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Giacinto Scelsi (IPA: [ʤaˈʧinto ˈʃelsi]), Count of Ayala Valva (La Spezia, January 8, 1905 – Rome, August 9, 1988), was an Italian composer, who also wrote surrealist poetry in French. A count is a Nobleman in European countries The word count comes from French comte, itself from Latin La Spezia ( Spèsa in the local dialect of Ligurian) is a city in the Liguria region of northern Italy, at the head of La Spezia Events 871 - Battle of Ashdown - Ethelred of Wessex defeats a Danish invasion army Year 1905 ( MCMV) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year starting Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2 Events 48 BC - Caesar's civil war: Battle of Pharsalus - Julius Caesar decisively defeats Pompey at Pharsalus Year 1988 ( MCMLXXXVIII) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link displays 1988 Gregorian calendar) Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest A composer (literally meaning 'one who puts together' is a person who creates Music, usually in the medium of notation, for Interpretation and Performance Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people 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 each on a single note"] (1959). Pitch represents the perceived Fundamental frequency of a sound Microtonal music is Music using microtones — intervals of less than an equally spaced Semitone. In Acoustics and Telecommunication, the harmonic of a Wave is a component Frequency of the signal that is an Integer In Music, timbre (ˈtæm-bər' like timber, or, from Fr timbre tɛ̃bʁ is the quality of a Musical note or sound that distinguishes different In Music, the term note has two primary meanings 1 a sign used in Musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a Sound; His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except for scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of his life, until 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, about a quarter of a century after those works had been composed and less than a year before the composer's death (he was able to attend the premières and personally supervised the rehearsals). Year 1987 ( MCMLXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link displays 1987 Gregorian calendar) The impact caused by the late discovery of his works was described by Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich saying:[1]

“ A whole chapter of recent musical history must be rewritten: the second half of this century is now unthinkable without Scelsi. Harry Halbreich is a Belgian Musicologist. He studied with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, and became professor of musical analysis . . He has inaugurated a completely new way of making music, hitherto unknown in the West. In the early fifties, there were few alternatives to serialism's strait jacket that did not lead back to the past. In Music, serialism is a technique for composition that uses sets to describe musical elements, and allows the manipulation of those Then, toward 1960–61, came the shock of the discovery of Ligeti's Apparitions and Atmosphères. Atmosphères is a piece for full orchestra composed by György Ligeti in 1961 There were few people at the time who knew that Friedrich Cerha, in his orchestral cycle Spiegel, had already reached rather similar results, and nobody knew that there was a composer who had followed the same path even years before, and in a far more radical way: Giacinto Scelsi himself. Friedrich Cerha (born February 17, 1926 in Vienna) is an Austrian composer and conductor ”

Dutch musicologist Henk de Velde, alluding to Adorno speaking of Alban Berg, called Scelsi “the Master of the yet smaller transition,” to which Harry Halbreich added that “in fact, his music is only transition. Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno ( September 11, 1903 &ndash August 6, 1969) was a German -born international sociologist Alban Maria Johannes Berg (February 9 1885 &ndash December 24 1935 was an Austrian Composer. ”


Contents

Life

Born in the village Pitelli near La Spezia, 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, he became the first adept of dodecaphony in Italy, although he did not continue to use this composition system. Arnold Schoenberg ( pronounced ˈʃøːnbɛrk (13 September 1874 &ndash 13 July 1951 was an Austrian and later American Composer, associated with Twelve-tone technique (also dodecaphony, especially in British usage twelve-note composition) is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold In the 1920s Scelsi made friends with intellectuals like Jean Cocteau and Virginia Woolf, and travelled extensively abroad. Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889 &ndash 11 October 1963 was a French Poet, Novelist, Dramatist, Designer, Boxing (Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941 was an English Novelist and Essayist, regarded as one of the foremost In 1927, in Egypt, he first came into contact with non-European music. This article is about the country of Egypt For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Egypt topics. His first composition was Chemin du coeur (1929). Then followed Rotativa, first conducted by Pierre Monteux at Salle Pleyel, Paris, on December 20, 1931. Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city

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. Paul Hindemith (16 November 1895 &ndash 28 December 1963 was a German Composer, Violist, violinist teacher music theorist and conductor. Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский) ( &ndash 6 April 1971 was a Russian born Composer, considered by many to Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich ( Russian: ru Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович ( &ndash 9 August 1975 was a Russian Composer Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (Серге́й Серге́евич Проко́фьев Sergéj Sergéjevič Prokófjev) ( - 5 March 1953 was a Russian composer who Due to the enforcement of racial laws under the fascist regime of Mussolini these concerts were not able to continue for long, preventing the performance of works by Jewish composers. The term Italian Fascism denotes the totalitarian Fascismo political movement that ruled Italy from 1922 until 1943 under leader Benito Mussolini Scelsi refused to comply, causing the composer's gradual removal from Italy. In 1940, when Italy entered the war, Scelsi was in Switzerland, where he remained until the end of the conflict, composing and improving his music conception. Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation He married Dorothy Kate Ramsden, a divorced Englishwoman (whose daughter from her previous marriage was Katie Boyle). Catherine "Katie" Boyle (born Caterina Irene Elena Maria Imperiali Di Francavilla on 29 May 1926) is a Television presenter, well known

Back in Rome after the war 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. He rejected the notions of composition and author in favour of sheer improvisation. Improvisation (also called extemporization) is the practice of acting singing talking and reacting of making and creating in the moment and in response to the stimulus of 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 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 in Rome during the 1960s (Curran, 2003, in NewMusicBox). Composer Alvin Curran (born 13 December 1938 in Providence Rhode Island) is the co-founder with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Frederic Anthony Rzewski (born April 13 1938 in Westfield Massachusetts) is an American Composer and virtuoso Pianist. Scelsi also collaborated with other American composers including John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Earle Brown who visited him in Rome. WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> John Milton Cage Jr Morton Feldman (January 12 1926 – September 3 1987 was an American Composer, born in New York City. Earle Brown ( Lunenburg Massachusetts, December 26, 1926 &ndash Rye New York, July 2, 2002) was an American composer

Alvin Curran recalled that: "Scelsi. Composer Alvin Curran (born 13 December 1938 in Providence Rhode Island) is the co-founder with Frederic Rzewski and Richard . . 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 9th 1988.

Works

See List of compositions by Giacinto Scelsi. Below is a list of compositions by Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988

Selected discography

Accord / Universal-Musidisc

Cpo

Kairos

Mode

Other labels

Sources

References

  1. ^ Harry Halbreich, in the analytic commentaries published accompanying Jürg Wyttenbach's recordings of Scelsi's orchestral integrale by Accord. The New Yorker is an American Magazine that publishes reportage commentary criticism essays fiction satire cartoons and poetry

External links

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