Giacinto Scelsi

Giacinto Scelsi (Spezia, January 8th 1905 - Rome, on August 9th 1988), is a Compositeur Italy N.

Life

Resulting from the Italian nobility, he studies initially with Rome then with Vienna with a pupil of Schönberg. He is before 1940 the first follower Italian of the Dodécaphonisme, quite front Luigi Dallapiccola. He passes through at the end of the Forties a great moral crisis where he calls in question all his former compositions. He makes several voyages in the East then where he discovers spirituality of it. After many stays in Europe, it is fixed definitively at Rome where it works in a solitary way and becomes in a late way one of the major actors of the post Sérialisme. Impregnated Eastern culture, Scelsi wanted to be before a whole messenger, " a facteur" had fun he to say. The message coming moreover higher. Moreover, he refused to be made photograph. “The real paternity of its work however was often questioned; considering its immense Scelsi fortune according to some would have purely and simply used " négres" it would have allotted the paternity of the inventions… ”. Thus the entourage of the type-setter Luciano Bério often fustigated the type-setter contrary the musicologist harry Halbreich invited the claimed negro ones with " refaire" from Scelsi of in addition to-fall… The ambiguity also seems to come from the recourse to many scribes and with the smoke screen sometimes very smoky maintained by the direct entouurage the type-setter, behaving a such sect… it is thus very difficult to étblir an exact chronology of the compositions of Scelsi and to have recourse for example to the drafts… this lack of data can only feed the polemic on a singular work between all… |date=

Its work had a great influence on the musicians of the Route: Tristan Murail, Gerard Grisey, Michael Levinas and Solange Ancona, that Scelsi could meet at the time of their passage by the Médicis Villa with beginning of the year 70.

Work

He wrote more than 150 pieces of music. Its most outstanding works are posterior with 1950 and are characterized by a focusing on the sound, often monodic, or in the form of cluster instrumental or vocal, exploiting the microtones or the granulation of the articulations. It is initially for instrument alone that its new ideas take form during the Fifties, while being extended to small formations in chamber music and forsaking gradually its instrument of predilection hitherto: the piano. This one was adapted indeed little for its new research, in particular asking for the possibility of of maintaining the sound and of modifying its stamp. And it is with the Quattro pezzi known una foot-note sola (1959) that this new design of the music and the sound takes its most succeeded form. Each one of these four parts is based on a single note played by a chamber orchestra, being declined on times and varied attacks. One notes an inspiration orientalizing as in Aion, four episodes of the life of Brahma (1961) and Konx-Om-Pax 1968 (three terms wanting to say “peace” into Assyrian, Sanskrit and Latin). Its orchestral works of maturity are characterized by the dominating use of coppers and percussion, even if the cords, sometimes, preserve a big role. He is also the author of collections of poetries in French.

The authenticity of its work - more exactly of the copies carried out from some of its improvisations - was questioned and sometimes very highly disputed after its death. The type-setter Vieri Tosatti indeed wrote through the press that he was the true author of the work of Giacinto Sclesi, and this 6 month after the death of the type-setter. If there is not any doubt that Tosatti had a close cooperation with him, one cannot define today with precision which was the degree of this collaboration.

It should be still added that Giacinto Scelsi worked much with the musicians who interpreted his works. It was a thing to which it gave much importance. One can in particular quote Michiko Hirayama (voice), Joelle Léandre (Double bass), Frances Marie Uitti (Violoncello).

External bonds

Fondazione Isabella Scelsi
Biography of Giacinto Scelsi by itself (Information center of the Modern music).
Season of the CDMC/Concerts-meetings, conferences

European days of musical studies “Today, Giacinto Scelsi” (1905-1988) 12, January 13rd, 14th and 18th 2005 ----

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