Uaxuctum giacinto scelsi biography

The first recording of his 32-minute grand cantata La nascita del Verbo. Steeped in chromaticism, with hints of Scriabin and a sea of percussion, Nascita boasts a vast double fugue (one of the most imposing in the history of music) and a forty-seven voice canon in twelve keys.
This work, »truly written in blood,« left Scelsi »in a deplorable state,« afterwards he stopped composing for several years.
One of Scelsi's infamous pieces is the Quattro Pezzi (su una nota sola). Each piece is limited to one pitch with micro-fluctuations of sound (vibratos, slurs, spectral changes, tremolos...). Because of the nearly total abandonment of harmonics, the listener concentrates on new sonorous subtleties, on the orchestra's timbre as a whole.
In 1966, he completed the ferocious, tormented, complex Uaxuctum. The myths and mysteries of this Mayan city is reflected in Scelsi's compositional process: new instrumental and vocal techniques (breathing noises, nasal sounds, muted or inhaled gutturals...), rhythmic incantations, a petrified flow of time. Few woodwinds, a string section consisting o

Scelsi, Giacinto

Composer

A biographer's nightmare, Giacinto Scelsi was a mysterious, reclusive, and elusive Italian aristocrat whose music has been described as otherwordly, miraculous, visionary, and life-altering. Refusing the title of "composer," Scelsi regarded himself as a medium through which music, originating in celestial spheres, appeared in the physical realm. Deeply spiritual, Scelsi immersed himself in the great traditions of Eastern and Western wisdom, always seeking a deeper understanding of the universe. He was not, however, a mystic who composed in order to convey certain insights to a wider audience; for him, writing music was a mystical act.

As a rule, even esoteric composers express their ideas through more or less traditional musical idioms. Despite his efforts to probe the mysteries of existence, the Russian composer Aleksandr Scriabin, for example, remained within the confines of Western tonality, even as he anticipated atonal music, which relinquished defined keys and the idea of a tonal center—a point of reference that the listener, regard

Giacinto Scelsi

Italian composer and poet

"Scelsi" redirects here. For the US politician, see Joseph Scelsi. For the Italian model, see Chiara Scelsi. For the transport facility in Massachusetts, USA, see Scelsi ITC.

Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi (Italian pronunciation:[dʒaˈtʃintofranˈtʃeskomaˈriːaʃˈʃɛlsi]; 8 January 1905 – 9 August 1988,[1] sometimes cited as 8 August 1988[2]) was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French.

He is best known for having composed 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 Quattro pezzi su una nota sola ("Four Pieces on a single note", 1959).[3] This composition remains his most famous work and one of the few performed to significant recognition during his lifetime. His musical output, which encompassed all Western classical genres except scenic music, remained largely undiscovered even within contemporary musical circles during most of h

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