Program #130, January 23 2003: String works of Giacinto Scelsi.

Tonight's show was intended as a continuation of a previous general review of Scelsi's oeuvre. I'd certainly been thinking about doing this show ever since then -- I was just waiting for a good time to drop it into the schedule.

Scelsi's string quartets are, simply put, key twentieth-century works. Depending on one's perspective, it might not be fair to say that Scelsi's quartets form a set of equal stature with the quartets of, say, Shostakovich or Bartók; but the primary unfairness would lie in claiming that Scelsi's works are quartets in the same way as are those of Shostakovich or Bartók. Scelsi ultimately used the form for rather different ends. His other string works, which are often revamped versions of material introduced in the quartets, also embody the unique vision Scelsi brought to composition for strings.

Scelsi's compositional labors can be generally grouped into four periods. His first period is important, but preliminary, not representative of what would become Scelsi's main compositional orientation. The first quartet springs from the latter years of this period, and reflects both his musical interests of the time and his (somewhat sketchy) musical training: a great emphasis on counterpoint and formal structure, some use of dodecaphony in a rather Bergian fashion, a Scriabinesque flavor at times.

Scelsi's first-period approach ended more or less in conjunction with a period of breakdown and recovery, apparently triggered by his wife's permanent departure from their relationship, but probably incorporating many smaller crises and realizations -- for example, the process of integrating experiences that came from his travels in Asia and the Middle East, and his deep interest in religious/spiritual expansion -- as well. He rejected twelve-tone composing as a dead end during this time, and performed an odd sort of therapy on himself that led to his new approach: he repeatedly played the same note on a piano for hours at a time, moving his awareness inside the sound, learning to hear tones (and their minute variations) from the inside out. As his compositional focus shifted to a concern with exploration of the power and subtlety of single tones, it took a while for this new approach to reach its full flower. The ramping-up period of this approach more or less constitutes his second period; the third period, which contains the middle three of Scelsi's quartets, begins as Scelsi's new compositional approach settles into a mature, creatively stable place; the fourth period, from which springs the fifth quartet (a rescoring of his Aïtsi, a work originally written for piano), maintains and extends the gains of the third period while reclaiming some of the concerns of the first.

Scelsi had a keen interest in composing for instruments like strings and voices, because of their ability to handle microtonal variations. Once into his second period, Scelsi began composing a variety of string works -- for string orchestras, for solo, duo, and trio combinations -- and continued to refine his compositional approach for strings above and beyond the quartet format. For example, he began notating his works string by string in the mid 1960s; his Elegia per Ty, first written in the 1950s as a memento for his departed wife, was rewritten in this new way, and finally unveiled in 1966. He would also rework material for new instrumentations (particularly, between quartets and string orchestras) in order to fully explore the sonic dimensions of the material. The binding theme for all his works, whether quartets or not, was his overriding interest in the exploration of the soundworlds of individual tones; he remained very interested in considerations of form, instrumentation, and tradition, but found ways to route these through his preoccupation with the inner dynamics of sound.

Hence my statement above regarding Scelsi's quartets as compared to those of other luminaries. Even composers as radical as Ferneyhough, however innovative they may be, still have not essentially changed what the quartet is; their contribution lies in extending its reach and scope in artful ways. But for Scelsi, I think, the quartet was primarily one tableau -- albeit a very convenient one -- for executing a different kind of mission. That he did such a good job incorporating the dictates of that tableau while executing his mission underscores the value of his art, and suggests possible grounds for thinking about how we might evaluate his more unusually scored string works. Nevertheless, Scelsi composed for his own inner vision, not to advance any particular form; and for that reason, we must in the end evaluate Scelsi's art according to different, or at least additional, criteria -- criteria perhaps only Scelsi understood.