Giacinto Scelsi
Encyclopedia
Giacinto Scelsi Count
Count
A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is...

 of Ayala Valva (La Spezia
La Spezia
La Spezia , at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the Liguria region of northern Italy, is the capital city of the province of La Spezia. Located between Genoa and Pisa on the Ligurian Sea, it is one of the main Italian military and commercial harbours and hosts one of Italy's biggest military...

, January 8, 1905 – Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, August 9, 1988) was an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 who also wrote surrealist poetry in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

.

He is best known for writing music based around only one pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...

, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...

 and dynamics
Dynamics (music)
In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...

, as paradigmatically exemplified in his revolutionary Quattro Pezzi su una nota sola ["Four Pieces on a single note"] (1959). His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of his life. A series of concerts in the mid to late 1980s finally premièred many of his pieces to great acclaim, notably his orchestral masterpieces in October 1987 in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, about a quarter of a century after those works had been composed and less than a year before the composer's death. Scelsi was able to attend the premières and personally supervised the rehearsals. The impact caused by the late discovery of Scelsi's works was described by Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich
Harry Halbreich
Harry Halbreich is a Belgian musicologist.He studied with Arthur Honegger and later with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. From 1970 to 1976 he was Lecturer in Musical Analysis at the Royal Conservatory in Mons...

:
Dutch musicologist Henk de Velde
Henk de Velde
Henk de Velde is a Dutch seafarer. He is especially known for his long solo-voyages around the world....

, alluding to Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....

 speaking of Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

, called Scelsi "the Master of the yet smaller transition," to which Harry Halbreich added that "in fact, his music is only transition."

The music of Scelsi was heard by millions in Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

's Shutter Island in which excerpts of his two pieces "Quattro pezzi su una nota sola" (which does not appear on the soundtrack of the film) and "Uaxuctum: The Legend Of The Mayan City Which They Themselves Destroyed For Religious Reasons – 3rd Movement" were featured in the film alongside the music of his contemporaries György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

, Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...

, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

 and Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...

.

Life

Born in the village of Pitelli near La Spezia
La Spezia
La Spezia , at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the Liguria region of northern Italy, is the capital city of the province of La Spezia. Located between Genoa and Pisa on the Ligurian Sea, it is one of the main Italian military and commercial harbours and hosts one of Italy's biggest military...

, Scelsi spent most of his time in his mother's old castle where he received education from a private tutor who taught him Latin, chess and fencing. Later, his family moved to Rome and his musical talents were encouraged by private lessons with Giacinto Sallustio. In Vienna, as a disciple of Arnold Schönberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, he became the first adept of dodecaphony
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...

 in Italy, although he did not continue to use this composition system. In the 1920s, Scelsi made friends with intellectuals like Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...

 and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

, and travelled abroad extensively. In 1927, in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, he first came into contact with non-European music. His first composition was Chemin du coeur (1929). Then followed Rotativa, first conducted by Pierre Monteux at Salle Pleyel, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, on December 20, 1931.

In 1937, he organised a series of concerts of contemporary music, introducing the music of (among others) Hindemith, Schönberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovitch, and Prokofiev to an Italian audience for the first time. Due to the enforcement of racial laws under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

, these concerts were not able to continue for long, preventing the performance of works by Jewish composers. Scelsi refused to comply, causing the composer's gradual removal from Italy. In 1940, when Italy entered the war, Scelsi was in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, where he remained until the end of the conflict, composing and improving his conception of music. He married Dorothy Kate Ramsden, a divorced Englishwoman.

Back in Rome after the war, his wife left him (eventually inspiring Elegia per Ty), and he underwent a profound psychic crisis that eventually led him to the discovery of Eastern spirituality and also to a radical transformation of his view of music, his so called second period. He rejected the notions of composition and author in favour of sheer improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...

. These improvisations, recorded on tape, were later transcribed by collaborators under his guidance, then orchestrated and complemented by the composer's meticulous performance instructions, or adjusted from time to time in close collaboration with the performers.

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 intermediary. It is for this reason that Scelsi never allowed his image to be shown in connection with his music; he preferred instead to identify himself by a line under a circle, a symbol of Eastern provenance. Some photographs of Scelsi have emerged since his death.

One of the earliest interpreters Scelsi closely worked with is the singer Michiko Hirayama, whom he met in 1957 in Rome. From 1962 to 1972 he wrote the extensive song cycle "Canti del Capricorno" directly for her due to her special and unique vocal range. The writing process of the piece was an example for Scelsi's very personal way of working: developing pieces through improvisation, recording and then final transcription.

From the late 1970s, he met several leading interpreters who have promoted his music all over the world and gradually opened the gates to wider audiences, such as the Arditti String Quartet, the cellist Frances-Marie Uitti
Frances-Marie Uitti
Frances-Marie Uitti is composer and cellist known for her performances of the most esoteric and virtuoso contemporary classical music. She was born in Chicago to Finnish parents, and she studied classical music at Meadowmount with Ronald Leonard and Josef Gingold, Boston University with Leslie...

, the pianists Yvar Mikhashoff
Yvar Mikhashoff
Yvar Emilian Mikhashoff was an American virtuoso pianist and composer...

 and Marianne Schroeder
Marianne Schroeder
Marianne Schroeder is a Swiss pianist and composer. She studied with Giacinto Scelsi. She played at Carnegie Hall, Lucerne Festival and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. She worked with John Cage and Shigeru Kan-no....

.

Scelsi was a friend and a mentor to Alvin Curran
Alvin Curran
Composer Alvin Curran , is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds....

 and other expatriate American composers such as Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.- Biography :Rzewski began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt...

 who lived in Rome during the 1960s (Curran, 2003, in NewMusicBox). Scelsi also collaborated with other American composers including John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

, Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...

, and Earle Brown
Earle Brown
Earle Brown was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems...

 who visited him in Rome.

Alvin Curran
Alvin Curran
Composer Alvin Curran , is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds....

 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 on August 9, 1988.

Works

See List of compositions by Giacinto Scelsi.


Bibliography-
  • Le Poids net et l'Ordre de ma vie, Vevey, 1945
  • Sommet du feu, Rome, 1947
  • Le Poids net, éditions GLM (Guy Levis Mano), 1949
  • L'Archipel Nocturne, éditions GLM, 1954
  • La conscience aiguë, éditions GLM, 1962
  • Cercles, Éditions Le parole gelate, Rome, 1986


Actes Sud published the writings of Giacinto Scelsi in three volumes, the majority of which are now out of print:
  • L'homme du son, poetry edited and with commentary by Luciano Martinis, with collaboration from Sharon Kanach. Actes Sud 2006,
  • Les anges sont ailleurs, writings on Scelsi's life, music and art. Actes Sud, 2006.
  • Il Sogno 101, an autobiography. Actes Sud.

Accord/Universal-Musidisc

  • Œuvre intégrale pour choeur et orchestre symphonique (1. Aion - Pfhat - Konx-Om-Pax, 2. Quattro Pezzi - Anahit - Uaxuctum, 3. Hurqualia - Hymnos - Chukrum). Orchestre et chœur de la Radio-Télévision Polonaise de Cracovie, conducted by Jürg Wyttenbach (recorded 1988, 1989 and 1990; ref. 201692, 1992, 3 CDs: 1. ref. 200402, 1988 2. ref. 200612, 1989 3. ref. 201112, 1990; re-released by Universal-Musidisc in 2002)
  • Elegia per Ty - Divertimento nº3 pour violon - L’Âme ailée - L’Âme ouverte - Coelocanth - Trio à cordes. Zimansky, violin; Schiller, viola; Demenga, cello (ref. 200611, 1989)
  • Quattro illustrazioni - Xnoybis - Cinque incantesimi - Duo pour violon et violoncelle. Suzanne Fournier, piano; Carmen Fournier, violin; David Simpson, cello (ref. 200742, 1990)
  • Suite No.8 (Bot-Ba) - Suite No.9 (Ttai). Werner Bärtschi, piano (ref. 200802, 1990)
  • Intégrale des œuvres chorales (Sauh III & IV - TKRDG - 3 Canti populari - 3 Canti sacri - 3 Latin Prayers - Yliam). New London Chamber Choir, Percussive Rotterdam, conducted by James Wood (ref. 206812)

Cpo

  • 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

Kairos

  • Yamaon; Anahit; I presagi; Tre Pezzi; Okanagon (Kairos 1203) the Klangforum Wien conducted by Hans Zender
    Hans Zender
    Johannes Wolfgang Zender is a German conductor and composer.-Life:From 1956 to 1959 Zender studied piano, conducting, and composition at the Hochschule für Musik Frankfurt and at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.From 1959 to 1963 he was Kapellmeister of the Municipal Theatres in Freiburg im...

  • 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

Mode

  • The Piano Works 1 (Mode Records 92) played by Louise Bessette
  • The Orchestral Works 1 (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
  • The Orchestral Works 2 (Mode Records 176) Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
  • The Works For Double Bass CD (Mode Records 188) played by Robert Black

Other labels

  • 5 string quartets, String trio, Khoom. Arditti String Quartet; Michiko Hirayama, voice; et al. (recorded 1988; Salabert Actuels, ref. 2SCD 8904-5; re-released by Montaigne / Naïve, ref. MO 782156, 2002; 2 CDs)
  • Trilogia (Triphon, Dithome, Igghur) - Ko-Tha. Frances-Marie Uitti
    Frances-Marie Uitti
    Frances-Marie Uitti is composer and cellist known for her performances of the most esoteric and virtuoso contemporary classical music. She was born in Chicago to Finnish parents, and she studied classical music at Meadowmount with Ronald Leonard and Josef Gingold, Boston University with Leslie...

    , cello (Fore 80, No.6 [LP]; Etcetera, KTC 1136 [CD])
  • Intégrale de la musique de chambre pour orchestre a cordes (Natura renovatur, Anagamin, Ohoi, Elohim). Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, conducted by Jean-Paul Dessy (recorded May 1998; Forlane, ref. UCD16800, 2000)
  • Canti del Capricorno. Michiko Hirayama, voice; et al. (recorded 1969 & 1981/1982; Wergo, ref. WER 60127-50, 1988)
  • 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, cello
  • Natura renovatur (ECM 1963) Münchener Kammerorchester conducted by Christoph Poppen
    Christoph Poppen
    Christoph Poppen is a German conductor, violinist and academic teacher.-Professional career:As a violinist, Poppen was awarded first prize in the Kocian Violin Competition age 14...

    , Frances-Marie Uitti
    Frances-Marie Uitti
    Frances-Marie Uitti is composer and cellist known for her performances of the most esoteric and virtuoso contemporary classical music. She was born in Chicago to Finnish parents, and she studied classical music at Meadowmount with Ronald Leonard and Josef Gingold, Boston University with Leslie...

     on violoncello
  • Trilogy: Triphon, Dithome, Ygghur (for cello solo) - 1957-61/65. Arne Deforce, cello on AEON, AECD 0748, 2007.

Sources


External links


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