Klarinet Archive - Posting 000163.txt from 1997/06

From: DGross1226@-----.com
Subj: Giacinto Scelsi's Clarinet Music
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:14:33 -0400

In today's Los Angeles Times, Mark Swed reviewed contemporary Italian
composer Giacinto Scelsi's (pronounced "shell-see") music recently performed
by the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas.

Supposedly Scelsi, who died in 1988 at the age of 83, was quite an eccentric
who "lived in an apartment overlooking the Forum in Rome, had a penchant for
being carried about like a Roman emporer, forbade any photos to be taken of
himself, signed his name with a large circle and thick line under it,
attempted to ban his music from being performed in Italy in perpetuity, and
hired his own private orchestra. He was "a 'postman' who delivered musical
messages from higher realms."

Thursday's concert featured Aion which uses "vast arrays of deep brass and
woodwind instruments, percussion, basses, and a single viola (enough said!)
to prortray four episodes in a day of the Brahma. Scelsi "uses microtones to
ask instruments to squeeze the pitch into what be the 'cracks' in the piano
keyboard."

Reviewer Swed also referred to recordings of Scelsi's clarinet music released
on the CPO label. Is anyone familiar with this music? Is it worth a trip to
the music store?

Don Gross
La Canada, California