Probe 
(for 3 female voices and 2 contrabass clarinets)
Premiered by the Neuevocalsolisten (Johanna Zimmer, Susanne Leitz-Lorey and Truike van der Poel) with Bass-clarinetists Armand Angster and Olivier Vivares (September 5th 2015 at Elisabeth-Kirche, Berlin)
The idea of a rehearsal being performed and not a performance that was properly rehearsed is what shapes the Form of Probe. However this piece is not a theatrical re enactment of a rehearsal situation. It is simply a musical assessment of its dynamics. Probe works with the left-overs of rehearsing: score pages that are flipped, individuals practicing their parts, talking to themselves or to their companions about places to emphasize, to rehearse, while interspersing small amounts of their own parts, — the future music or material that is supposed to be finally performed. However, all becomes frustrated by the constant attempt to perform the piece. Thus, the use of a constant repetition of materials, their obsessive practice, till they perform once again the obligatory ritornello from the piece’s beginning. We are surprised to find ourselves immersed in this chaotic “construction of a piece” that is not quite there yet. We hear comments or exclamations, and we imagine them, in the first instance, something “outside” of the music itself. However, betraying the idea of rehearsal itself the Music, like a cannibal, takes over and swallows everything: the questions, the practicing, the flipping of the pages etc, repeating and distorting them, absorbing all that we’d heard before as part of the perceptual flux. The piece ends in a quite simple choral part, also a left-over of something larger, woven in the fabric of the rehearsal space. This “torso” is but a trace, slices of a possible piece that although “never realized” vibrates, hopefully, like Music itself.

Live at Elisabth-Kirche Berlin 2015

Probe for 3 female voices and 2 contrabass clarinets

GESTURES, for solo violin (1993). As for my Percussion Studies for guitar, "Gestures" is part of a larger project that intends to create pieces that employ extended-techniques for many acoustic instruments while developing their motoric and ergonomic constraints. Such pieces should provide a very flexible framework enhancing the connection of pitch and non-pitched zones (noises). Hence, Gestures is an attempt to articulate specific musical parameters such as pitch, rhythm, intensities and extended techniques. The piece’s trajectory emphasizes the idea of exploiting the violin's mechanical capabilities. It articulates both, the traditional playing techniques of a known object/instrument and the perspective of a certain estrangement from a the instrument itself, a distancing in the Brechtian sense as if the instrument was considered an object trouvé (found object) exhibiting as a whole its raw sonic potential. The piece starts with percussive (no bow) sounds allied to pizzicatos. Then it  develops to incorporate the bow traditionally employed as well as manipulated as a mallet, striking the instrument in unusual ways. A virtuosic attempt brings all the techniques to a maelstrom of approaches whose boundaries are dictated less by pitch/noise frictions then by the sheer limitations of the gestural manipulations of the instrument. The importance of such approach in this piece is not merely the orientation and coordination of feasible routes for the hands “to handle“ (gestures) but to understand that the routes themselves should be “heard” as thematic material.  Thematic here is understood as motivic gestuality that although not audible (they are gestures) live and connect at the subsurface level of the composition. In other words, the gestures acquire a similar musical status as their audible counterpart - the sound itself. This approach brought powerful insights onto new timbristic colors for the violin.  It imposed, at the same time, the design of a very flexible new playing technique. Thus, the organic and flexible juxtaposition of these two basic parameters (sonic and ergonomic) not only coordinates the piece's phraseology and structure but stands as its principal goal.  Gestures dedicated to the violinist Gregor Kitzis, is a virtuosic attempt to challenge the interpreter's abilities within the instrument's constraints.

Gestures for solo violin (©1993 Arthur Kampela)

Phalanges, for Harp solo (1995) - program notes
The title "Phalanges" refers to the fingers' bones, the very skeleton of the player, the subcutaneous motor skills that underlie the act of playing/touching the strings. Compositionally, there are three main ideas that intersperse in this piece:
1) The ergonomic or motoric one, referring to the way the hands accommodate the technical demands of the instrument; 2) The Rhythmic ‘sculpting,’ referring to the interaction of complex rhythms and the use of my system of Micro-Metric Modulation, a mathematical way to link very complex rhythms/ratios through common speeds; 3) The use of extended-techniques dividing the harp in three different sonic regions in which the middle one employs a cloth/paper that mutes the pitches subsequently creating a kind of timbral asymmetry in the sonic presentation of the instrument.
First, the ergonomic aspect: the creation of motives and themes in this piece are a direct result of the very patterns of the player's hands/fingers. New sonic material emerges as a result of the dislocation of the hands throughout the harp. This is accomplished in two ways: a) When the harpist stretches hands widening or contracting the gaps between fingers while maintaining similar fingerings’ patterns - thus, creating small melodic distortions; b) Through the mere pedal- retuning of the strings providing a diverse melodic or harmonic contour for similar hands' patterns; Even if the fingers’ patterns are not “thematically audible,” (since they only refer to the techniques that propel the sounds) they acquire, nevertheless, the status of "articulatory themes" being as important as the audible ones.
Second, using a mathematical way to mediate between two adjacent rhythms through a system I developed called Micro-Metric Modulation. Although complex rhythms can be very demanding to execute it is possible to imagine an effective rhythmic bridge that is common to two adjacent and differing rhythms or ratio configurations. This approach is based on commutative and associative properties and is derived from Elliott Carter’s polyrhythmic ideas, but in a “compressed” way. It is fully developed on my Doctoral Thesis from 1997-8 (Micro Metric Modulation: New Directions in the Theory of Complex Rhythms), although uses of it on my own music are anterior to the thesis itself).
Third, employing a series of devices (paper between strings, tuning fork, constant pedal glissandi, half-pedal “buzz” sounds, etc.) I managed to destabilize the typical way of playing the instrument and the way it is commonly heard. More than seeking mere effects, I was “seeing” the instrument as a sonic (found-)object that could be “subjected” to different types of timbristic and ergonomic demands. Finally, studying the way the instrument behaves under certain rhythmic constraints it was possible to manipulate with similar flexibility pitch and noise (extended-techniques) zones.
The theatrical aspect of Phalanges conveys its deep meaning: Navigating between the fingers' technical demands and its almost magic output (the music itself) the harpist questions the public with a bleak and distancing (‘Brechtnian’) look, as if saying, - “...where does music begin? And where it ends...?”
© Arthur Kampela 2014

Phalanges For Harp Solo (©Arthur Kampela) - Harpist: Anne Bassand

TAK-TAK...TAK...
for Ensemble Modern and Plásticas Sonoras
Commissioned by the DAAD and the Ensemble Modern for the Project Re-Inventing Smetak. (Dedicated to Dorinha Kampela, minha mãe/ my mother - e/and Baiana, como/as Smetak...) 
My piece’s title comes from both, a nickname that Smetak was kindly addressed by Gilberto Gil (a great Brazilian songwriter from the Tropicalist movement of the 1960’s) and an allusion to his own metier as a luthier and builder of innovative sound-producing objects/sculptures/instruments. The title spells accents and a dynamic motion, emphasizing the hybrid character of language itself and in particular, of everything that was of Smetak - this benign “Bruxo” (sorcerer) -  interest…. Has the music started already in the title…? - might be an interesting Smetakian question..! 

In order to “escape” the “Smetakian trap,” his creative volition, (given the weird instruments invented by the master called "Plásticas Sonoras")I decided to expose and subvert somehow the formal constituents of these instruments, their technical ‘limitations.’ My aim during this composition was to create a new kind of virtuosity that has in common with western instruments the fact that an engaged musicianship is being constantly assessed in order to show the instruments’ plasticity. Thus, I deployed new techniques for their manipulations reinventing a repertoire of gestures for them. That way I could create a “Cadenza” for the VINA (Smetak’s most prominent invention- a cello with Calabashes on its top) that is extremely virtuosi in demand but keeps the uniqueness of the instrument, its iconic difference, visible and functional to the music… Here the cellist plays coils, hits the calabashes with his bow, pulls a trigger to an old clock-like sound and play the strings in an unusual way. As a common feature of my own music, I always try to avoid exposing instruments as part of an innocuous circus where they would be just a mere gimmick, or “effects’ makers”. My score is a reflection of complex processes in order to safeguard and subsume all its materials to the same compositional demands. I also treated the Western instruments using Smetak’s hybrid approach. The piano and the percussionist II make up for one unique instrument: both play the same piano; the guitarist and the flutist have percussive instruments to prolong their own gestures in other directions… The Smetakian “Chori Sol e Lua” although built for a cellist type of player, is performed here by a guitarist. 

Finally, I wanted to subsume the whole Smetakian concept of a cosmic instrument, creating a kind of “vibrating entanglement” of all the musicians. For that I built what I called the “Elastic Tree.” It is a visually enticing scenario, a mopnbile of sorts as if the very musicians were "hanging" from its thin bamboos -as it looks like an umbrella... However, my intention was to link all the musicians through elastics (that extends from the tip of the thin bamboos to the floor) and vibrate with percussive instruments when shaken. This vision came to me as I contemplated Smetak’s instrument “Pindorama.” A bamboo structure that spits from its head or top (like a Medusa) “plastic capilars” whose end exhibit small flutes. This instrument, played by many musicians at the same time, is somehow a powerful metaphor for our time of divisions of all sorts: financial, racial, religious, political, aesthetic, national, etc. I think that the Elastic Tree functions as a META-Smetakian icon, where Smetak ceases to be seen as an alien or marginalized figure within our common history; an Icon that, I hope, reverberates (and alerts), within the unchanged climate of our primitive culture - where utopia is a form of dystopia and earthlings are the true aliens…

©Arthur Kampela 2017 “The Smetak Project” DAAD/ Ensemble Modern

Tak tak-tak Sala São paulo 12 de julho 2017, 3.51 AM

Kampela wrote Uma Faca Só Lamina (‘A Knife All Blade’) in 1998 as part of his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, Kampela explains that the title derives from a poem by the Brazilian Surrealist poet João Cabral de Melo Neto. The central image in that poem, Kampela tells us, is “ ‘A Knife All Blade,’ (analogous to a holographic device showing the same object at different angles, claustrophobic and inescapable)
        	The degree of specificity that Kampela develops in his notational processes borders on the sublime. Not only does he include detailed pitch instructions (quarter tones, harmonics, and so on), but has also included a lexicon of physical gestures for the ensemble to recreate. While some of them are quite idiosyncratic (“hit the wood (soundboard) below the neck with the little finger of the left hand while doing a left hand pizz.”) others take even more widely used extended techniques and incorporate them into Kampela’s sound. 
        	If the tactile physicality of Uma Faca Só Lâmina forms one pillar of its construction, another rests on Kampela’s theory of “micro-metric” modulation. Kampela tells us that micro-metric modulation “extends the scope of his rhythmic practice insofar as it compresses Carter’s metric modulation into a ‘micro-level’ of the beat’s possible subdivisions.” This process results in extraordinarily complicated rhythmic patterns, where, in order to perform Kampela’s notation, a single beat must be divided into smaller subdivisions that function as “rhythmic bridges” between two completely different rhythmic configurations or gestures.
        	When realized in sound, Kampela’s theories become a deliciously complex chaos, a cosmic scream split across the five sections of the work, all played continuously. From the opening viola cadenza we hear Kampela’s expansive language for strings, replete with added vocalizations by the players. This is music of intense concentration, both for the players and the listeners. Kampela goes so far as to frame his music’s disavowal of traditional musical markers in favor of a more immersive sonic experience in ethical terms:
I always deeply mistrust a complete anything, since I understand that the “noises of the sea” or a “dog’s bark,” for instance, are but prolongations of the experiential self “shooting” through modes or states of being. Composition, in this context, is seen as an accumulation of “frequential sediments,” a place of “charged mistrust,” a trace – and it is most exposed when it gravitates to the threshold of its own “opacity.” What I am articulating is a moral stance that, analogous to my music’s procedures, stresses that the artistic project should be a withdrawing of the ego, an attempt to bring forth what in us is genuine commitment.

Similar Motion

Uma Faca Só Lámina: I. Cadenza I

Kampela wrote Uma Faca Só Lamina (‘A Knife All Blade’) in 1998 as part of his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, Kampela explains that the title derives from a poem by the Brazilian Surrealist poet João Cabral de Melo Neto. The central image in that poem, Kampela tells us, is “ ‘A Knife All Blade,’ (analogous to a holographic device showing the same object at different angles, claustrophobic and inescapable)
The degree of specificity that Kampela develops in his notational processes borders on the sublime. Not only does he include detailed pitch instructions (quarter tones, harmonics, and so on), but has also included a lexicon of physical gestures for the ensemble to recreate. While some of them are quite idiosyncratic (“hit the wood (soundboard) below the neck with the little finger of the left hand while doing a left hand pizz.”) others take even more widely used extended techniques and incorporate them into Kampela’s sound. 
If the tactile physicality of Uma Faca Só Lâmina forms one pillar of its construction, another rests on Kampela’s theory of “micro-metric” modulation. Kampela tells us that micro-metric modulation “extends the scope of his rhythmic practice insofar as it compresses Carter’s metric modulation into a ‘micro-level’ of the beat’s possible subdivisions.” This process results in extraordinarily complicated rhythmic patterns, where, in order to perform Kampela’s notation, a single beat must be divided into smaller subdivisions that function as “rhythmic bridges” between two completely different rhythmic configurations or gestures.
When realized in sound, Kampela’s theories become a deliciously complex chaos, a cosmic scream split across the five sections of the work, all played continuously. From the opening viola cadenza we hear Kampela’s expansive language for strings, replete with added vocalizations by the players. This is music of intense concentration, both for the players and the listeners. Kampela goes so far as to frame his music’s disavowal of traditional musical markers in favor of a more immersive sonic experience in ethical terms:
I always deeply mistrust a complete anything, since I understand that the “noises of the sea” or a “dog’s bark,” for instance, are but prolongations of the experiential self “shooting” through modes or states of being. Composition, in this context, is seen as an accumulation of “frequential sediments,” a place of “charged mistrust,” a trace – and it is most exposed when it gravitates to the threshold of its own “opacity.” What I am articulating is a moral stance that, analogous to my music’s procedures, stresses that the artistic project should be a withdrawing of the ego, an attempt to bring forth what in us is genuine commitment.

Uma Faca Só Lámina: II. C-Proposition

Uma Faca Só Lámina: III. D-Variation

Uma Faca Só Lámina: IV. Cadenza II

Uma Faca Só Lámina: V. Finale

"Antropofagia," for Electric Guitar and Large Chamber Ensemble. 
Composer Arthur Kampela
Dedicated to electric guitarist Wiek Hijmans
Hommage to Pierre Boulez
To my father Leibo Kampela, (do meu coração, in Memoriam...)
Performed by the Kammerensemble Neue musik Berlin, Ultraschall Festival 2013 during my residency as Composer Fellow at the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm - (Berlin 2012-2013)
World Music Days 2006 (ISCM), Stuttgart 

The title "Antropofagia" (meaning the consumption of human flesh, i.e. cannibalism) is derived from the modernist movement that happened in Brazil in 1922. The underlying concept of such movement by the Brazilians intellectuals of the time was to "digest" the cultural remains of Euro-centric culture in order to spill (or vomit) it back, this time transformed or as they wished, reinvigorated by a new cultural paradigm. Understood as an intellectual defense to the bombardment of imported cultural mannerisms, the movement of the "week of '22" (as it is known) was in true searching for its own (modernist/Brazilian) identity. To accomplish such task they started to look at the the symbols of culture taken for granted, re(de)vising ways to think their notions and concepts afresh.

My work "Antropofagia," intends to attach similar ethos to the underlying fabric of compositional tools, questioning from the start, their usage, form, and function. First, with the electric guitar - that polymorphous instrument - as the piece's soloist. Its capacity to be an extension and differ from, itself while affirming its own identity points already to the deconstructed concept that underlies the compositional act. I take as my first compositional insight the fact that the instruments are mere sonic objects, without preliminary history and work them from "scratch." The traditional aspect is but one side of their (sonic) possibilities. As a referent to the cultural characters of the "week of '22," the guitar can also be seen as my "Macunaíma" (devised as "a hero without character" by Mario de Andrade in his poly(a)morphous romance of the epoch).

"Antropofagia" is built in one continuous movement. From the beginning, the musicians are employing their voices and pebbles as if "reaching" for their instruments, as if "inventing" their own way into what suppose to be a piece. The intention here is to bring the perceptual output to the idea of grain, white noise, as a pre-instrumental polarity. Important as well is the notion that each musician is a flexible sonic entity not having necessarily a fixed instrumental role. Slowly, this entropic beginning starts to present more organized and recognizable patterns developing higher compositional strategies. This underlying cosmo(a)gony of form and content reveals the subjacent battle that happens between motoric /ergonomic instrumental constraints and the surface of pitch and noises interactions. The Ensemble mirroring the distorted sonic 'emissions' of the electric guitar "spills or vomits" back its materials from a 'cauldron' of extended-techniques. My piece is but a residue, a trace of the inherited notion of thematic transparency. By the end, soloist and ensemble return to the initial gesture -- a white-noise 'carnival' that washes away when consumed by its own vortex.   
(listen to it loud !!) ©Arthur Kampela 2004-6. All Rights Reserved!.

Antropofagia for Electric Guitar and Large Chamber Ensemble -  Arthur Kampela

TAK-TAK...TAK...
Ensemble Modern and Plásticas Sonoras (Dedicated to Dorinha Kampela, minha mãe/ my mother - e/and Baiana, como/as Smetak...) My piece’s title comes from both, a nickname that Smetak was kindly addressed by Gilberto Gil (a great Brazilian songwriter from the Tropicalist movement of the 1960’s) and an allusion to his own metier as a luthier and builder of innovative sound-producing objects/sculptures/ instruments. The title spells accents and a dynamic motion, emphasizing the hybrid character of language itself and in particular, of everything that was of Smetak - this benign
“Bruxo” (sorcerer) - interest....  Has the music started already in the title...? - might be an interesting Smetakian question..!
The Plásticas Sonoras can be seen in two very distinctive ways. From one side they are objects without ‘restrictions’ that embody a new type of relationship not with traditional music but sound itself. They do not come with a guideline as how to “properly” play them. The very playing becomes an invention of the performer. They can be played by many performers at once (see his ‘Pindorama’), etc. From the other hand they are embedded in an aesthetic viewpoint, since timbre itself implies a formal commitment to a specific sonic outcome and consequently, a formal, view.
Thus, in order to “escape” the “Smetakian trap,” his creative volition, I decided to expose and subvert somehow the formal constituents of his instruments, their technical ‘limitations.’ My aim during this composition was to create a new kind of virtuosity that has in common with western instruments the fact that an engaged musicianship is being constantly assessed in order to show the instruments’ plasticity. Thus, I deployed new techniques for their manipulations reinventing a repertoire of gestures for them. That way I could create a “Cadenza” for the VINA (Smetak’s most prominent invention) that is extremely virtuosi in demand but keeps the uniqueness of the instrument, its iconic difference, visible and functional to the music... As a common feature of my own music, I always try to avoid exposing instruments as part of an innocuous circus where they would be just a mere gimmick, or “effects’ makers”. My score is a reflection of complex processes in order to safeguard and subsume all its materials to the same compositional demands. I also treated the Western instruments using Smetak’s hybrid approach. The piano and the percussionist II make up for one unique instrument: both play the same piano; the guitarist and the flutist have percussive instruments to prolong their own gestures in other directions... The Smetakian “Chori Sol e Lua” although built for a cellist type of player, is performed here by a guitarist.
Finally, I wanted to subsume the whole Smetakian concept of a cosmic instrument, creating a kind of “vibrating entanglement” of all the musicians. For that I built what I called the “Elastic Tree.” It is a visually enticing scenario. However, my intention was to link all the musicians through elastics that vibrate with percussive instruments when shaken, maintaining a basic musical priority. This vision came to me as I contemplated Smetak’s instrument “Pindorama.” A bamboo structure that spits from its head or top (like a Medusa) “plastic capillaries” whose end exhibit small flutes. This instrument, played by many musicians at the same time, is somehow a powerful metaphor for our time of divisions of all sorts: financial, racial, religious, political, aesthetic, national, etc. I think that the Elastic Tree functions as a Smetakian icon, where Smetak ceases to be seen as an alien or marginalized figure within our common history; an Icon that, I hope, reverberates (and alerts), within the unchanged climate of our primitive culture
- where a utopia is a form of dystopia and earthlings are the true aliens... ©Arthur Kampela 2017 “The Smetak Project” DAAD/ Ensemble Modern 12 de Julho 2017 (NEW VERSION EDITED BY MARTIN HERRAIZ)

Arthur Kampela

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