Giacinto Scelsi, Count of Ayala Valva (8 January 1905 – 9 August 1988), wa… Read Full Bio ↴Giacinto Scelsi, Count of Ayala Valva (8 January 1905 – 9 August 1988), was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French.
He is best known for writing music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and 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.
Born in La Spezia, Italy, Scelsi studied music first in Rome, and later in Vienna, with a disciple of Arnold Schönberg. Subsequently Scelsi 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 Frederick 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."
Giacinto Scelsi died in Rome in 1988.
He is best known for writing music based around only one pitch, altered in all manners through microtonal oscillations, harmonic allusions, and changes in timbre and 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.
Born in La Spezia, Italy, Scelsi studied music first in Rome, and later in Vienna, with a disciple of Arnold Schönberg. Subsequently Scelsi 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 Frederick 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."
Giacinto Scelsi died in Rome in 1988.
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Quattro Pezzi III
Giacinto Scelsi Lyrics
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Moment's
@Ashleigh Holmes Speech could also be considered that, and most people don't think of spoken language as music, even though it is about communication, just like birdsongs (which many people consider music, even though both the human spoken language and birdsongs have pretty much the same intent). Spoken language is even more organised and consistent in terms of sounds and order of sounds than birdsongs. The sound of your car alarm going off is organised, urban sounds such as beeps when the metro doors open are organised, the sounds when you dial someone are organised as well.
Also, like futuristic and concrete music, I could compose a piece using only the sound of chainsaws, machines, doors slamming, and even though it was my intent to compose a piece of music and it would fit your description, I can guarantee you most people (specially non musicians) would not consider that music because they don't listen to it as music.
At last, let's not forget that what many consider music is not just about sound, but also about silence at some point.
The point is, there are hardly any objective definitions about what music is. It's extremely subjective. Organisation of sounds CAN be music, but not every organisation of sounds is popularly considered music, not every organisation of sound has the intention to be music and not everything that is considered music is organised sounds.
When it gets down to this point, many people try to talk about beauty, but that definition also changes from culture to culture and from time to time.
The thing is, I'm replying to you because I used to think the exact same thing you said, but there are many contradictions. And that may lie within the fact that music doesn't have a specific universal function, so we can't measure how "well" a certain thing fits in the picture - we can't objectively discriminate between what it is and what it's not based on what "it should be".
Therefore, the best definition I've come to, so far, is that "music is what one listens to as music". It's as simple as that, because then we ignore all the impossible to solve variables that can pop up when we objectively try to encapsulate everything that is music under one definition trying to errouneously judge it upon who or what produces it instead of putting that weigh onto who's listening to it. Not only that, but you can even start to hear the sound of your washing machine, of a train passing by or of someone hitting pans as music if you listen to it with the intention of listening to it as music, things that otherwise wouldn't be music to you if you didn't listen to it with that intent.
Bmj Composer
Thanks for uploading the works of scelsi. I really appreciate him for his various of techniques of composing.
sonicsnap117
Wonderful! Scelsi's music prefigures the french spectral music.
emilianoturazzi
yes and honestly it's basically a bit better...
sonicsnap117
@emilianoturazzi This is debatable. Imho, spectralism has produced works of exceptional quality, among the most important of the last quarter of the twentieth century. I don't want to underestimate Giacinto Scelsi whose music I like greatly. But it is true that I admire for a long time Hugues Dufourt, Michael Levinas and especially Tristan Murail and Gerard Grisey. I think they've made a great contribution to contemporary music.
emilianoturazzi
@sonicsnap117 you're obviously right:
1) that is just my point of view (my taste and also a personal critical evaluation that's far from being widely shared) and it is obviously debatable.
2) they unquestionably made a great contribution to contemporary music.
my comment was a bit stupid :) and too much synthetic: at least I forgot "imho"... I always give it for understood, but maybe it's better to be more esplicit :)
by the way, I also know that my personal view could change: nothing absolut... just a step in the debate.
sonicsnap117
@emilianoturazzi No problem Emiliano. You are an honest and sincere person.
Rémi Audibert
Les harmonique s'invitent à notre oreille... on entrevoit les heures que passait Scelsi à répéter une note unique de piano jusqu'à en déceler tous les aspects... de la pré-musique spectrale. Merci du partage.
Clément Belio
Qu'est-ce que tu racontes c'est juste l'alerte test du premier mercredi du mois.
Stefan Predoi
Limitations breed creativity, and this is a great example. This was surprisingly before western drone music like LaMonte Young or Stars of the Lid and, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments section, spectralism. I wish more people knew about Scelsi.
Philippe Cirse
Es hermoso, como la improbable y luego mesiánica reunión de un paraguas
y una máquina de coser en una mesa de disección 👑