"Mixing of styles, borrowing from other historical periods and other cultures - these are certainly hallmarks of our current pluralistic times, but I don't think the nail has been hit squarely on the head with that word which indicates, after all, simply the opposite of singular. The fact that many people are doing many different things at once does not constitute a style or trend. The one factor I see clearly evident in much of the new music is that of intense personality. The composer now has the opportunity, to develop a personal art without regard to tradition or anti- tradition."
More than twenty years ago, composer Ingram Marshall wrote the above paragraph regarding the problem of language and style in musical composition. Marshall has been one of the most outstanding voices of his generation, building a very personal work developed under the influences of electronic music, minimalism and sounds from different cultures. His early works are mostly based on electronic treatments of voices and, after a travel to Indonesia in early seventies, he has deeply involved in a kind of works using tonal materials in a cloudish textures
mixing instrumental, electronic and acoustic resources. During seventies and eighties, Marshall gave us a very consistent body of work in which beauty and construction are not opposite terms. From this period, "Fog Tropes," "Gradual Requiem," "Gambuh I," "Hidden Voices" and "Alcatraz" gained wide recognition as works in which tonal materials are combined with electronic tapestries in a very personal way. Remarkably, he is a composer who is interested and committed with a deep sense of music expressiveness, a very special area of creation particularly neglected for many experimental artists. His attention to these concerns has driven to him to the study of several traditions, technical to spiritual, dating from ancient times. In other words, in Marshall's hands, experimental music can be related to different traditions in many forms.
(Daniel Varela)
