La pieza filosofal. José Luis Turina, concepto y música / The philosopher's piece. José Luis Turina, concept and music

By Alfonso J. Fernández

(Interview published in issue no. 3 of the magazine Melómano, May-June 1996)



With the premiere of La raya en el agua -announced in issue no. 2 of MELÓMANO- José Luis Turina, once known primarily as "the grandson of Don Joaquín," returns to the spotlight after two years of working behind the scenes. During this time, he has been dedicated to advising on the reform of the musical education system in his role at the Subdirección General de Enseñanzas Artísticas. A student of García Abril and Bernaola, with over sixty premieres to his credit and a corresponding member of the Academy of Fine Arts Santa Isabel de Hungría of Seville, Turina reveals himself as a seeker of the essence of music and a lover of both concept and form.


Grandson of Joaquín Turina, what has he left you?
I never met him personally because my grandfather had passed away three years before I was born. However, I have experienced the normal process of remembrance and receiving the essence of a person through the transmission from parents to children. I suppose that my grandfather had the same opinion about music that bullfighters have about the art of bullfighting: they never want their children to pursue it. My approach to music was a difficult one. It was a rather late vocation. Until I was 17, I hadn’t had any serious contact with music beyond that of a mere enthusiast. Additionally, the fact is that at that time, musical education in Spain was nonexistent, except for the purely random and intuitive kind.
Entering the world of music so late has caused me significant challenges. To master an instrument, a physical adaptation to it is necessary. At that time, my dream was to become a violinist, but that instrument, in particular, requires a twisted body posture, and when your body is already formed, it becomes difficult to adapt to it. I studied violin for five years and started with the piano, but I eventually abandoned both to dedicate myself entirely to composition. My "advanced" age caused my dream to be shattered, but it allowed me to enter the world of music with a mental agility and, perhaps, a maturity that helped me delve into the field of composition, which requires a different approach than that of a performer, so certain drawbacks were offset by a series of advantages.
In almost three years, I had completed all of Solfège and much of Harmony, so I finished my studies at a normal age, even though I started them late.

Did entering the world of music so late lead you to focus more on teaching and composition?
Certainly on composition, because otherwise, I would have become a violinist. Tangentially, it also led me to teaching, which is both a vital necessity, a means of survival, to have something to live off, as well as a secondary vocation. There are more career opportunities for a performer than for a composer. I don’t create commercial music, and I don’t have any works from which I could live off royalties, which forces me to do something that allows me to compose at the same time. It’s a disadvantage, but it also has its benefits, as it frees you from aesthetic constraints and allows you to not be dependent on commissions to make a living.

All Spanish orchestras boast of getting closer to contemporary music, of commissioning one or two new works each year.
But that’s as far as it goes. My last two symphonic works were composed in 1993 for the Tenerife Orchestra and in 1994 for the anniversary of the Madrid Symphony Orchestra. The former was performed very successfully by the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra and then didn’t interest any other orchestra, nor was it requested by them. I believe orchestras should also attend to this area. I understand that for their end-of-year reports, they commission a work from a composer, but there needs to be another effort, one of disseminating that music, promoting that work, through exchanges with other orchestras or other methods.

How can that aspect be strengthened? Who is ultimately responsible: the public, publishers, the type of music, the composers themselves for not making more commercial music?
It seems almost a miracle to me that contemporary music garners any interest. We face the challenge of competing against a repertoire so beautiful and rich that I’m surprised people even want to expand it.
Music has the particularity of developing over time, and time is needed to listen to a piece and make it your own. To listen to my Violin Concerto you need a good half hour, and to listen to Musica ex lingua you have to sit down and listen to it calmly.
There are many ways to approach music. There is a majority audience that doesn’t want to expand its horizons and another that seeks different kinds of artistic products beyond those it already knows. There’s also the issue of publishing, which is incredibly expensive, and publishers aren’t willing to invest without knowing if they can recoup their investment. Very little of my music is published, perhaps because I have an intuitive distrust of the publishing world, and maybe also because of what I see around me; I’ve neither been fortunate enough to have a major publisher take an interest in my work, nor do I have the character to approach a publisher to show them my music and beg for a publication. I make do with photocopies, which is what the publishers do as well. The benefit of the more influential publishers is that they can promote your works at festivals and help get them noticed.

Due to particular circumstances, you’ve stayed away from trends or the obligation to fulfill commissions with a specific style.
This is mainly in certain types of commissions that come with conditions that are not what I’m looking for or where I don’t feel up to the task. I had the opportunity to compose a two-hour opera for the Sala Olimpia and turned it down because it would have been a massive undertaking. My dream is to compose an opera, but that wasn’t the one, and I didn’t need to do it, so I was able to refuse. My "modus vivendi" is teaching, which also gives me the freedom to do somewhat what I want, freeing myself from many constraints, not only aesthetic ones, and thus allowing me to compose the work I feel like creating. In this sense, I feel comfortable because composing, for me, is not a divine pleasure; it’s very challenging, and I don’t experience an intense satisfaction while composing. I was deeply struck by a phrase I read in an interview with Lutosławski. He said he didn’t know why he composed, as it was a torment for him. There’s something that drives me to compose, something I don’t fully understand and don’t resist, but that doesn’t fully satisfy me either. It does satisfy me later on, when I sit in a chair and listen to the premiere, but the act of composing is very intense and sometimes quite dramatic.

Why do you continue composing?
Because of a permanent dissatisfaction. You never write exactly what you would like to write. Following an idea from Ortega, beauty is what things would be if they were as we want them to be. When I’m composing, I have the feeling that I never reach what I would want. This creates enormous dissatisfaction because I wanted to go in one direction, but somehow the music took me elsewhere, so I’m always caught between what I wanted to do and what I know and can do at any given moment. I see that the goal fades away, and I head toward another place, like a castaway who sees the coast but drifts out to sea, unable to do anything about it. And perhaps there, he discovers a much more beautiful panorama than the coast and heads toward that new goal, but, in time, he doesn’t reach that one either. I think this is not something that only happens to me, but it is the essence of artistic nature. The artist composes, paints, or sculpts throughout their life because they never create the work they dream of and are always restless to create what they desire; and that is the next work. I have that feeling, although I’m not entirely sure if that’s really the case deep down. That’s why I am in a state of permanent dissatisfaction when I’m working on a piece, not when I look at it from a certain perspective, once it’s done.

Do you achieve the satisfaction of those to whom you direct your work? I suppose an artist is also satisfied when a piece is applauded because it has been enjoyed, has managed to move or relax the audience. That is one of the challenges of contemporary music, because few composers are as concerned with pleasing the audience as they are with pleasing themselves or following a certain trend, and I believe you are outside of that. Your works do manage to move people.
Yes, because I don’t shy away from it, because I don’t set out to do it "a priori," as has happened with much contemporary music. The 20th century is enormously fascinating, very rich, characterized by multiple perspectives, as seen in cubism or in such genius and misunderstood works as those of Joyce or Proust. I try to create a piece where there are both rational aspects and others that touch more closely on the emotion and the inherent possibilities of musical expression. I can explain my music note by note, but I don’t want it to just stay there; I want it to also express something, which doesn’t have to be with the same expressive techniques used in past music, something I also don’t shy away from. The person of each time has the obligation to have one foot in the past and another in the future to thus achieve a logical synthesis of vital balance. Therefore, I try to synthesize both aspects in my music. Because of this flexibility, I like to create very different works, and even within the same piece, there can be different situations. I seek a synthesis. For example, in the Violin concerto I set out on a journey through a series of languages that range from the most absolutely atonal, bordering on noise, to the clearly tonal in C major; additionally, I chose C major deliberately because of the emblematic nature of this key. I love the result, and it is a piece that has been very well received.

What are your personal tastes, and what attracts you to your favorite composers?
I wouldn’t know where to start, but I do have a particular fondness for the composers who marked the beginning of my journey in composition toward very specific paths. The Polish school, for example, interests me greatly: Lutosławski and Penderecki are fundamental. I am also interested in Ligeti and all the Central European movements. I think there is an aspect of art that goes beyond the musical object itself. The artistic product is something that transcends the work. In a composer, I’m interested not only in the music but also in how they think and approach it. Sometimes the thought behind a work seems more important to me than the work itself, especially when both converge, reaching the ideal of creation. For example, in a composer like John Cage, whose music doesn’t particularly interest me, I’m more captivated by his aesthetic thought. What you take home after a concert is not the artistic product but an idea of it. That’s why the whole conceptual world seems to me the path one should pursue. The resolution of aesthetic problems lies in the concept of the work, not in the work itself. To give an example, I’m not sure what interests me more about the Goldberg Variations, whether it’s what I hear in the interpretation of a great pianist or the structural idea and the prodigious architecture behind that work, which I enjoy through an analysis and a deep understanding of how it’s constructed. That’s why I try to ensure that my music achieves a balance between structure, that is, reason, and heart, that it justifies itself as music but at the same time has a richness of approach and structural rigor that makes sense but is also complementary.

Let’s return to your other endeavors. You were a professor of Harmony at the Conservatory of Cuenca and also directed that center. Later, you were at the Conservatory Superior of Madrid, and finally, you came to the Subdirectorate General of Artistic Education, where you serve as a Technical Teaching Advisor. What does your current activity focus on? How has this trajectory been?
I was in Cuenca for four years, from 1981 to 1985, and then I came to the Conservatory Superior of Madrid, where I stayed until 1993, when I was invited to collaborate as an advisor for the Subdirectorate General of Artistic Education. At that time, the Madrid Conservatory was going through a slightly critical phase, and I felt a bit uncomfortable because I didn’t feel that it was functioning adequately as an institution. Precisely, my role at the Ministry focuses on the technical advisory work for the development of the LOGSE in relation to music education. That is, it’s about adapting and improving the functioning of music education centers with the new law in hand and the implementation of a new curriculum, with which I believe the Conservatory Superior of Madrid and all other conservatories in the country will function again, but now as centers aimed at training professionals. Teaching is something I miss, and I’m clear that if not this year, then next year, I will have to return to it. This recent period has been, let’s say, a "sabbatical" stage in terms of direct contact with students.

After the reform and having "fixed" certain aspects of music education, it will be very gratifying to return.
I don’t know if we’re fixing it, but we are giving it a necessary turn because, due to the intrinsic needs of the lack of adequate centers, all music education, not being part of general education, was channeled through conservatories, creating a hybrid model of a center where those who studied for pleasure and those who wanted to be professionals went, forcing a level of education that was exaggerated for the former and totally insufficient for the latter. The implementation of the Law has been very important because it has placed music education within the full rights of the education system. It guarantees that studies lead to a degree equivalent in every way to a university degree, even allowing access to doctoral studies. Above all, the Law defines the role of conservatories as centers exclusively dedicated to the training of professionals. Spain is the country with the most conservatories: twenty-seven, all of which are called superior but aren’t truly superior because the level is very low since they have to cater equally to amateurs and professionals, as I’ve already mentioned. Now everything is changing, but it has to be complemented by developing centers aimed at meeting the majority demand for basic music education, which should be through music schools, and this is the model adopted throughout the rest of Europe.

Has the change in government resulted in a change in the trend and application of the law?
The only thing we know is that all of us who were forming a team in the last four years have been renewed in the commission of services to stay on next year, which "a priori" seems to be a guarantee of continuity, and that what we have been doing doesn’t seem bad to the new government, although maybe the political change is still very recent, and we don’t really know if new directives will be imposed. The problem in music education is that both teachers and students need to realize that things have to change and that this requires a sacrifice from those who need to collaborate in this change. Before the entry into force of the regulations developed by the law, the great problem of conservatories was overcrowding, which led to a demand for the most typical specializations, such as piano and guitar, resulting in a very high number of pianists and guitarists to the detriment of other instruments. This had to be redirected to achieve the desirable result of professionalism, which is why the creation of new piano and guitar positions has been reduced, and other specializations have been expanded. Likewise, a new system needs to be structured that allows for greater dedication to students, especially in areas that require more specific attention.

Could music education be, due to the economic crisis, the Cinderella of education?
The worst thing that could happen is that the budget doesn’t grow. A cut would be dramatic, but if that happens, the first thing to do, though it may be difficult, is to set priorities. I believe that the musical effectiveness of a country is measured by the level of success of its higher education. In my opinion, and it’s just my opinion, resources should be focused on higher education. What we’re trying to do is to establish a base that is currently an inverted pyramid; that is, the base is the tip, and therefore it wobbles. Enthusiasm needs to have its place too, but not in professional or superior conservatories.

Returning to your musical activity and successes, what did it mean to receive the Queen Sofía Prize?
It was a huge satisfaction. However, I haven’t entered another competition since, nor do I have much interest in doing so. I put a lot of passion into Ocnos. It was a theme that had obsessed me since my time in Rome in the early '80s. The Queen Sofía Prize was a professional recognition that, at that moment, was very important, not just because of the prize itself or the financial award, but because of the premiere and everything that comes with it before and after.

Conducting has played a minor role in your life. Does it attract you?
I’ve only done a couple of recordings. It’s not something that seduces me because it involves dealing with human beings in a way that I’m not sure I’m prepared for. Besides, it’s a very special field. I get along very well with musicians, but precisely because the interaction with them isn’t too intense, whereas conducting an orchestra means standing in front of a hundred people with whom you have to do deep work, which entails a series of human relationships that, nowadays, are the most complicated thing we can do. I feel more comfortable on my own, working on a blank sheet of paper. It’s more a matter of ability than ambition.