Klarinet Archive - Posting 000190.txt from 1997/06

From: Floyd Williams <F.Williams@-----.au>
Subj: Re: Giacinto Scelsi's Clarinet Music
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 13:49:37 -0400

Don, Scelsi's clarinet music is definitely worthwhile. You might like
to get a copy of Preghiera per l'ombra(Bb clarinet), Tre Studi(Eb
clarinet), but,apparently Scelsi didn't mind if it was played on other
clarinets and Ixor, which works well on either Bb or bass. These pieces
are published by Salabert.
His music seems to be undergoing a bit of a rennaissance in the last few
years and there are several CDs available of a wide range of his music,
but, to my knowledge, no recordings of the above two pieces.

Regards,
>
> 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

--
Floyd Williams
Queensland Conservatorium-Griffith University
Conference: http://www.gu.edu.au/acsc