Joaquín Turina

Joaquín Turina (born December 9, 1882, Sevilla, Spain—died January 14, 1949, Madrid) was a Spanish composer who helped to promote the national character of 20th-century Spanish music.

After studying in Sevilla (Seville) and Madrid, Turina went in 1905 to Paris, where he was a pupil of Moritz Moszkowski for piano and Vincent d’Indy for composition. Though he absorbed elements of the French style, he was inspired in Paris by Isaac Albéniz to write distinctively Spanish music. He wrote the Sonata española for violin and piano and the symphonic poem La procesión del rocío (1912) and in 1914 returned to Spain. Turina’s native city, Sevilla, figures largely in his mostly picturesque works, notably in the Sinfonía sevillana (1920), in the Canto a Sevilla (1927; “Song to Seville”) for voice and orchestra, and in his albums of piano miniatures, among them Rincones sevillanos (“Sevillian Nooks”) and La leyenda de la Giralda (“The Legend of Giralda”). He was most successful in his many songs. He also wrote two operas, Margot (1914) and Jardín de oriente (1923; “Garden of the East”), incidental music, and chamber works. His Danzas fantásticas (1920; “Fantastic Dances”) for orchestra and La oración del torero (1925; “The Torero’s Speech”) for string quartet or string orchestra were particularly popular. Turina was critic for the Madrid paper El Debate and wrote a short encyclopaedia of music.