World première for Javier Torres Maldonado on July 24 in the Sala Nezahualcóyotl of the Ciudad Universitaria in Mexico City: Di natura artificiale will be played by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, who commissioned the new work, conducted by José Arean. The composer explains: «The title comes from the basic material of the work: one of the thirteen strokes of an electroacoustic sound associable with a bell due to its gestural and mimicking qualities, of imaginary material (metallic) and of spectral luminosity (inharmonic), that precede the dramatic finale of the last scene, Ritorno ad Itaca, of the radio drama I composed in 2011, Un posible día, for soprano, narrator, ensemble and electronics. This sound fascinated me not so much for its association with the plot as for its sonic beauty; so I decided to use it as one of the materials for Di natura artificiale. The link between these two compositions actually comes not only from the adoption of a material that, albeit in a different way, is common to both (the isolated stroke I mentioned before), but also from the nature inherent to each work: in Un posible día the materials were generated from the “natural” sound of a tam tam (rubbed with a super-ball), while in Di natura artificiale, although the primary material derives from the processes of metamorphosis of the sound in question, in reality, thanks to the transformations that make it possible to obtain a new paradigmatic model (that is, the imaginary, enormous bell stroke, with its deep and evolutive sound, a sort of “bell-harp-piano”, all combined into one), its nature is transformed into something sophisticatedly artificial. In Di natura artificiale one can observe the desire to create the compositional processes strictly linked to the physical structure of the basic sound objects as well as to their perceptual and gestural qualities; in this sense the piece has elements that are a continuation of the work I have developed over the last eleven years, through which I have tried to establish a deep bond between the worlds of musical composition and new technologies, to which I have recently added the possibilities deriving from computer-assisted orchestration. These tools allow me to observe the musical material in many different ways and so allow me to imagine compositional processes that would otherwise be very difficult to conceive. Di natura artificiale also exploits an equally important second material, obtained through the application of a technique that is new to my music: although I don’t consider it “spectral” but rather “multidimensional”, in some of my works a technique is applied, always differently, whereby the same single model is superimposed, as if observing it submerged in various different simultaneous “dimensions”. In the specific case of this work, the verticality derives from harmonic spectra with different fundamentals, in a way that their sum produces inharmonicities. These inharmonicities, considered at a horizontal level, are totally harmonic, while if considered in their verticality – or if you prefer in their “luminosity” –, they present inharmonic combinations due to the fact that their fundamentals are a minor or major second apart. In the various sections there is an alternation or overlapping of different techniques for the transformation of the sound objects, as well as of the musical texture; these include translations of the previously mentioned electronic stroke, evolutions of luminosity in complex timbres, the alternation and transformation of plays of figures featuring a superimposition of elements which originate from multidimensional interpretations of the basic materials, counterpoints of timbres and superimpositions of polyphonic densities that have different degrees of similarity to the original model».