate, and higher education levels all together. Everything was combined in the same center until the LOGSE reform ended that arrangement. In the same building as the Teatro Real were also the Dance Conservatory and the Royal School of Dramatic Art. When we had to leave there in 1990, the Superior Conservatory then focused solely on higher education, as established by LOGSE. My subject, Harmony, was a middle-grade course, so my career path diverged from the Royal Conservatory (I was a professor there from 1985 to 1990). The emotional connection you have with the institution where you trained and worked in your early teaching years is immense, and for the Conservatory to remember me and grant me such a distinction is something that deeply moves me and fills me with great satisfaction. It's a very kind gesture that I deeply appreciate.

Q: As your retirement approaches, what projects do you have in mind?
A: Many. Working with the JONDE for 19 years has been all-consuming, leaving very little time for other activities. Despite that, I have never stopped composing (if you look at my catalog, you will see that I have composed two or three works every year; this year, I've done four or five), although I have significantly limited the format. It’s a matter of time and focus: sometimes I go weeks without being able to write anything, and in those circumstances, embarking on a substantial work that requires close monitoring is challenging. For instance, with a twenty-minute orchestral piece, you must know exactly where you left off yesterday to know what to do today and what you plan to tackle tomorrow. If you leave it for three weeks, when you return, you don't know where you are. That's why I have long rejected all proposals to write symphonic music, often saying, "We'll talk when I retire, but for now, no." I joke that I’ve become a composer of A4 format, meaning chamber music, because that is more manageable. Therefore, as a result of my work with the JONDE, I have had to reduce the format of my music and my creative pace, adjusting it to my availability, inevitably reducing the diffusion of my music. Once retired, I will try to dedicate more time to it.