Scelsi, Giacinto (1905 - 1988)

[Beef Oven!]

[Lat-Literal]

It isn't enough to say that music is difficult. In what way? Difficult to understand and in what respect? Difficult to engage with, enjoy, be challenged, be able to contextualize in any personally meaningfully way or relate to emotionally? This suggests the need for analysis but I would suggest that the opposite is the case. Rather, it is often about maps, the key signposts and headline messages where listeners will readily find a latch. Take the France out of any concept of Debussy and some will lose most of him while others won't do so, being uninterested in concept. Elgar beyond the shallow may well be interpreted in class terms given the period of his writing and that he is as like the royals - Albion via Germany.

I am inclined to see those who lean towards what I perceive as abstraction as often hiding behind a sense of purity, a wish to challenge symbolic connotation and an insistence that music is best in its own right. If that is not the case, then shout. If it is the case, that's fine but more markers could be provided on how individual freedom is clearly expressed and it's not merely symptomatic of the herding instinct as in any art including in any other classical or other music periods. Without such things, one could suspect that in places it is a repetitive urging of an urge to "spill the beans" with some game play in refusing to do so. That too is ok, unless there are some elements of self-blinding. There is an unmerited harshness in the comment here not least because I am open minded but deliberate obliqueness can be a one trick pony without a bit of hefty communal work around it. Just sayin'.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I am inclined to see those who lean towards what I perceive as abstraction as often hiding behind a sense of purity, a wish to challenge symbolic connotation and an insistence that music is mostly best in its own right. Art for art's sake.

But are you not in danger of hamstringing any opposition to your "inclination" here, Lats? Everything having not to argue from its own perspectives but to conform to what you "perceive as abstraction". Unless you make more clear what your terms mean to you, how can anyone argue against it - or, for that matter, support your opinion?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But, to take the latter part of what you said - "an insistence that Music is mostly best in its own right" - well, I believe this, without "insisting" on it for anyone or anything other than my own pleasure in listening to Music (and those who share this preference for listening to Music in this way). If this is " a sense of purity" (I don't agree that it is, any more than looking at a painting and not dancing as I do so demonstrates "a sense of purity") then I sure as hell ain't "hiding behind" it: I'm shouting it from the rooftops on every possible occasion as loudly as I possibly can!

[Lat-Literal]

But are you not in danger of hamstringing any opposition to your "inclination" here, Lats? Everything having not to argue from its own perspectives but to conform to what you "perceive as abstraction". Unless you make more clear what your terms mean to you, how can anyone argue against it - or, for that matter, support your opinion?

Well, thank you ferney as always and I re-worked it but I will stick with the art for art's sake sentence. It wasn't that I decided better of it. It is just that I have to get the pagination correct even though I know that what is on my screen isn't on the screen of everyone. It's important to me that the lines on the right appear as sharp as I can get them to the ones on the left when I send the damned thing into the ether. Plus, of course, it is essential that all the text is in rigid blocks. No idea why. It's my one concession to science over nature.

I still believe - I mean this in the warmest way given the range of communications you and I have had and I know that you weather me reasonably - that there are elements of game play. That can be an irritation when it feels like a daily game. At this stage in my life, I am acutely aware too of how I have appropriated a lot of what others have had to say musically to my own life, specifically and to offer assurances that it is not wholly egotistical to the people with or indeed not with me. But I am clear on individual voices. I have had to take a break from what I am writing here to sign for a delivery of rose bushes but earlier today I received a Henry Flynt. That is the sort of abstraction I can buy into easily as it is full of composer clarity. I don't think I hamstring myself. What I would like from other people at times is perhaps "what this means to me" but I can't force it nor would I try.

[Beef Oven!]

1960

[Serial_Apologist]

... Serial - do you approach all music with these sociological spectacles? Does our knowledge of the social environment of Couperin, Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin really help with an understanding of the music they produced? I mean at a deep level - of course the kind of musics their patrons required inform the structures they had to work within : but the actual music itself, the genius of the music - does a sociological take really help our appreciation?

Half from what you describe as sociological spectacles, given that what is conveyed is happening or has happened in a given context, and is peculiar to that context; half from how idiom expresses and tries, with varying degrees of success, dependent on receptivity, to communicate images which can resonate, in the recipient, in ways that all art which, prima facie, employs images rather than words and concepts to get its message across. Is not at least in part the purpose of art to communicate feelings and sensations (which cannot always easily be translated into words except in reference to it, e.g. speaking of its structures and continuities), in order to confirm or reinforce our sense that what you, he, she and they see, hear, feel etc. is what I feel? Where this becomes political, ie relative to given power structures, is where it becomes exclusionary.

This, for me, is why having a "sociological" perspective on music is as important as being able to appreciate it spontaneously, in the first instance by giving it one's hopefully undivided attention if it calls for it. Being "won over" is a longer process, as explained by why tastes can change.

How those feelings, sensations etc and their specificity are conveyed is one of life's mysteries, or, more precisely I suppose, a function of the human capacity to communicate other than on the verbal level. I suppose it's closest to indicating without saying what it is that is being indicated, but letting it "speak for itself", and thus analogous to "body language", or the sense of wonder apparently universally experienced when witnessing a marvel of nature, except that in music a complex language equivalent that has evolved is involved. One might say that that language equivalent is trans-historically arrived at, that, had the outcomes of history been other, the music would have evolved differently; why it should have arrived in this particular formulation is the mystery. Sometimes it's a shame to explain mysteries or try to interpose a subtext.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't think I hamstring myself.

No - I didn't mean to suggest that you did, just that the wording meant that any dialogue might be "hamstrung" if it was based on an individual "perception". (I hope that's clearer )

What I would like from other people at times is perhaps "what this means to me" but I can't force it nor would I try.

Well, in my case, when I first heard the Four Pieces for Orchestra that I posted in #14, I was intrigued that something I wouldn't've previously thought I'd find interesting - a 16-minute work which slowly elaborated a single pitch - managed to hold my attention. The difference between what I was expecting to hear when I'd heard the work so described, and the actual sounds that the composer created "stuck" with me - I wasn't sure if I'd "liked" the pieces, but I was "held" by them, and wanted to hear them again. The general sound of the work stuck with me, and I was irritated that I couldn't play it again in order to compare what I "remembered" with what I'd actually heard. (This was some twenty years ago, before either Listen Again or YouTube ... or Amazon to buy a recording.) When I managed to get a CD, the pulsating sounds seemed both familiar and new; it completely captivated me, holding my attention and making me impatient to play it again when it had finished.

As we're using words to communicate experiences created by sounds, I have to resort to simile: the four pieces "sound" like four different viewpoints of the same object (like four photos of the same sculpture) or like a landscape photographed from the same viewpoint at different times of the day. But I don't imagine a sculpture or a landscape as I'm listening - I concentrate on the psychological (thoughts and feelings) and physiological effects that the sounds are making on me, which are unique to the Music itself. For me, it isn't a matter of "purity" - more, if you like, of the independence of the Music to create psychic reactions that are different from those created by literature, or visual Art ... or swimming, gardening, eating etc.

In short, I get more from Music in its own terms ("more" in terms of enjoyment, illumination, contemplation) than I do from that which depends on - and demands - that I "colour" my thinking with other "extra-Musical" concerns.

[Dave2002]

I did go to Wapping for this concert - which featured a cello piece by Scelsi - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...on-356791.html in 2006.

The performer was Frances-Marie Uitti - http://www.uitti.org/Biography.html

[Lat-Literal]

No - I didn't mean to suggest that you did, just that the wording meant that any dialogue might be "hamstrung" if it was based on an individual "perception". (I hope that's clearer )


Well, in my case, when I first heard the Four Pieces for Orchestra that I posted in #14, I was intrigued that something I wouldn't've previously thought I'd find interesting - a 16-minute work which slowly elaborated a single pitch - managed to hold my attention. The difference between what I was expecting to hear when I'd heard the work so described, and the actual sounds that the composer created "stuck" with me - I wasn't sure if I'd "liked" the pieces, but I was "held" by them, and wanted to hear them again. The general sound of the work stuck with me, and I was irritated that I couldn't play it again in order to compare what I "remembered" with what I'd actually heard. (This was some twenty years ago, before either Listen Again or YouTube ... or Amazon to buy a recording.) When I managed to get a CD, the pulsating sounds seemed both familiar and new; it completely captivated me, holding my attention and making me impatient to play it again when it had finished.

As we're using words to communicate experiences created by sounds, I have to resort to simile: the four pieces "sound" like four different viewpoints of the same object (like four photos of the same sculpture) or like a landscape photographed from the same viewpoint at different times of the day. But I don't imagine a sculpture or a landscape as I'm listening - I concentrate on the psychological (thoughts and feelings) and physiological effects that the sounds are making on me, which are unique to the Music itself. For me, it isn't a matter of "purity" - more, if you like, of the independence of the Music to create psychic reactions that are different from those created by literature, or visual Art ... or swimming, gardening, eating etc.

In short, I get more from Music in its own terms ("more" in terms of enjoyment, illumination, contemplation) than I do from that which depends on - and demands - that I "colour" my thinking with other "extra-Musical" concerns.

Yes - thank you.

That is kind of you.

I feel - although I am happy to be countered on this point - you are feeling structures, perspective and texture whereas I am more for - read in this what you will - concepts of fire, of water and especially air, be that an inner dusty "forlorn" or the mystery and freedom of breeze. I doubt I am so keen on solids, especially when they are mobile and also speak.

[Richard Barrett]

The first music by Scelsi I heard was in 1982 on a record by the Ensemble 2e2m which contained Quattro Pezzi, Pranam II, Okanagon and Kya, all of which are still among my favourite pieces of his now that it's possible to hear recordings of most of his work. (The French connection with Scelsi was that at a certain point his work had been "discovered" by the so-called spectralist composers - Murail, Grisey et al - and held up as an antecedent to their concentration on the inner structure of sound as musical material.) Over the next couple of years appeared the Trilogia for cello with Frances-Marie Uitti (who knew him well), and the first of two recordings by the Arditti Quartet of the works for string quartet. (There'd been some earlier recordings of violin and vocal music by Paul Zukofsky and Michiko Hirayama respectively, which I also made it my business to seek out.) There was something highly mysterious about these rare releases of music by such a reclusive composer. I would also seek out all the scores I could find and study them assiduously. Finally in 1986 came a concert of his music at the Almeida Theatre in London, at the end of which Scelsi appeared onstage to acknowledge the applause. I didn't feel it was appropriate to go up and meet him after the concert, so that was my only chance missed...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I feel - although I am happy to be countered on this point - you are feeling structures, perspective and texture whereas I am more for - read in this what you will - concepts of fire, of water and especially air, be that an inner dusty "forlorn" or the mystery and freedom of breeze.

Yes - I think that that isn't unfair; although, in order to communicate my responses to others, I might use "fire", "water", "air" etc as similes/metaphors.

I doubt I am so keen on solids, especially when they are mobile and also speak.

A lot of them coming around asking us to vote for them recently.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I did go to Wapping for this concert - which featured a cello piece by Scelsi - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...on-356791.html in 2006.

The performer was Frances-Marie Uitti - http://www.uitti.org/Biography.html

I envy you that, Dave; F-MU is a great performer - and (as Richard mentions) she worked closely for a long period with Scelsi, and has done much to make his work more widely known, most powerfully as a performer, but also as a writer/talker. (Somewhere I have an off-air cassette of her presentation of Scelsi's Music in the Iconoclassics series which itself must be around twenty years old, from the time that I first became aware of this Music.)

[bluestateprommer]

Two Fridays ago, the FLUX Quartet (kind of the USA's answer to the Arditti Quartet, AFAICT, or at least one such answer) gave this concert at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, with 3 (!) string quartets by Scelsi. I'd certainly never heard these works live, so I walked in with open ears and no pre-conceptions. The first impression that struck me in each quartet was the idea of a "fantasia upon one chord", so to speak, in how each work seemed to revolve around a chord, or series of notes. Others more familiar here with Scelsi can clearly speak much more intelligently about the works than me.

One bit of amusement was that just before the final quartet in the concert (which was actually the Fourth Quartet, as the FLUX switched No. 5 and No. 4), the first violinist's A-string broke. The violist (I think) mentioned that one requirement that Scelsi asked for in the Fourth Quartet was that one of the strings needed to be tuned up a fourth, which puts even more tremendous pressure on the instrument than usual. So we had a slight delay before the final work.

[Serial_Apologist]

Two Fridays ago, the FLUX Quartet (kind of the USA's answer to the Arditti Quartet, AFAICT, or at least one such answer) gave this concert at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, with 3 (!) string quartets by Scelsi. I'd certainly never heard these works live, so I walked in with open ears and no pre-conceptions. The first impression that struck me in each quartet was the idea of a "fantasia upon one chord", so to speak, in how each work seemed to revolve around a chord, or series of notes. Others more familiar here with Scelsi can clearly speak much more intelligently about the works than me.

One bit of amusement was that just before the final quartet in the concert (which was actually the Fourth Quartet, as the FLUX switched No. 5 and No. 4), the first violinist's A-string broke. The violist (I think) mentioned that one requirement that Scelsi asked for in the Fourth Quartet was that one of the strings needed to be tuned up a fourth, which puts even more tremendous pressure on the instrument than usual. So we had a slight delay before the final work.

Or perhaps the violist was himself too highly strung.