The composer

almost naked, like the children of the sea.

Antonio Machado, Portrait

light luggage: This is how Juan Francisco Sans left this world, the composer, the pianist, the musicologist, the researcher, the editor, the teacher, the director, the one who shared everything. During the last weeks of his life, he uploaded dozens of his research articles to the Academia.edu portal on the Internet, he generously gave everything to leave light luggage. Those of us who did not know about his health condition did not understand such profusion, and for this reason we observed him carelessly, accustomed as we were to his generosity, because he always gave everything, because he always worked for music and musicians, for those who preceded him in time, for his students, his colleagues, for his public, and for the music of Latin America —passion that united us—.

I met Juan Francisco when we were all “boys” in 1980, at the Juan José Landaeta Conservatory, then located in a beautiful country house in Campo Alegre, by the architect Manuel Mujica Millán. There we coincided in the classes of Professor Antonio Mastrogiovanni, a Uruguayan composer who lived for a long time in Venezuela. On the three floors of the villa one could go from Mastrogiovanni’s composition classes to those of Antonio Lauro, Eduardo Kusnir, Primo Casale and Ángel Sauce, the latter two also teachers of Juan Francisco. There were those of us who were eagerly looking for teachers who would take us by the hand to the musical avant-garde. Juan Francisco, always conciliatory, had the wisdom or intuition to learn from everyone. At the age of 20, he was already a postmodern spirit for whom there was no single truth, but rather different ways of knowing.

At that time, a small group of students from different backgrounds met to study contemporary music and composition under the guidance of this teacher who had just trained and lived in Italy and who had also been a student at the prestigious Torcuato Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires. Juan Francisco was a discreet young man eager to learn, with a reputation as an excellent pianist and as an inquisitive and intelligent man. There, at the Juan José Landaeta National Conservatory of Music, he prepared himself while attending the School of Arts of the Central University of Venezuela. In 1987 he graduated as a master composer.

His work, written over nearly forty years, covers just over twenty original compositions, among the first preserved in his catalog dating from the mid-80s, such as his Toccata, for piano four hands and 2 percussionists written in 1985; he Unexpectedlyfrom 1987 for symphony orchestra, and, from the same year, the Triptych for Corpus Christi daythe first of his choral works, all graduation works, until the last ones written in 2021: Classics of no future, Suite for string quartet and A shadow falls over the world, for mixed choir.

Tireless as he was, from a very young age he devoted himself to working on the dissemination of Venezuelan music. First of the works of his generation colleagues, organizing the I and II National Meeting of Venezuelan Composers (1994, 1996), of which he was artistic director, held in the spaces of the Banco Consolidado Cultural Center, today BOD. Around the same time, in the program that he hosted for a decade (1990-2000) on the National Radio of Venezuela, American composers, produced a space that allowed him to broadcast an important repertoire of music from our region in a weekly program. Later, in the production and recording of a series of albums under the sign of “postmodernity”, thanks to which works by composers of his generation can be known and enjoyed and, in more recent years, in the hard and sustained work as tutor at the UCV, where he created and developed, together with his wife Mariantonia Palacios, a line of research on critical editions that was sorely needed in our country and that has done so much good. I forgot to remember his notable tenure as president of the —now extinct— Vicente Emilio Sojo Foundation and, do you know what? Juan Francisco in none of these instances dedicated himself to editing, recording and disseminating his own works, but to thinking about the country , to think about history and in all cases he was enormously generous taking care of the music of others, seeking to organize the history of music in Venezuela, always so neglected.

As it happens with almost all Venezuelan composers, they are known personally or “of reference”, we know something about their catalogue, if they wrote a lot or little, if they are or were predominantly symphonic or choral composers, if they ventured into the cinema and in the theater, opera or electronics, but in reality little is known about music, because beyond a premiere date few works are replaced, even fewer are recorded, which makes access to listening difficult and that happens with the work of Juan Francisco, of whom so few things I get uploaded to music platforms on the Internet.

So let us stop at his work. Three choral pieces written in the first stage of it: Triptych for Corpus Christi dayfrom 1987; six by eight, from 1990, based on a text by the Venezuelan writer Carlos Augusto León, later versioned (2008) for voice and piano and dedicated “to my beloved wife”. Then would come his Song of the Creatureson the magnificent text of San Francisco de Asís, from 1993. Very recently the existence of what would be his last work has come to light, A shadow falls over the world, with texts by the Colombian musician and poet Fernando Linero, of which he left us two versions, one for mixed choir and the other for 12 voices.

For solo instrument, two works: the beautiful and the difficult Marisela, for solo harp written for Marisela González, its great performer. Of the same year, the Postmodern Variations on a Baroque Themepara piano solo.

In the symphonic field, in addition to the Unexpectedly During his student years, he would write three works for soloists and orchestra: I sing to the infinite childrenin 1989, for baritone, choir and orchestra; tolledfor three guitars and orchestra in 1996, dedicated to the Raúl Borges Trio, and endless story, (1999-2002) for harp and small chamber orchestra, commissioned by Marisela González for the Third Latin American Meeting of Harps held in Venezuela. Its premiere took place long after its completion, hence its name. Juan Francisco also experimented with electronic music with his Let me die, variations on a theme by Monteverdi, for oboe or saxophone and magnetic tape —tape— that the oboist Jaime Martínez would premiere. With electronics once was enough.

The catalog grows when we come to the chamber music section, perhaps his favorite genre: the Toccata already mentioned, for piano and percussion, undoubtedly written under the influence of Bela Bartok. New and old, for 3 guitars, composed in 1988, when he began his close relationship with the Raúl Borges Trio. The work is well protected in a couple of editions and in a magnificent professional recording that can be heard on Soundcloud. One of my favorites, aboriginal song, 7 recreations on indigenous Venezuelan themes for harp and flute, whose interpretations became legendary in the hands of Marisela González and Luis Julio Toro, also edited and recorded, well disseminated among the younger generations. We can listen to an excellent interpretation on YouTube.

Of the liberation of the formsfor double bass and piano, from 1990, “sort of musical essay with the title of a medieval treatise”, which he recorded together with the magnificent double bass player Luis Gómez Imbert, to whom the work was dedicated, published on the album Con corda, under the sign of postmodernity. From 1991, his Fantasy Casalefor oboe, clarinet, trumpet, bassoon and piano, dedicated to the Galzio quintet, written on a theme by his teacher Primo Casale, excellently recorded on the disc celedonia, from the series «signs of postmodernity», a publication that I am honored to share with him, now available as a tribute on YouTube. Then it would come, in 1996, the accountantfor two trumpets, horn, trombone, tuba and piano —the last of that stage—, dedicated to Gustavo Matamoros and the Meridian Arts Ensemble, premiered in 1997 at the Subtropics New Music Festival in Florida.

In an interview with Evelyn Navas Abdulkadir, published in Venezuela Sinfónica, Juan Francisco confessed: “Lately, musicological work has absorbed me so much that I have barely had the opportunity to do orchestrations of historical works, but not my own compositions. My catalog is small, but I must say with satisfaction that they have played almost everything, and are still playing it”. These orchestrations also deserve to be mentioned, another commitment fulfilled with the heritage of Venezuelan music: the Fantasy on the theme Give me shoe polish for two pianos by Juan Vicente Lecuna, in 1994; the Bolivarian Fantasy for six bands on hymns of the Bolivarian countries, by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez, in 1999; the 17 children’s pieces for piano by Antonio Estévez, in the year 2000; the Seven Venezuelan Christmas bonuses from the 19th century, in 2001; they would follow the Prelude, Waltz and Rigaudon for harp and piano by Reynaldo Hahn, orchestrated in 2003, and then the piano pieces My Theresa y A ball in a dreamby Teresa Carreño, in 2012.

It would take 20 years for Juan Francisco to date, in 2016, his next chamber works: You were beautiful Ines, fado for voice and piano dedicated to Andrea Imaginario on a text by Luís de Camões, beautifully interpreted, available on Spotify; celestial squaresfor wind octet, product of its editorial alliance with Cayambis Music Press, in 2018, followed by the magnificent mazes, for oboe and piano, also edited by Cayambis, which was premiered by Sans together with the oboist Vicente Moronta, to whom the work is dedicated, in Caracas, during the IV edition of El oboe y sus laberintos in 2018. Moronta announces the premiere in Europe in the coming months in concerts in Berlin and Vienna. The work that would be the last in his catalogue, the Classics Suite from in the future, for string quartet written in 2021, dedicated to Juan Diego Parra, his colleague from the Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano de Medellín, the institution to which he would dedicate his final years as a teacher. celestial squares will see its premiere in Medellín in May 2023. It is glad to know that his music also took root there.

This catalog still needs to delve into details, to specify some dates, especially of the works that he himself covered. But there is more to do, his colleagues, his friends, his students, we have a task: to disseminate his work, to know it in depth, to make it last.

We leave when we are born,