Description
I made this arrangement of Poema en forma de canciones (Poem in the form of songs, Op. 19, 1917) by the Spanish nationalist/impressionist composer Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) in autumn 2019 after I and a pianist friend failed to find any satisfactory original pieces or adaptations for trombone and piano for a concert of Spanish music at Morley College, London. Maestro Martino Tirimo described it as “a very fine arrangement”, and I think that it’s the best late-romantic trombone solo currently available. It also seems to work very well on other instruments. What you’ll get:
- A four-page solo part in the transposition and clef requested, with the Spanish lyrics and some performance suggestions. Here’s a sample of the solo part in treble clef for Bb trumpet.
- A sixteen-page score containing the piano part and the solo part as above. Here’s a sample for piano and trombone in tenor clef.
Turina is said to have said in 1944 that “for me, music is a diary of life itself,” and this 10’30” suite deals in impressionist fashion with various facets of love. Here’s Teresa Berganza singing the original with Juan Antonio Álvarez Parejo (the first movement is piano solo!):
You’ll find a skeleton description of Turina’s life and (vocal) compositions on Wikipedia and in Jacqueline Cockburn, Richard Stokes and Graham Johnson’s The Spanish Song Companion. The four love poems used by Turina were written by Ramón de Campoamor (1817-1901), a realist poet and monarchist placeman who, growing up amidst the Carlist Wars, rejected gory romanticism and classical pomposity in favour of plain, traditional, almost anti-aesthetic language. Poema seems to have been written in 1917, although Turina later dates it to 1918, perhaps to have its genesis coincide with the tenth anniversary of his marriage in 1908, during his Parisian phase, to Obdulia Garzón, his childhood sweetheart. My version is based on the 1923 Unión Musical Española edition for soprano and piano with minor modifications in phrasing gleaned from Turina’s manuscript dated August 1917 for soprano and orchestra.
- “Dedicatoria” (Dedication). A dramatic prelude for solo piano, for all the world like a guitarist at the beginning of a flamenco spectacle, playing a warm-up number while his singer has a glass at the bar. Includes several motifs and rhythms used later.
- “Nunca olvida” (Never forget). As death nears, the soloist contrasts, in an exquisite melody, his willingness to forgive those he has hated with his inability to pardon the person he so passionately loved.
- “Cantares” (Songs) contrasts cante jondo-type flamenco bravura with dance, and is often sung as an encore: “The more I flee from you, the closer you feel, for your likeness is in me the shadow of my thoughts. Tell me again today: yesterday, bewitched, I listened to you without hearing and looked at you without seeing.” If you’re playing this on slide trombone, you may find that cadenza-like melismata work better articulated than legato.
- “Los dos miedos” (The two fears) is a lyrical tour de force. Evening, and she says, “Why so close? I am frightened of you.” A brief passage which sounds to me like part of the scherzo from Borodin’s second string quartet, and then a band plays, and the night end and, lying at your side and to the sound of a distant bell (Debussy’s Cathédrale engloutie?), she says, “Why so distant? I am frightened without you.”
- “Las locas por amor” (Women frantic for love) is pure student exuberance: “I will love you, Venus, if you prefer that I do so at length and sensibly.” To which “the goddess of Cythera” replies that, like all women, she prefers to be loved “fleetingly and frantically.” The setting evokes artsy Paris: the piano opens with a motif like the musician Schaunard’s in Puccini’s Bohème, and parlando verging on mock-plainsong is crowned by a brilliant final flourish.
