Poema en forma de canciones Op.19 (1918)

Dedicatorio

Nunca olvida

Los dos miedos

Las locas por amor

When Albéniz advised Turina to turn to Spanish folk music for his material, the younger composer was probably not altogether pleased. As a pupil of Vincent d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris – where he had been instructed in the worship of César Franck and the virtues of cyclic form – he had had just taken part in the first performance of his Piano Quintet Op.1 and this would not have been the kind of advice he wanted to hear. Albéniz was right, however. Although Turina retained his ambition to write in the conventional major forms, the Andalusian in him was asserting itself in his piano and chamber music even before his departure from the Schola Cantorum and his return to Spain in 1914.

By 1918, in the Poema en form de canciones, Turina had embraced “sevillanismo” wholeheartedly and with a completely convincing command of the idiom. That much is clear from the opening solo-piano piece, Dedicatorio, which begins with keyboard versions of a flamenco singer’s “Ay!” and a guitarist’s preludial strumming before presenting two melodies of authentic Spanish extraction (one of them recently featured in Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain). The prominent role of the piano extends into the actual songs with a fairly long introduction to Nunca olvida, establishing the gently swaying accompaniment to the thoughtful vocal line. Cantares is primarily a display of flamenco bravura for the singer while the piano’s main function is to provide an appropriate guitar-style framework at the begining and end of each stanza. In Los dos miedos, on the other hand, it supplies the passionately expressive interlude that represents what it is that has so radically changed the emotional situation between the beginning and the end. And in Las locas por amor it alone is awarded the cheerful tune that, reminiscent of Debussy though it is, so effectively reflects the carefree mood of the song.