Giacinto Scelsi

Giacinto Scelsi, Count of Ayala Valva (January 8, 1905 – August 9, 1988), was an Italian composer. He is best known for writing music based on only one pitch, such as Quattro Pezzi Su Una Nota Sola ["Four pieces each on a single note"] (1959). He also wrote surrealist poetry in French. (His name is pronounced ja-CHEEN-to SHELLsi.)

Life

Born in La Spezia, Scelsi studied music first in Rome, and later in Vienna with a disciple of Arnold Schönberg, and became one of the first adepts of dodecaphony in Italy. At the end of the 1940s, he underwent a profound religious crisis that led him to the discovery of Eastern spirituality and also to a radical transformation of his view of music. He rejected the notions of composition and author in favor of sheer improvisation.

Scelsi came to conceive of artistic creation as a means of communicating a higher transcendent reality to the listener. From this point of view, the artist is considered a mere intermediator. It is for this reason that he never allowed his image to be shown in connection with his music. He preferred instead to identify himself with a line under a circle, a symbol of Eastern provenance. Some photographs of Scelsi have emerged after his death.

Scelsi was a friend and a mentor to Alvin Curran and other expatriate American composers such as Frederic Rzewski who lived Rome during the 1960s (Curran, 2003, in NewMusicBox). Scelsi also "conspired" with other American composers including John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown who visited him in Rome.

Alvin Curran recalled that: "Scelsi ... came to all my concerts in Rome even right up to the very last one I gave just a few days before he died.... This was in the summer time, and he was such a nut about being outdoors. He was there in a fur coat and a fur hat. It was an outdoor concert. He waved from a distance, beautiful sparking eyes and smile that he always had, and that's the last time I saw him." (Ross, 2005).

Scelsi died in Rome in 1988.

Works

See List of works by Giacinto Scelsi.

Selected discography

Yamaon; Anahit; I presagi; Tre Pezzi; Okanagon (Kairos 1203) the Klangforum Wien conducted by Hans Zender
Streichquartett Nr. 4; Elohim; Duo; Anagamin; Maknongan; Natura renovatur (Kairos 1216) the Klangforum Wien conducted by Hans Zender
Action Music, Suite No 8 "bot-ba" (Kairos 1231) played on piano by Bernhard Wambach
The Piano Works 1 (Mode Records 92) played by Louise Bessette
The Orchestral Works I(Mode Records 95) Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic & Choir conducted by Juan Pablo Izquierdo, with Pauline Vaillancourt, soprano, and Douglas Ahlstedt, tenor
Music For High Winds (Mode Records 102) played by Carol Robinson, clarinets, Clara Novakova, flute and piccolo, Cathy Milliken, oboe
The Piano Works 2 (Mode Records 143) played by Stephen Clarke
The Piano Works 3 (Mode Records 159) played by Aki Takahashi
Chamber Works For Flute And Piano (Cpo 999340-2) played by Carin Levine, flutes, Kristi Becker, piano, Peter Veale, oboe, Edith Salmen, percussion, and Giacinto Scelsi, piano
The Complete Works For Clarinet (Cpo 999266-2) played by the Ensemble Avance, conducted by Zsolt Nagy, with David Smeyers, clarinets, and Susanne Mohr, flute
Complete Works For Flute And Clarinet (Col Legno 200350) played by the Ebony Duo
Trilogia (CTH 2480, together with Aşk Havasi by Frangis Ali-Sade) played by Jessica Kuhn on violoncello
Natura renovatur (ECM 1963) Münchener Kammerorchester conducted by Christoph Poppen, Frances-Marie Uitti on violoncello

Sources

NewMusicBox.org: Waking Up to Alvin Curran Wednesday, November 26, 2003 1:30-2:30 p.m. A Conversation with Frank J. Oteri at the American Music Center © 2004 NewMusicBox
Scelsi Morning After November 15, 2005 by Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise Articles, a blog, and a book-in-progress by the music critic of The New Yorker
Fondazione Isabella Scelsi

External links