José Luis Campana’s ‘Mixing up’ (2017), for live wind sextet (oboe, clarinet, trumpet, horn, bassoon, and trombone) and recorded ensemble of 29 instruments from different folk music traditions around the world, is the continuation of his vast collection of works for different instrumental, voice- instrumental, electronic, and mixed formations, as well as lots of research work in the electronic music studio. It initiates a new phase in his work as a composer.

‘Mixing up’ responds to the need for radical renewal in sound matter. To put an end to the historically charged sounds and compositional techniques for acoustical orchestral instruments. To put an end to the particular tones and techniques of folk music that inevitably introduce an exotic effect in the context of western music. To put an end to recent techniques and technologies rapidly turned academic and repetitive – like the 60s pieces for flute which all became ‘Gazzelloni pieces’, bearing the name of the exceptional flautist who had premiered them, often accompanied by real-time sound treatment, all of the same fabric since they were generated using the same software. ‘Mixing up’ reflects the desire to invent a new sound universe – uncharted, unprecedented, fresh – while drawing on the wealth of popular traditions (the instruments with their distinctive timbres) as well as the classical tradition. Not one timbre has been modified or tampered with by the computer sound transformation programs. The extension higher and lower of the tessitura of certain popular instruments, as well as the halos of rich timbral resonance, contribute to creating the impression of distant spaces, dreamlike dimensions, and infinitude. The composer’s intention is not in contrasting alterities, as it has always been in the past, nor the appreciation of individual timbres, but in their interaction and fusion creating something different. Schoenberg had shown the way with his piece Farben [Colours] from Six Pieces for Orchestra (opus 16 – 1908), which became the very definition of his Klangfarbenmelodie, melody of timbres. But it is often forgotten that the concept of Klangfarbenmelodie integrates not only instrumental timbre, but also pitch and dynamics, as well as fundamental principles of western composition: harmony and polyphony. The new sound matter invented by Campana is also, like all artistic discovery, a strong synthesis: the characteristics of timbre of folk and classical instruments absorbing the compositional techniques of recent music to the benefit of a new musical universe, liberated from the shackles of technical and technological traditions, stereotypes, and automatisms, and open to today’s compositional imagination.

After Stravinsky, de Falla, Bartok, Berio, Ravi Shankar, and Menuhin…, it seemed there was no longer any place for continued research into the field of folklore. The experience of Campana masterfully proves the opposite. Bolstered by the advances of spectral music and recent technology, he discovers in the timbres of folk instruments a new unexplored realm for the invention of infinite sound material, constantly reinvented.

Klangfarbenmelodie, the term was too limited with respect to Schoenberg’s compositional discovery in Farben. The forceful ambition of the composer J L Campana is to create a unique mix of not only folk and classical instrumental timbres, but to also execute a convincing mix of these timbres with compositional techniques and the formal thinking of this early 21st century.

Ivanka Stoïanova – PhD in Musicology and Doctor Honoris Causa