Like his friend Manuel de Falla, Joaquín Turina lived in Paris during the years immediately preceding World War I, and like Falla, it was through contact with Debussy and Ravel that he learned how to write Spanish music for orchestra. The lively rhythms of Spanish dances, combined with the sophisticated art of orchestration that the French composers had perfected, was a powerful recipe that helped Spain find its individual voice on the international musical scene in the early decades of the 20tth century.
Turina’s Danzas fantásticas were first written for piano solo, but they were much more successful in the orchestrated version, first published in 1921. Again like Falla, who brought together the musical styles of several provinces in his celebrated Seven Spanish Folksongs, Turina combined an Aragonian jota, a Basque zortziko and an Andalusian farruca in his piece. The three movements are entitled Exaltación (“Exaltation”), Ensueño (“Daydream”), and Orgia (“Orgy”); the titles connect the music to the mottos Turina placed before each movement, all three from the novel La orgia by José Más (1885-1941). The novel is a critique of the decadent Sevillan aristocracy, and the quotes highlight how those señoritos (“little señors”) were intoxicated by art, music, and manzanilla—the wine that Carmen drank at Lillas Pastia’s tavern…
It seemed as though the figures in that incomparable picture were moving inside the calyx of a flower.
The guitar's strings sounded the lament of a soul helpless under the weight of bitterness.
The perfume of the flowers merged with the odor of manzanilla, and from the bottom of raised glasses, full of the incomparable wine, like an incense, rose joy.
From José Más, La Orgia (1919)
Notes by Peter Laki
