Experimentation, creativity, and musical pedagogy come together at the Mixtur Festival from April 19 to 29, a festival that in 2017 received the prestigious Premi Ciutat de Barcelona for its commitment to contemporary arts. A multidisciplinary approach, which also incorporates new technologies for the vehiculation of developing artistic languages, akin to a nonconformist sensibility open to new forms of experimentation with sound. The old Fabra i Coats factory hosts concerts and pedagogical activities, such as training workshops for musicians and round tables, energized by the guest artists in this edition, among them Ricardo Descalzo, Rebecca Saunders, and Fred Frith.
The history of this radically current music, which not only enables the enjoyment of experts in the field - but also those interested in new trends in the realm of creation - dates back to the revolution of the avant-gardes, which in a genuinely post-romantic attitude dared to question with a new radicalism the beaten path of tradition. If the gravitation around a dominant note for the composition of melodies felt as familiar had already been dynamited with dodecaphonism, scientific progress would make possible another form of psychic evocation. The experimentation inherent in the production of composers like Edgar Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Pierre Boulez is directed at affecting states of consciousness and the perception of sound, assuming the baggage of the most innovative compositions of the first decades of the century, by the so-called Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern).
Perhaps it is no coincidence, given such ambivalence, that - to this day - the mathematical control of sound materials and the taste for randomness coexist, both in terms of how musicians should interpret the scoreAt the origin of this new way of composing, the musical intuitions of an earlier composer, such as Gustav Mahler, have also been recognized. In his work, the explicit and subliminal interference of sounds converge, the collage, the overexploitation of instruments and transmutation of genres within the framework of the symphony, which in itself represents a world in constant mutation. A world that includes the lowest and the highest, and that aims at the dilution of borders between both, even incorporating the paradoxical imprint of something similar to silence from masses of sound in subtle movement, which generate the sensation of an absolute and paradoxically dynamic stillness. Think of the beginning of First Symphony or in the adage of the unfinished Tenth: growth, the evolution of materials is calculable, even if they seem to abyss themselves in the verbalization of an unspeakable reality. Regarding Webern, Eugenio Trías wrote that the "duplicity (rational/irrational) of music, art of alienation and ecstasy, but also of number and rhythm, is precisely what characterizes its essence."
Perhaps it is no coincidence, given such ambivalence, that the mathematical control of sound materials and the taste for randomness coexist -to this day- both in the way musicians would interpret the score, from Charles Ives to Witold Lutoslawski, and in the sound produced, that which emanates from John Cage's prepared piano. The repetition of cells is perpetuated with an attractive degree of unpredictability in Morton Feldman, Steve Reich or Phillip Glass. The superposition of melodic lines in loop, a loop not always performed electronically (the Kronos Quartet, a string ensemble, is perhaps the group most committed to this music), contrasts with minimalism and in sum the presence of silence, which Arvo Pärt has also evoked. The current Max Richter, Johann Johannsson, Bryce Dressner, Nico Muhly or Olafur Arnalds are inspired by the work of these creators -with different means and fortunes-, some of whom have already been signed by record labels as classical as Deutsche Grammophon.
Thinking in terms of musical archaeology, even before these new visions that reconcile classical tradition and technical advances, sometimes incorporating jazz (listen to Uri Caine or the young Francesco Tristano), the truth is that the invention of electronically controlled instruments once represented a type of relationship with sound that in a somewhat Gattopardian way inverted the terms to preserve its essence. Far from seeking tonal recreation -traditional harmony- for mere recognition and enjoyment, instruments were created that produced a reality hitherto unheard of. The theremin (1920) and the ondes martenot (1928), predecessors of current electroacoustic music, generate a physical reality -vibration of waves, from amplification- that broadens the scope of manipulation and artificial constitution of the sound space. A line that some pop artists, such as the Icelandic creator Björk, have also followed.
At its core, the fruitful questioning of the natural/artificial is reproduced with variations, in line with what was suggested by the so-called musique concrète, already with the pioneering Concert de bruits by Pierre Schaeffer, broadcast on radio in 1948. Beyond the scandalous nature of the experiment, the recording and reorganization of everyday sounds inaugurated an area of unusual productivity, thanks to synthesizers and samplers. The possibilities for modifying the sound event – mathematically premeditated or improvised, in the studio or live – are confirmed as infinite, and the field for experimentation and learning completely open within the framework of a festival that has become a reference, such as Mixtur.