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Tanmatras: The Life and Work of Giacinto Scelsi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Robin Freeman
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Extract

Giacinto Scelsi, last Count of Dayala Valva and one of the most extraordinary composers of this century, died in Rome on 9 August 1988 at the age of 85 in the Policlinico Gemelli after an attack brought on by the sweltering Roman summer: he who never went to the mountains to avoid it, thinking that warmth could do him only good. After the Naples earthquake of 1980, which flattened the mediaeval hill town of Valva and with it the family castle and its library, Scelsi said: crolla il castello, crolla il padrone. The castle falls to bits and so does its master. Those of us who knew him in his last years remember above all the frail figure sitting on a couch below the two portraits that Dali had given the Eluards for a wedding present, doing ironic and at times testy battle with the world and old age, there in his overheated house across from the Roman Forum. With such a view, he used to say, what one does must be quite splendid or else a very bad joke. During his lifetime Scelsi refused to be photographed, did his best to avoid programme notes, and gave information about his life only when he chose to forget himself in conversation. Few of us cared to violate these rules, knowing that for a man who had dictated the mémoires of his future life they represented a kind of defence against a finality imposed from without. He sought something like this in his music as well, hoping it would seem only a snatch of what had been going on long before, of what would be going on long after.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 176 , March 1991 , pp. 8 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 In view of the fact that there seems no proof that Walter Stein (active in Vienna from 1900) actually studied with Schoenberg, the Editor of Tempo has suggested to me that the Stein in question might be Fritz Heinrich, a student of both Schoenberg and Berg and the man who prepared the vocal score of Wozzeck. I have a recollection of Scelsi's having said ‘Walter’, independent of Claudio Annibaldi's New Grove Scelsi article (naming ‘W. Stein’) - which I hadn't read at that time. Nevertheless, while awaiting further information on Walter Stein, the idea is worth entertaining. First because Scelsi was much more interested in the music of Berg than that of Schoenberg: in fact one of his few pieces with a dedication is an elegy on the death of Berg. And second because a man who consented to do the vocal score of Wozzeck, however privileged the task, might well have had time for an eccentric foreign student who lacked formal preparation.

2 Scelsi's wife's name was Dorothy. His pet name for her was Ty. He wrote two pieces for her, a Suite for piano (No.6) from 1938–9, called I capricci di Ty, when they were together and a duo for viola and 'cello from 1966, Elegia per Ty, after they were separated but as far as I know before her death.

3 Zeller, Hans Rudolf, ‘Das Ensemble der Soli’, in Musik-Konzepte 31: Giacinto Scelsi (edition text+kritik, 1983)Google Scholar.

4 Thus the 1959 date given for the first performance in the Musik-Konzepte volume on Scelsi, and cited by Harry Halbreich in his notes to the recording of the Quattro Pezzi (‘c’est l‘une desirès rares oeuvrcs de Scelsi qui furent créés tôt aprés leur achièvement’), is incorrect. The programme tells us ‘les quatre Pièces pour orchestrc sont récentes puisqu'ellcs ont été composécs en 1960’. Though it is still possible that they were written in 1959 since Henri Michaux in a letter from 19 October 1961 remarks: ‘Enfin on va entrendre cette ocuvre unique’. In any case, whether Scelsi heard the first performances of Ligeti's Atmosphères and Lontano (1960–1) before finishing the Quattro Pezzi is of little importance. Their lines of research at that time were utterly different. Ligcti was useful to Scelsi later on, when he was expanding the microtonal counterpoint of works like the Second String Quartet into the spacious microtonal polyphony of his later style. Traces of Ligeti's, influence are to be found here and there throughout Aion for orchestra (1961)Google Scholar, though the mighty outburst in the first movement that suggests (to me, at least) Vishnu dancing on a mountain of skulls is there to show us the limits of that influence. There is something of Ligeti, as well in the first movement of Konx-Otn-Pax (1969)Google Scholar, but in Pfhat (1974) - to my mind the high point in Scclsi's production for large means - he is utterly himself again in yet another region of his own discovery.

5 The most important collaborator of Scelsi was Vieru Tosatti who seems to have worked with him on and off from the late 1940s until he went blind some 30 years later. Tosatti began writing letters to various music journals in Italy after Scelsi's death to say that he had written alt the music himself, but that in any case it didn't matter since it was utter rubbish. Tosatti's music is in favour with one of the directors of Italian Radio (an institution that has done everything possible to hold up Scelsi's acceptance in Italy), so I am not unfamiliar with it. The fact is that Tosatti's early ncoclassic scores have nothing to do with Scelsi's music, but that his Requiem, composed years after La naissance du verbe, betrays the influence, however watered down and conventionalized, of the earlier work. Tosatti's lack of scruples is reflected in the use he made of some poems of Scelsi's (written in French) in the preparation of the text of his own Gedidukonzert. But what surely decides the cas Scelsi, if there is such a thing, is the opinion of three composers who are among the most meticulously professional of our time.

York Hōller, discussing the 1987ISCM Festival in Cologne over a beer when it was all over: ‘By far the most interesting event for me was the Scelsi evening. There's something really new there. That man is a wizard!’.

Franco Donatoni at lunch with his composition students in Trastcvere in 1988: ‘I don't know what the problem is. It's really quite simple. You see, there were three great Italian composers born in the early years of this century'. [The other two being Petrassi and Dallapiccola. ‘Scelsi's music was unknown til] recently, and so everyone's making a fuss over it’.

György Kurtàg, on his way to an evening at Ada Gentile's after being collected at his hotel: ‘Do you know Scelsi's music at all?’ (say I). ‘Only the Fourth Quartet. But it's enough to consider myself an adept of that man.’

6 Frances-Marie Uitti leaves no room for doubt on this point: ‘It was always interesting to work with Giacinto, even on a transcription’ [they had prepared the score of Sauh (1973) together] ‘the choice of dynamics, the working out of an idea - he always knew exactly what he wanted’. (Interview with Stefania Gianni.)

7 The hearse first carried the body to the wrong vault, that of his father, when the will clearly provided for his burial in the vault of his mother and sister in another part entirely of Verano cemetery. When this mistake was rectified it was found that there was not enough room for the remains of what had been a tiny slip of a man in the space allotted to him. The projecting part of the coffin was masked by flowers and work to be done left for another day.