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The Music Room => Composer Discussion => Topic started by: snyprrr on May 02, 2009, 12:34:14 PM

Title: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on May 02, 2009, 12:34:14 PM
When it comes to composers who appear to be concerned only with "sounds", all the fun sounds generated over the last hundred years, two composers come to mind: Lachenmann and Sciarrino. 

One could go on about the similarities and differences between these two, but suffice to say, Lachenmann is German, and Sciarrino is Italian...if you get my drift, sonically speaking (they also appear to not like each other very much?).

All I will say is that Sciarrino has taken the experiments with extended technique to places no one else seems to have gone. I think he single-handedly reinvented the flute rep., and I particularly have enjoyed all his string and mixed ensemble works; however (thank God), there is much Sciarrino that I shun (mostly the long vocal works).

Anyhow, I wanted to present a gameplan for the potential neophyte, so, bear with me.

SALVATORE SCIARRINO:

For me, the core is the string music:

Sei capricci/ per mattia for solo violin
Tre notturni brillanti for solo viola
Ai limite della notte for solo cello
Explorazione del bianco for solo DBs

La malincolia for vln/vla
Codex purpureus for string trio
Sei quartetti brevi for SQ

Quintetto No.1/Centauro marino for Clarinet Qnt.
La ragione della conchiglie /Codex purpureus II for Piano Qnt.
Trio No.2 for Piano Tr.

and the mixed ensemble pieces:

Lo spazio inverso
Il tempo con L'obelisco
Explorazione dell bianco II
Introduzione all'oscuro


PIANO:
Though his instrumental music usually lies on the border of inaudiblity, his piano music can be teeth smashingly bloody. There are two main discs, and I believe between them we have most of it.  Though I would never ask you to start here, some of the smaller pieces have a fluid water music to them that belies Sciarrino's other output (Anamorfosi).
One standout is the harpsicord piece De o de do (Tiensuu-Finlandia) which IS the wildest hrpsrd. I've heard. I imagine his harp pieces are equally droolable.

FLUTE:
I think he has written more solo flute music than anyone around these days, and there ARE rabid converts. The pops, the burbling, the gurgling, the icynesses...it's all here if you're a flautist. I think there are actually 2 separate sets (2cds a piece) available, but of course, the flautist Roberto Fabricciani?? would be the way to go. $$$ have prevented me.

Then there are pieces with wind and piano, and a couple of wind quintets (again, most of this is available on the Stradivarius label).

The standout disc for me is a chamber retrospective on the Arion label, very hard to get. Also, the Arditti and Knox recitals, and the solo violin disc, The Refined Ear.
__________________________________________________________

Switching over to orchestral...well, it's been pretty spotty, though he managed to make it onto one of those Abbado Wein Modern DG discs (Autoritratto della notte). Everything still pretty much sounds the same, though the greater forces add somewhat.
But now Stradivarius has released a 2cd set of orchestral works (I won't list) to sate the most rabid fan. I'm sure $$$ will prevent me, however...
...ultimately, like Rihm, a couple of perfect Sciarrino cds will go a long way. There IS a giant "symphony", Un'immagine di Arpocrate, available, for chorus, piano, and orch., with texts from Goethe and Wittgenstein, that may be the ultima for those seeking a calling card. I recall it being very big...and too long for me.
__________________________________________________________

now for the part I stay away from, the vocal/ens. music, most of which is verrry long (the pieces listed above being fairly short), and with such a spare instrumentation as to make late Feldman seem opulent. For some reason the cd makers have chosen to concentrate on this part of Sciarrino's output, which, at least, saves me the $$$. Standouts have been:

Aspern suite
Vanitas
Lohengrin
(and all those Kairos discs I can't seem to find at the moment)

I don't know too many sciarrino -philes who like this part of his output.
__________________________________________________________

So...he's one of my favorite composers...which means he has a lot of music I shun (like Xenakis). I have my "complete string chamber" (minus solo violin), which I love, and were I to go further I might dip into the harrowing piano music or the extraordinary flute music. I probably WON'T be going for the piece for 100 saxes!!!

So, I know Sciarrino is only for a few, but I believe that many open minded people would be turned on to him if they can appreciate the true physicality of what it takes for a musican to pull it off, and that Sciarrino's sounds DO "conjure" (in the manner of Scelsi) openings into other worlds. Just listen to Garth Knox play the viola piece, it is simply amazing. All Sciarrino's string music has this effect on me.
Eventhough they appear just to be exercises, these pieces ARE put together "in such a way."

Anyhow, I look forward to any thoughts on the matter. Feel free to talk about ANY composer (like Lachenmann/Haas)also living in this shadowy sound world.

Thank you for your support.





Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Lethevich on May 02, 2009, 02:12:52 PM
I bought the following disc on its release (2001 if I recall):
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510511QGFCL._SL500_AA240_.jpg)

It served as a rather short, sharp shock in revealing the extent of classical modernism for me. Of course, I hated it at first, but gradually I felt compelled to relisten to it, then again, then again, and strange things happened. I considered the caprices as pure aural torture on my first listen, but after a few years I had come to consider them as some of the most sensual music I had yet encountered. Pure sound-worship in its glistening, stabbing lines. Wild stuff!
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: not edward on May 02, 2009, 04:49:14 PM
One of the most stunning pieces I've heard by this composer is (on Stradivarius) "Studi per l'intoazione del mar", for 104 flutes, 104 saxes and one percussionist. It's got an amazing sound world and the rainstorm sequence is like nothing I've ever heard before.

The disc Lethe mentions is interesting me. While Sciarrino can be a bit repetitive, at his best he's like nothing else.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on May 04, 2009, 04:13:10 AM
I like Sciarrino a lot. I have a number of his works and it all started when I decided to dig into that mysterious dedicatee of Nono's La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura--"a Salvatore Sciarrino, 'caminante' esemplare" (interestingly I prefer the Arditti/Richard version of it rather than the Mellinger/Sciarrino).

The first works I was exposed to (all of which I truly loved) were the Fabbrica degli incantesimi (the first bundle of flute works), Un'Immagine d'Arpocrate (yes, it is big, but it is also so fantastic) and Vanitas (the writing for voice, piano and cello is exquisite).
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: The Six on May 04, 2009, 08:26:45 AM
scriabinwasmydad on Youtube has some Sciarrino up. His sonatas are pretty good, with No.2 probably being the best. He does seem to be using a new technique in writing for the instrument, but it doesn't really rely much on the how it will end up sounding.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on May 04, 2009, 10:16:39 PM
I'm still going to hawk that Arion chamber cd.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on March 07, 2010, 03:08:18 PM
Been having a lot of fun with Sui poemi concentrici, recently released on Kairos. It's almost like ambient music, which is probably a consequence of having been adapted from his soundtrack to the Divina Commedia television series.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on March 11, 2010, 10:58:34 AM
Quote from: petrArch on March 07, 2010, 03:08:18 PM
Been having a lot of fun with Sui poemi concentrici, recently released on Kairos. It's almost like ambient music, which is probably a consequence of having been adapted from his soundtrack to the Divina Commedia television series.

I was just surfing Sciarrino on Amazon. Wow, has the discography exploded!

1) So, the thing you have is 3 cds with one "concerto" per disc?? What's up with that? Are they really that long? I noticed that they were all from the late-'80s, good vintage.

2) I also noticed that Stradivarius' 2-cd orchestral set reaches back to the '70s (Varianzoni for cello & orch) and has a few very recent bits also.

3) Strad also has a 2-cd set of mixed wind & piano music, not counting the seemingly endless flute discs. Thankfully, there is only one clarinet piece so far.

4) The vocal music has exploded to the point where i can't tell one piece from another. The titles seem to wash endlessly over me,... thankfully, I'm not yet tempted. I remember straining to hear the Gesualdo piece in the store when it came out.

5) I saw a new solo violin disc,... by composer Jurg Widmann's wife or sister?? It contains the 6 Capricci. This piece now has three recordings!

6) As a side note- the Avant Accordian discs are starting to clot! Yikes, so many!

7) A new Strad disc also pairs all of Sciarrino's "night" music for piano, with Ravel's Gaspard. Sciarrino's piano music (one one cd by Damieri, and one by Hodges) is one area that I'm not sure on. I have Sonata No.4, the abbatoir PS!, and I've heard Anamorfosi (zzz), but,...mmm,...I don't know. Anyone? I have heard some scintillating bits.



I seems that a very good chunk of Sciarrino's vast output is now on the market. Missing are a greater variety of orchestral works, but, not having heard the above 2-fer, I have no opinion.

Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: bhodges on March 11, 2010, 11:05:52 AM
And more Sciarrino news: just found out that this summer, the Lincoln Center Festival will present La porta della legge (2009), his opera based on Kafka's The Trial.

Details here (http://new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/lcf-2010-la-porta-della-legge).

--Bruce
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: kentel on March 11, 2010, 12:43:07 PM
Quote from: snyprrr on May 02, 2009, 12:34:14 PM

So...he's one of my favorite composers...which means he has a lot of music I shun (like Xenakis). I have my "complete string chamber" (minus solo violin), which I love, and were I to go further I might dip into the harrowing piano music or the extraordinary flute music. I probably WON'T be going for the piece for 100 saxes!!!

So, I know Sciarrino is only for a few, but I believe that many open minded people would be turned on to him if they can appreciate the true physicality of what it takes for a musican to pull it off, and that Sciarrino's sounds DO "conjure" (in the manner of Scelsi) openings into other worlds. Just listen to Garth Knox play the viola piece, it is simply amazing. All Sciarrino's string music has this effect on me.
Eventhough they appear just to be exercises, these pieces ARE put together "in such a way."

Anyhow, I look forward to any thoughts on the matter. Feel free to talk about ANY composer (like Lachenmann/Haas)also living in this shadowy sound world.

Thank you for your support.

I've listened to a few cd's (especially the Kairos') and I can roughly say that I loved what I heard, and that I agree with most of your comments, with just one restriction : after some time, Sciarrino's musical language seems a little bit to be always the same : rustling, brushing, fluttering, hisses, swishes. Well, actually you said it too :) But it's very beautiful, no doubt about that, he has an extraordinary sense of timbre harmonies.

The musical stream he and a few others (Lachenmann, Francesconi, etc.) belong to is called "Klang Komposition" and was originally initiated by Nono. But my opinion is that Nono's music followed two completely different directions at a time : the post-serialist and the sound/spectral-like composition. In the latter, he was heavily influenced by his fellow countryman Scelsi, no doubt about that.

Thus, the very origins of Klang Komposition is certainly Scelsi's music, and this is striking when you listen to THIS cd :

(http://www.kairos-music.com/R/Sciarrino/Sciarrino1.jpg)

where you have one work by Sciarrino, Infinito Nero and 3 by Scelsi (Codex Purpureus, Muro d'orizzonte and Omaggio a Burri). The sound textures of Sciarrino's Infinito Nero are exactly the same than in Scelsi's Muro d'orizzonte. The 4 works are masterpieces, but the cd leaves no doubt about who is the genius  :)

Anyway, this cd is one of the best Kairos cd's I've heard (and I have almost heard them all) : to me Infinito Nero is the best piece by Sciarrino, and the 3 others are among the best by Scelsi.

I'll tell a bit more about Sciarrino and other Klang composers (Lachenmann, Fabbricciani, Francesconi etc) in a moment, if I can find a little bit time :)

--Gilles
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: bhodges on March 11, 2010, 01:20:42 PM
Quote from: kentel on March 11, 2010, 12:43:07 PM
Anyway, this cd is one of the best Kairos cd's I've heard (and I have almost heard them all) : to me Infinito Nero is the best piece by Sciarrino, and the 3 others are among the best by Scelsi.


Gilles, I am a huge fan of Infinito Nero, too, after hearing it live back in 2003 at a Juilliard concert.  One interesting detail about the concert: the piece is so quiet that they even turned off the air conditioning system in the hall for about 20 minutes, to maximize the effects.  It is amazing what you hear when you are in an environment of such stillness.

PS, I'm envious that you've heard so many of the Kairos CDs.  I have maybe 12 or 15 of them, all quite good. 

--Bruce 
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on March 11, 2010, 03:03:56 PM
Quote from: snyprrr on March 11, 2010, 10:58:34 AM
1) So, the thing you have is 3 cds with one "concerto" per disc?? What's up with that? Are they really that long? I noticed that they were all from the late-'80s, good vintage.

They're all 45-50 minutes long, each with a different combination of soloists and orchestra.

Quote from: snyprrr on March 11, 2010, 10:58:34 AM
2) I also noticed that Stradivarius' 2-cd orchestral set reaches back to the '70s (Varianzoni for cello & orch) and has a few very recent bits also.

3) Strad also has a 2-cd set of mixed wind & piano music, not counting the seemingly endless flute discs. Thankfully, there is only one clarinet piece so far.

I absolutely love the flute disc on Col Legno (corresponds to vol 1 of the flute works on Strad).

I haven't checked the new releases on Strad, will definitely check them out.

Quote from: snyprrr on March 11, 2010, 10:58:34 AM
7) A new Strad disc also pairs all of Sciarrino's "night" music for piano, with Ravel's Gaspard. Sciarrino's piano music (one one cd by Damieri, and one by Hodges) is one area that I'm not sure on. I have Sonata No.4, the abbatoir PS!, and I've heard Anamorfosi (zzz), but,...mmm,...I don't know. Anyone? I have heard some scintillating bits.

For music with piano, I think Un'immagine d'Arpocrate and Vanitas are absolutely outstanding (two of my favourite pieces). I never personally got that much into Sciarrino's solo piano music (nothing really beats Stockhausen's Klavierstucke).
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on March 11, 2010, 04:06:46 PM
Quote from: kentel on March 11, 2010, 12:43:07 PM
The musical stream he and a few others (Lachenmann, Francesconi, etc.) belong to is called "Klang Komposition" and was originally initiated by Nono. But my opinion is that Nono's music followed two completely different directions at a time : the post-serialist and the sound/spectral-like composition. In the latter, he was heavily influenced by his fellow countryman Scelsi, no doubt about that.

I've never seen a definitive link between Scelsi and Nono, certainly not to the point of having "no doubt about that". For one, Nono's approach and intent are different than Scelsi's--the latter is concerned about the sound, Nono with silence; Scelsi explores and brings to the fore the components that build up the sound, Nono is concerned about sound at the limits of audibility, with a very fragmented continuity.

And I would never say that Nono is a Klang Kompositionen composer. He wasn't doing the same kind of work other composers were doing in the 60s, which is when most Klang Kompositionen came into being; can't really compare with what Cerha (another less-known composer I really like), Ligeti, or Scelsi were doing then.

Quote from: kentel on March 11, 2010, 12:43:07 PM
Thus, the very origins of Klang Komposition is certainly Scelsi's music, and this is striking when you listen to THIS cd :

(http://www.kairos-music.com/R/Sciarrino/Sciarrino1.jpg)

where you have one work by Sciarrino, Infinito Nero and 3 by Scelsi (Codex Purpureus, Muro d'orizzonte and Omaggio a Burri). The sound textures of Sciarrino's Infinito Nero are exactly the same than in Scelsi's Muro d'orizzonte. The 4 works are masterpieces, but the cd leaves no doubt about who is the genius  :)

Anyway, this cd is one of the best Kairos cd's I've heard (and I have almost heard them all) : to me Infinito Nero is the best piece by Sciarrino, and the 3 others are among the best by Scelsi.

I think this is not the correct CD. Indeed it has Infinito Nero, but the other pieces are based on Gesualdo. You were probably thinking of the Kairos CD with Lo spazio inverso, but then you lost me when you attributed the other works to Scelsi. Codex Purpureus, Muro d'orizzonte and Omaggio a Burri are all works by Sciarrino.

Quote from: kentel on March 11, 2010, 12:43:07 PM
I'll tell a bit more about Sciarrino and other Klang composers (Lachenmann, Fabbricciani, Francesconi etc) in a moment, if I can find a little bit time :)

I love Lachenmann, and have a CD or two with works by Luca Francesconi. I've never heard anything by Fabbricciani, other than as a performer of works by both Nono and Sciarrino.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: kentel on March 11, 2010, 10:53:30 PM
Quote from: petrArch on March 11, 2010, 04:06:46 PM
I think this is not the correct CD. Indeed it has Infinito Nero, but the other pieces are based on Gesualdo. You were probably thinking of the Kairos CD with Lo spazio inverso, but then you lost me when you attributed the other works to Scelsi. Codex Purpureus, Muro d'orizzonte and Omaggio a Burri are all works by Sciarrino.

That's correct, and I got totally deceived because on the Naxos Music Library where I heard these pieces, the last three you mentioned are credited to...Giacinto Scelsi...  ??? But I checked it on the Kairos website and they are wrong...(on the NML I mean).

I can't say I disagree with your comment, but a little bit though : I agree for the "silent" aspect of Nono's music, but I find it rather difficult to deny that there is a clear connection between Scelsi's Three Sacred Songs from 1958 and Da un diario italiano from 1964 or Donde estas hermano ? from 1982, or between La Lontananza nostalgica utopica futura from 1984 and Anagamin from 1965.  Their approaches may be different, but the result is sometimes very close.

As well as I find it difficult to deny that there is a clear connection between Das Atmende Klarsein and many works by Lachenmann, thus between the Klang Komposition and Nono : after all, Lachenmann was Nono's pupil, and the references to Nono are omnipresent in his interviews.

My feeling is that the most striking feature of Nono's music (which you don't find in Scelsi's) is what I would call the pointillist effects (Fragment Stille - An Diotima, Hay que caminar sonando, Como una ola de fuerza y luz etc.). Lachenmann inherited that from Nono, and we're talking about Klang Komposition. Lachenmann is the Klang composer par excellence.

In any case, that's great to discuss all this matter with a fan of Nono, I love his music (minus the political aspect). My favorite is the Prometeo where you find all the ingredients of his music aesthetics at a time, and which I consider as his greatest accomplishment.

--Gilles
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: kentel on March 11, 2010, 11:05:48 PM
Quote from: petrArch on March 11, 2010, 04:06:46 PM
I love Lachenmann, and have a CD or two with works by Luca Francesconi. I've never heard anything by Fabbricciani, other than as a performer of works by both Nono and Sciarrino.

I know only this (very good) one :

(http://www.col-legno.com/pics_db/fabbriciani.gif)

for solo hyperbass flute. If you don't know what a hyperbass flute is :

(http://webspace.webring.com/people/ea/allreeds/hyperbass1.jpg)

This is very beautiful, it's like hearing the creaks and the cracks of the ice and the freezing wind all around. I highly recommand it.

Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: kentel on March 11, 2010, 11:17:11 PM
Quote from: bhodges on March 11, 2010, 01:20:42 PM
Gilles, I am a huge fan of Infinito Nero, too, after hearing it live back in 2003 at a Juilliard concert.  One interesting detail about the concert: the piece is so quiet that they even turned off the air conditioning system in the hall for about 20 minutes, to maximize the effects.  It is amazing what you hear when you are in an environment of such stillness.

PS, I'm envious that you've heard so many of the Kairos CDs.  I have maybe 12 or 15 of them, all quite good. 

--Bruce

Hi Bruce, as PetrArch revealed to me that the 3 other pieces I mentioned are by Sciarrino too, it's really a pity you can't hear them since they really are masterpieces ! It's on this cd (the good one this time) :

(http://www.kairos-music.com/R/Sciarrino/Sciarrino2.jpg)

Infinito Nero is still my favorite anyway. I'd love to hear it in real... All these pieces are on the NML, as most Kairos' cds; I'll write to them about this credit error.

--Gilles
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on March 13, 2010, 12:42:08 PM
Quote from: kentel on March 11, 2010, 10:53:30 PM
I can't say I disagree with your comment, but a little bit though : I agree for the "silent" aspect of Nono's music, but I find it rather difficult to deny that there is a clear connection between Scelsi's Three Sacred Songs from 1958 and Da un diario italiano from 1964 or Donde estas hermano ? from 1982, or between La Lontananza nostalgica utopica futura from 1984 and Anagamin from 1965.  Their approaches may be different, but the result is sometimes very close.

Well, close results aren't enough to establish a causal link (as much as wildly different results aren't enough to prove the opposite). See, for instance, Varèse's Amériques and Stravinsky's Sacre (regardless of how strongly the latter claimed he had a measure for measure analysis of how Amériques was taken from the Sacre): "Close" results but no causal link. Compare also Cage and Feldman; very different results, but definite and well-known link.

On Scelsi, the natural progression is Scelsi -> spectralism, i.e. Murail, Grisey and others. There is probably more of Scelsi in Feldman than in Nono.

Quote from: kentel on March 11, 2010, 10:53:30 PM
As well as I find it difficult to deny that there is a clear connection between Das Atmende Klarsein and many works by Lachenmann, thus between the Klang Komposition and Nono : after all, Lachenmann was Nono's pupil, and the references to Nono are omnipresent in his interviews.

Klang Komposition has a well-defined meaning, and to me it has nothing to do with what Nono, Lachenmann and even Scelsi did. Again, it is a kind of composition that emerged in the 60s, as a reaction against serialism. Cerha is a good example (see the awesome Spiegel cycle, for instance), along with the textural stuff by Penderecki (e.g. Anaklasis, Emanationen) and most of Ligeti's masterpieces of that decade (e.g. Apparitions, Atmosphères). The only concession I would make there is the striking similarity between the opening of the last movement of Scelsi's Pfhat and the opening of Cerha's Spiegel IV, but I would hardly say Scelsi was a Klang Komponist. And of course, Spiegel is from 1961 and Pfhat from 1974, so the influence, if there was any, was the other way around.

It is indeed well-known that Lachenmann was a pupil of Nono's. Bettina Ehrhardt (of A Trail on the Water fame) has made a very interesting documentary about Lachenmann that is a must-see for every Lachenmann fan (she mentioned she was doing one on Rihm, and I can't wait to see it).

Quote from: kentel on March 11, 2010, 10:53:30 PM
Lachenmann is the Klang composer par excellence.

As I said above, you are probably using another definition of Klang Komposition. Perhaps because of the use of extended playing techniques, the timbral variety and the free use of "noise"?

Quote from: kentel on March 11, 2010, 10:53:30 PMIn any case, that's great to discuss all this matter with a fan of Nono, I love his music (minus the political aspect). My favorite is the Prometeo where you find all the ingredients of his music aesthetics at a time, and which I consider as his greatest accomplishment.

Interestingly, although I find Prometeo to be the masterpiece around which all of the other compositions he did in 1980 and after gravitate, I don't think it is the most interesting. I far prefer Quando stanno morendo, the Lontananza, Guai ai gelidi mostri, Omaggio a Kurtag and obviously the string quartet. To be fair, there are exceedingly good segments in Prometeo (such as the Prologo but also Tre Voci, which only "gelled" in my ear when I saw it in concert).

The political aspect is inextricable from the work. That's what makes Nono's sound world deep in meaning and intent.

In any case, this discussion should probably move to a different thread; we don't want to hijack it and take the focus away from Sciarrino ;).
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: UB on March 14, 2010, 05:06:20 AM
"Klang Komposition has a well-defined meaning, and to me it has nothing to do with what Nono, Lachenmann and even Scelsi did. Again, it is a kind of composition that emerged in the 60s, as a reaction against serialism. Cerha is a good example (see the awesome Spiegel cycle, for instance), along with the textural stuff by Penderecki (e.g. Anaklasis, Emanationen) and most of Ligeti's masterpieces of that decade (e.g. Apparitions, Atmosphères).

I have been following this exchange with great interest because I enjoy music by most of the composers being discussed. However I do not remember running across the term 'Klang Komposition" before and when I do a search I find very little about it and I could not find any "well-defined" meaning or explanation.

Since a number of styles emerged in the 60s as a reaction against serialism that does not seem like a very well defined meaning. Since you seem to know exactly what it means, could you please tell me where I can find more than the few things that are show up on Wikipedia. Thanks!
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: kentel on March 14, 2010, 05:38:15 AM
Quote from: UB on March 14, 2010, 05:06:20 AM
"Klang Komposition has a well-defined meaning, and to me it has nothing to do with what Nono, Lachenmann and even Scelsi did. Again, it is a kind of composition that emerged in the 60s, as a reaction against serialism. Cerha is a good example (see the awesome Spiegel cycle, for instance), along with the textural stuff by Penderecki (e.g. Anaklasis, Emanationen) and most of Ligeti's masterpieces of that decade (e.g. Apparitions, Atmosphères).

I have been following this exchange with great interest because I enjoy music by most of the composers being discussed. However I do not remember running across the term 'Klang Komposition" before and when I do a search I find very little about it and I could not find any "well-defined" meaning or explanation.

Neither did I :) I only heard once Lachenmann say something about that. I think it comes from this paper by Rainer Nonnenmann, Angebot durch Verweigerung: Die Ästhetik instrumentalkonkreten Klangkomponierens in Helmut Lachenmanns frühen Orchesterwerken. Curiously, it is mentioned on many pages in French and German, but not in English...

In french the stream is called "bruitiste"; I don't know the english equivalent. For me Sciarrino is certainly bruitiste, as Lachenmann, Francesconi, Fabbriciani and all those guys.

Just a question of words actually...

--Gilles
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: kentel on March 14, 2010, 05:51:28 AM
Quote from: UB on March 14, 2010, 05:06:20 AM
I have been following this exchange with great interest because I enjoy music by most of the composers being discussed. However I do not remember running across the term 'Klang Komposition" before and when I do a search I find very little about it and I could not find any "well-defined" meaning or explanation.

Since a number of styles emerged in the 60s as a reaction against serialism that does not seem like a very well defined meaning. Since you seem to know exactly what it means, could you please tell me where I can find more than the few things that are show up on Wikipedia. Thanks!

Apparently it is called "Noise Music" in english : it's here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_%28music%29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_%28music%29). Lachenmann is mentionned there, but if you go to the article devoted to him, he's said to belong to the musique concrète instrumentale stream.

Musique concrète instrumentale means, according to Lachenmann himself (I still quote from the Wikipedia) :

in which the sound events are chosen and organized so that the manner in which they are generated is at least as important as the resultant acoustic qualities themselves. Consequently those qualities, such as timbre, volume, etc., do not produce sounds for their own sake, but describe or denote the concrete situation: listening, you hear the conditions under which a sound- or noise-action is carried out, you hear what materials and energies are involved and what resistance is encountered.


And that's exactly what Sciarrino does too.

So maybe we can say that Musique concrète instrumentale is a ramification of Noise Music   ????

And what about spectralism  ??? ??? ?

--Gilles

Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on March 14, 2010, 07:21:12 AM
Quote from: UB on March 14, 2010, 05:06:20 AM
Since a number of styles emerged in the 60s as a reaction against serialism that does not seem like a very well defined meaning. Since you seem to know exactly what it means, could you please tell me where I can find more than the few things that are show up on Wikipedia. Thanks!

Klang Komposition is certainly not the only style that emerged as a reaction against serialism. Think e.g. Xenakis, the New Complexity, Minimalism, etc.

Klang Komposition is also not bruitisme nor noise music. It is more textural than "noisy pointillism", for lack of a better term. Klang Kompositionen usually have long, sustained "sound surfaces". If you listen to any of the works mentioned, you'll quickly get the difference.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on March 14, 2010, 08:19:24 AM
Well, today it has been a delight listening to Storie di altre storie (http://www.amazon.com/Sciarrino-Storie-di-Altre/dp/B001AGPOHM)
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BG%2BBLY6eL._SL500_AA240_.jpg)

which will be followed by Orchestral works (http://www.amazon.com/Salvatore-Sciarrino-Orchestral-Francesco-Dillon/dp/B001D6UM94/ref=pd_bxgy_m_img_b)
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41U0BudjLvL._SL500_AA240_.jpg)

This, after being prompted by this thread to listen to the Scelsi 3 CD set of works for orchestra and choir on Accord, conducted by Wyttenbach, and Cerha's Spiegel cycle on the Komponistenportrait CD on Col Legno, conducted by Cerha himself. It's been a while since I listened to these CDs, but they really never disappoint, even after ~12 years.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: kentel on March 14, 2010, 08:24:49 AM
Quote from: petrArch on March 14, 2010, 07:21:12 AM
Klang Komposition is also not bruitisme nor noise music. It is more textural than "noisy pointillism", for lack of a better term. Klang Kompositionen usually have long, sustained "sound surfaces".

As have most spectral works. That's why I asked you about the difference between spectral music and klang composition.

On the contrary Lachenmann's works has generally not sustained sound surface, as far as I can remember. And Feldman's music has, though he's not considered as a klang nor as a spectral composer.





Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on March 14, 2010, 09:33:57 AM
Quote from: kentel on March 14, 2010, 08:24:49 AM
As have most spectral works. That's why I asked you about the difference between spectral music and klang composition.

On the contrary Lachenmann's works has generally not sustained sound surface, as far as I can remember. And Feldman's music has, though he's not considered as a klang nor as a spectral composer.

Did you read the wikipedia articles? That should give you some idea of the differences. It's all in the methodology. If I tell you here's a piece that does I-IV-II-V-I and another one that does P0-RI6-I7-R1, you would probably easily identify the methodology and not confuse the two, just because they both organize notes according to abstract rules.

Having long, sustained surfaces is not an exclusive characteristic of Klangkompositionen, that's why I said usually. In fact, what I like the most about Cerha's Spiegel, for instance, is the mix of long sustained surfaces (usually done with string instruments, lots of them), with serial-like (oh, the irony!) pointillistic pizzicati and staccati (done with strings, brass or percussion), and all variations in-between.

Klangkomposition is really a very small and specific, almost anecdotal, genre (like stochastic music). It's all music in the end, and composers knew how to expand the language and capture, mix and match the aspects of what they had at their disposal that better suited what they wanted to do.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Josquin des Prez on March 14, 2010, 09:47:18 AM
QuoteIl Spazio Sciarrino

That's incorrect. Lo Spazio Sciarrino is what it should say.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on March 16, 2010, 07:28:22 PM
Quote from: Josquin des Prez on March 14, 2010, 09:47:18 AM
That's incorrect. Lo Spazio Sciarrino is what it should say.

I was wondering,... thanks.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on March 16, 2010, 07:45:24 PM
Quote from: petrArch on March 14, 2010, 08:19:24 AM
Well, today it has been a delight listening to Storie di altre storie (http://www.amazon.com/Sciarrino-Storie-di-Altre/dp/B001AGPOHM)
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BG%2BBLY6eL._SL500_AA240_.jpg)

which will be followed by Orchestral works (http://www.amazon.com/Salvatore-Sciarrino-Orchestral-Francesco-Dillon/dp/B001D6UM94/ref=pd_bxgy_m_img_b)
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41U0BudjLvL._SL500_AA240_.jpg)

This, after being prompted by this thread to listen to the Scelsi 3 CD set of works for orchestra and choir on Accord, conducted by Wyttenbach, and Cerha's Spiegel cycle on the Komponistenportrait CD on Col Legno, conducted by Cerha himself. It's been a while since I listened to these CDs, but they really never disappoint, even after ~12 years.

And I didn't know the Orchestral Disc/Kairos was a 3cd set also!!



I just wanted to chime in on the Klangy stuff. Sciarrino's piece La Malincolia (I think it's for two violins, viola plus, or something like that), and it definitely utilizes certain effects in a very tonal way. I can't think of too many examples of where this style of music is used to serve purely old fashioned ideas,... meaning....

let's say a tuba can make an extremely high "C" note, that ends up having a really plaintive sound. Why not use that as the minor third in "a minor" situation? Do I make sense? The best example is Kagel's SQ No.3, a perect mix of music and noises (though, it does tend towards the music). The very opening of that piece is what I'm talking about.

I've heard that Sciarrino and Lachenmann are not friends at all. How funny.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Luke on March 17, 2010, 02:46:20 AM
In light of the above conversation about terminology - bruitisme, Klang Komposition, noise music, whatever - and specifically the use of Penderecki's name in that context, the 'correct' classification (if it matters!) for (essentially Polish) music of this type is, IIRC, sonorist - yeah, here's the wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonorism).

whilst I'm here....Anamorfosi only elicits zzzz? Humph! I love that piece, it's such a clever, funny little gem - who'd a thunk it was possible to merge (submerge?) a couple of Ravel water pieces like that at the same time as paraphrasing 'Singin' in the Rain'...? Never fails to lift my spirits, that one.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on March 29, 2010, 07:43:01 AM
Oh dear, I seem to have gotten myself into a tizzy watching Sciarrino piano pieces on YouTube. I'm totally in love! :-* :-*

ah, and with the Damerini album going for $60 on Amazon...

ok, Hamelin,...it's on you. Please record ALL of Sciarrino's piano music for Hyperion,...on ONE cd!! NOW!!!



btw- there's lots of cool YouTube stuff for Sciarrino.



Anyways, ciarrino's piano music is so,...so,... "physical",... I don't know, the "sound" of the piano really comes through. I wish I would have thought of this.

ok, I'm hyperventilating,...please,... help,...uh,....
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on April 07, 2010, 08:19:33 PM
I had three choices for Sciarrino's magnum opus for solo violin, the Sei Capricci (1976). I remember the version tied to the Immagine, but, all of a sudden, there were two new versions, one, an all wild recital, and one, a more stand avant selection.

I chose Barbara Luneburg over Carolin Widmann (the composer's sister) because of the more spectrally based discmates, GF Haas, and Manfred Stahnke (Widmann chooses Boulez, Ysaye, and Widmann (she's also the one who has a recital on ECM with Schoenberg, Zimmermann, Feldman, and Xenakis)). When playing Sciarrino, you shouldn't really be conservative in pairing, I think.

The Stanhke piece is a wonderful, imagined folk music, with the strings tuned FCFC. t's like an expanded meditation on the first mvmt of Ligeti's Viola Sonata.

One Haas piece I liked, one I didn't. Here is a composer confusing my expectations.



BUT!!,... the Sciarrino is a masterpiece. I think he's my new favorite (sorry Xenakis). What can be said? They say it's just surface, but I hear the Ages in there, the Timeless. All that futile work for so little sound. It's just so beautiful. I can't imagine there being the need for any more solo violin music (but hey, what would you recommend?). If anyone has never heard these before...


BUT WAIT!! THERE'S MORE!!!

I also finally got the Fabbriciani recital on ColLegno, Fabbrica della Incantesimi. How can you not but help to just love this disc beyond belief? The dove sounds in Canzona di ringraziamento. The evocation of ancient ruined cultures in the icy L'orizzonte luminoso di Aton. The kitchen sink approach of the last, and most mature piece on the album, Fra i testi dedicati alle nubi. The second volume of the Strad disc picks up where this leaves off (with the last three pieces here), but, nevermind, this is all you'd ever need. And, with Sciarrino as sound engineer, you really get a custom recording for the pieces. All of a sudden, in Hermes, what you thought was an extrememly dry acoustic erupts into a cathedral when the flautist pierces the pianissimo noodlings with a sharp attack.

No one can deny what Sciarrino has done for the flute. These pieces have a symphonism that is quite unique. Bravo!



AND IF YOU ORDER NOW!!!

I have put the call in to try to get the Damerini piano disc from Europe. I'm acting like I already have it, and I'm basking in day long Sciarrino-a-thons.

And, I ordered the Aspern Suite just for good measure (the only Sciarrino for $5).

YES, I'M'A really a'likin' the unassuming Venetian.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on April 08, 2010, 03:48:06 AM
Quote from: snyprrr on April 07, 2010, 08:19:33 PM
I also finally got the Fabbriciani recital on ColLegno, Fabbrica della Incantesimi. How can you not but help to just love this disc beyond belief? The dove sounds in Canzona di ringraziamento. The evocation of ancient ruined cultures in the icy L'orizzonte luminoso di Aton. The kitchen sink approach of the last, and most mature piece on the album, Fra i testi dedicati alle nubi. The second volume of the Strad disc picks up where this leaves off (with the last three pieces here), but, nevermind, this is all you'd ever need. And, with Sciarrino as sound engineer, you really get a custom recording for the pieces. All of a sudden, in Hermes, what you thought was an extrememly dry acoustic erupts into a cathedral when the flautist pierces the pianissimo noodlings with a sharp attack.

No one can deny what Sciarrino has done for the flute. These pieces have a symphonism that is quite unique. Bravo!

I just love that disc. You should try Vanitas (on Ricordi) next for something really different.

Quote from: snyprrr on April 07, 2010, 08:19:33 PM
YES, I'M'A really a'likin' the unassuming Venetian.

You meant sicilian, right?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on April 08, 2010, 07:06:00 AM
Quote from: petrArch on April 08, 2010, 03:48:06 AM
I just love that disc. You should try Vanitas (on Ricordi) next for something really different.

You meant sicilian, right?

Vanitas is currently unavailable, no used copies on Amazon. Should have got it when it came out, but you could have never gotten me to buy a forty min piece for voice, cello, and piano at that time, haha.

oh,...and,...yes.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: karlhenning on April 08, 2010, 05:55:02 PM
Decidedly piqued, is my curiosity.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on April 09, 2010, 10:22:49 PM
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 08, 2010, 05:55:02 PM
Decidedly piqued, is my curiosity.

He has one main solo clarinet work, Let Me Die Before I Wake. It's on the Alter Ego/Stradivarius disc, which happens to be probably the single best intro to SS, the similar Kairos disc notwithstanding. You might, however, catch the dreaded Pringles Syndrome!
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on June 29, 2013, 08:44:39 AM
Sciarrino 'Complete String Quartets' on KAIROS.

Yea, that's great, but it's STILL under 50mins.!! >:D
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mirror Image on November 11, 2013, 05:39:02 PM
(https://media.wnyc.org/media/photologue/images/0b/Sciarrino.jpg)

Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (sha-REE-no) is considered one of the leaders of advanced or avant-garde music in Europe. His music uses isolated sonorities such as harmonics, other unusual methods of tone production, and additional sounds that can be made with instruments such as tapping and key clicking. In addition, it is characterized by artful and frequent use of silence as part of the compositional structure, as well as frequent introduction, in a questioning or confrontational way, of pre-existing music, including classical American popular song.

He was a very bright, inquisitive, and talented child; interested in painting and other visual arts, he had moved to creating abstract works by the time he was ten. However, at about that age he was strongly attracted to music and began teaching himself music in 1959. He was guided in this by Antonino Titone, but aside from some studies with Turi Belfiore in 1964, had no formal academic training as a child.

Three years after starting his course of music self-teaching, a composition of his was accepted for the 1962 Third Palermo New Music Week Festival. In 1968 his Quartetto II was played in Rome and his work Aka aka to was premiered in Palermo.

In 1969, he moved to Rome. There he entered the electronic music course taught by Franco Evangelisti at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. His music at this time was fairly much a torrent of unconventional instrumental sounds, as he was inspired by electronic music to seek the full sound potential of his instruments. However, through the decade of the '70s he tended to eliminate the profusion in favor of lean, isolated sounds separated by silences. He has said "there [is] one thing without which no delight in sound makes sense, and that is the intensity of silence."

His major compositional influence was Luigi Nono, the most radical composer among well-known Italian musical figures of the post-World War II generation. In 1976, Sciarrino left Rome for a teaching post in Milan, where he worked at the Conservatory until 1982. In that year his success as a composer allowed him to cut back on his teaching work and he moved to the remote Umbrian village of Città di Castello. Nevertheless, he continued to teach at Florence Conservatory, Palermo, and Bologna. In addition, from 1978 to 1980 he was the Artistic Director of the Bologna Opera Theater.

Laurent Feneyrou has characterized Sciarrino's music as evolving towards the borderland of sound, suggesting "vast uninhabited spaces, especially the ocean wastes, the confines of dream..."

One of the earliest pieces to show in a marked way his interest in sound versus silence is Un'immagine di Arpocrate for piano, orchestra, and chorus (1979). During the 1970s he produced a notable series of works for solo strings, including the 3 notturni brillanti for viola (1974 - 1975), and 6 capricci for violin (1975 - 1976).

But in 1977 he was impressed by the playing of flutist Roberto Fabbricciani and has written numerous works for him, exploring increasingly tiny nuances of expression possible with the instrument. On the other hand, his large series of piano music tends to get more aggressive in tone over time.

Sciarrino's music exploring American popular song began with Cailles en sarcophage (1979), Efebo con radio (1981), and Blue Dream (1980). High points of this stream of Sciarrino's music includes the Nove canzoni del XX secolo (1991) and the "one-act still-life" Vanitas (1981) for voice, cello, and piano, a huge treatment of Hoagy Carmichael's song "Stardust." He also has a series of stage works, such as Lohengrin (1984), that deconstruct well-known stories and myths.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No thread for this guy? Hmmmm...well now is better than never. Any fans out there? What little I've heard of his music, I really enjoyed for the simple almost microscopic attention to detail found in his music. Almost a Feldman-like delicacy. I bought two orchestral sets on the Kairos label. Can't wait to hear more. What do you guys think of his music? Any other recommendations?

Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: petrarch on November 11, 2013, 05:40:14 PM
Merge please :)

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,12333.msg725081.html#msg725081 (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,12333.msg725081.html#msg725081)
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mirror Image on November 11, 2013, 05:42:09 PM
Quote from: petrarch on November 11, 2013, 05:40:14 PM
Merge please :)

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,12333.msg725081.html#msg725081 (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,12333.msg725081.html#msg725081)

Damn! :)
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mirror Image on November 11, 2013, 05:48:28 PM
This is so f****** cool! 8)

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZhoWzsq_SEs

Such an intimate sound-world that I can't help but to be enveloped into. I'm definitely going to be listening to this work whenever I get that Kairos box set.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mirror Image on November 11, 2013, 06:07:49 PM
Quote from: snyprrr on March 16, 2010, 07:45:24 PMAnd I didn't know the Orchestral Disc/Kairos was a 3cd set also!!

Yep, and then there's this one too:

[asin]B002L31R9M[/asin]

I bought both sets many nights ago. Can't wait to hear them!
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Pessoa on November 12, 2013, 03:42:59 AM
The premiere in Madrid of ' Luci mie traditrici' some years ago opened the gates of Sciarrino´s space to me. I delight in the sparenes, levity and little imposing qualities of his music.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on November 12, 2013, 04:33:22 PM
Oh yea, ya can't step on my Sciarrino Thread!! :laugh: It being so popular.

I was disappointed that the Kairos Complete String Quartets comes to only @40mins.! I mean, couldn't they have added all three solo string pieces? I have a nice amount of Sciarrino, but I might enjoy that 2cd Orchestral Works on Kairos.

merge!
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: snyprrr on November 12, 2013, 04:34:29 PM
Quote from: Pessoa on November 12, 2013, 03:42:59 AM
The premiere in Madrid of ' Luci mie traditrici' some years ago opened the gates of Sciarrino´s space to me. I delight in the sparenes, levity and little imposing qualities of his music.

apparently lACHENMANN FINDS HIM FRIVOLOUS? oops, sorry....
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mirror Image on November 12, 2013, 06:50:23 PM
Quote from: snyprrr on November 12, 2013, 04:33:22 PM
Oh yea, ya can't step on my Sciarrino Thread!! :laugh: It being so popular.

I was disappointed that the Kairos Complete String Quartets comes to only @40mins.! I mean, couldn't they have added all three solo string pieces? I have a nice amount of Sciarrino, but I might enjoy that 2cd Orchestral Works on Kairos.

merge!

There's two sets of orchestral works. Both are three discs sets, but I agree with you about the SQ recording. Kairos could have easily added a few other works to fill up the disc. It seems that Kairos do this kind of thing quite often.



Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: GioCar on April 03, 2017, 08:12:52 PM
Today Salvatore turns 70

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/SalvatoreSciarrino2016.jpg/220px-SalvatoreSciarrino2016.jpg)

Happy birthday, maestro!
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: GioCar on November 18, 2017, 08:17:39 AM
Here's the Bachtrack review of his new opera Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo, staged at La Scala (November 14 - World Premiere)

https://bachtrack.com/review-sciarrino-ti-vedo-flimm-teatro-alla-scala-milan-november-2017

(https://bachtrack.com/files/71298-057-k65a0453-resized.jpg)
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on June 06, 2020, 08:54:39 AM
(https://img.discogs.com/oE-vCEiOYJqwsPmbvEYqAIauDvA=/fit-in/600x602/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6540491-1421585210-9490.jpeg.jpg)

I'm enjoying the piano sonatas here -- shame Damarino doesn't play the 5th. Are there any other interesting performances of these sonatas?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on June 08, 2020, 05:45:12 PM
Nicolas Hodges has a good reputation as a Sciarrino interpreter. (I recall Nic from the old days on Usenet r.m.c.c. and r.m.c.r.)
But I'm only aware of Nic recording Sonata #5 and the Notturni, and haven't heard them.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 04:48:38 AM
Quote from: T. D. on June 08, 2020, 05:45:12 PM
(I recall Nic from the old days on Usenet r.m.c.c. and r.m.c.r.)
.

T.D. = Tom Deacon? Surely not!!!!

The only contact I've ever had with Nic Hodges was about 5 years ago now, when he sent me a recording of Finnissy's trio.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on June 09, 2020, 05:21:26 AM
Quote from: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 04:48:38 AM
T.D. = Tom Deacon? Surely not!!!!

The only contact I've ever had with Nic Hodges was about 5 years ago now, when he sent me a recording of Finnissy's trio.

Oh dear God, no! My real life initials are T. D., first name Tom, but I assure you that I have absolutely no connection with Deacon.
I gave up on Usenet many years ago, r.m.c.c. became moribund and Usenet contained too many crackpots, sociopaths and trolls (little did I suspect what the future had in store for us with "social media"). Missed the Joyce Hatto controversy, which was apparently hilarious and completely exposed "Freaky Deaky" (apologies to Elmore Leonard) and others.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: CRCulver on June 09, 2020, 07:42:59 AM
Was Tom Deacon the guy who couldn't stop banging on about how Boulez was the worst thing in the world?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on June 09, 2020, 09:00:41 AM
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41v2ar9%2BMiL.jpg)

This is the Sonata V which I've been enjoying most.

Tom Deacon was always pleasant to me, helpful when I was interested in c19 piano music. And full of amusing anecdotes about people he knew - Gilels, Richter, Rosen, Arrau, Brendel etc.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on June 09, 2020, 10:41:23 AM
My limited r.m.c.r. interactions with Tom Deacon were cordial/positive, but in those days I was posting mostly regarding contemporary music, so our interests barely overlapped.
One couldn't help noticing, however, that he was involved in many messy spats/feuds with other posters (who may well have been objectionable personalities in their own right  ;) ). So I generally avoided discussions in which Deacon participated.

Getting back to Sciarrino...
I enjoyed Vanitas, Lohengrin, Un'immagine d'Arpocrate (sort of a piano concerto) and Sei capricci for solo violin. But eventually (say, after the Esplorazione del bianco release), I began finding Sciarrino's palette of extended techniques (e.g. key clicks) and use of silences somewhat predictable, so I stopped keeping up with his recordings. I'll try to listen online to more vocal music (Macbeth seems appealing); I may have missed some good stuff.
To my surprise, I strongly disliked the one solo piano piece (Sonata #4 on the Esplorazione del bianco CD) I heard*, so never sought out any more. Otherwise I'd have purchased the Nic Hodges disc.

*But my reaction wasn't quite as harsh as the infamous classicstoday review https://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-7803/ (https://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-7803/)... :o
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on June 19, 2020, 03:55:36 AM
Well I don't agree with that review if he's talking about the possibility of Sciarrino's sonatas, but I do agree with him if he's talking about what Nic Hodges and Shai Wosner make of them.

Today I was enjoying two songs from an opera on this one, the opera's called Perseo e Andromeda, and I noticed it's got an early piece for four pianos which sounds as though it may wear out its welcome before it's over, La Navigazzione Notturna.

(https://blob.cede.ch/catalog/16572000/16572285_1_92.jpg)
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on July 26, 2020, 08:07:40 PM
(https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1385714316_10.jpg)

Sciarrino quartet 9. Evident debt to Nono I think, though full of Sciarrino recognisable effects. 20 minute long second movement. Intense, mystical, more dark and serious than quartet 8 I think. Released last year but I missed it. Is it too long? I mean, can Sciarrino do long form? I don't know.

Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: vers la flamme on July 28, 2020, 02:20:45 AM
Where's a good place to start w/ this composer?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on July 28, 2020, 04:52:37 AM
Quote from: vers la flamme on July 28, 2020, 02:20:45 AM
Where's a good place to start w/ this composer?

The list that snyprrrrrrr made as the first post on this thread is outstanding.

I would say Quaderno di strada is my personal favourite at the moment, followed by sei quartetti brevi
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on July 28, 2020, 12:19:33 PM
Several good recommendations on the first page of the thread IMO. I haven't kept up with recent compositions, so refrain from further comment.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on July 28, 2020, 08:32:26 PM
Quote from: vers la flamme on July 28, 2020, 02:20:45 AM
Where's a good place to start w/ this composer?

I forgot something yesterday, Sciarrino is very good with flute, there's Fabbrica Dele Incantesimi, a cycle, recorded by Roberto Fabbriciani. You'll like it, I'm sure, the music has great refinement, gentleness, restraint, poise. Sciarrino is a very classical composer in a way,
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on August 05, 2020, 12:45:46 AM
https://www.youtube.com/v/GIffmHdLkEs

Cosa Resta is from 2006, a setting for string quartet and voice of someone's post mortem household inventory. It goes absolutely cosmic half way through! Love it.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on August 05, 2020, 05:56:33 AM
Quote from: Mandryka on August 05, 2020, 12:45:46 AM
https://www.youtube.com/v/GIffmHdLkEs

Cosa Resta is from 2006, a setting for string quartet and voice of someone's post mortem household inventory. It goes absolutely cosmic half way through! Love it.

Thanks, great "concept" and I enjoyed it. I'm more fond of Sciarrino's vocal music than some of the contributors on p. 1 of this thread. Not springing for purchase...especially in the quieter passages I haven't changed my opinion (posted June 9) that

Quote from: T. D. on June 09, 2020, 10:41:23 AM
... eventually (say, after the Esplorazione del bianco release), I began finding Sciarrino's palette of extended techniques... and use of silences somewhat predictable...

But Cosa Resta motivates me to do some more listening. Interesting to hear Irvine Arditti's son Jake, the countertenor!
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on August 05, 2020, 06:41:54 AM
Except that what it does in the middle there was a surprise, so though I understand where you're coming from when you say he's predictable, he isn't always so.

Very much enjoying the 12 Madrigals at the moment. Still not managed to give the 9th quartet much attention - he seems to make the quartet instruments speak.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on August 05, 2020, 07:42:45 AM
Quote from: Mandryka on August 05, 2020, 06:41:54 AM
Except that what it does in the middle there was a surprise, so though I understand where you're coming from when you say he's predictable, he isn't always so...

Yes, Sciarrino is a bit frustrating for me. There are pieces and passages I deeply enjoy, but also many instances where (apologies for snark) I get the impression "...OK, cue a silence...now cue the cricket-like string riff...OK, now another silence...now cue the skittering woodwind key clicks...".

Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on September 08, 2020, 03:22:32 AM
(https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/863/MI0002863901.jpg?partner=allrovi.com)

From the above recording

QuoteTHE SEA, THE SOUND, THE MIRROR Notes on Salvatore Sciarrino's 12 Madrigal!

In addition to numerous works for the stage, Salvatore Sciarrino has written a number of vocal works for concert performance. Five of these two dozen or so pieces feature a chorus, but most of them are for solo voice and instruments. The transparent drawing of the vocal lines is evidently more in keeping with ideal of expression than dense polyphony or even the compact choral tableau. Writing in a form of polyphony reduced to the chamber music dimensions of an ensemble of soloists did once inspire him to write a remarkable composi-tion: L'alibi della parola (The alibi of the word) for four voices a cappella. It was premiered in Witten in 1994 as part of a concert by the Hilliard Ensemble whose theme was "Madrigals"; the idea behind the concert program was to present various aspects of this vocal tradition. At that time, Sciarrino avoided the term madrigal as a label for his composition, but in the selection and treatment of his texts his work was close to the refined, mannerist tendencies of this vocal genre in the period around i600. The texts on which L'alibi della parola was based are extremely heterogeneous: two visual poems by the Brazilian writer Augusto de Campos, a fragment by Petrarch, and inscriptions from ancient vases. The complex relationship of words and sounds here is far removed from a reproductive function of a psychological or any other realistic manner. By dispensing with an affective figural vocabulary, the four brief pieces clearly maintain a distance from the madrigal tradition, on the one hand, while, on the other hand, coming close to it in terms of its artificial gesture. This ambivalence is characteristic of Sciarrino, who likes to play his game of vexation with similarities and asymmetries, with paradoxes and a web of meanings that is subtle held in suspension.

This sort of diversity of perspectives is also revealed in his 12 Madrigali, com-posed in 2007 for four male and three to four female voices (the alto and mezzo-soprano parts can be sung by a single performer). Despite his unambiguous title, Sciarrino refers to the tradition of the genre only very freely here. Once again, in addition to the external feature of its a cappella ensemble, it is prima-rily the extravagant connection to the word that recalls the mannerist tenden-cies of the classical madrigal. A historicizing approach to the tradition - in the sense of a revival of affective language or even of the neomadrigalismo of the first half of the 20th century - is far from Sciarrino's intention. As we will show, that certainly does not mean that he fails to unfold a broad spectrum of his own expressive values or "figures" in these pieces.


Sounds as Signals


For the texts, Sciarrino chose six haiku by the Japanese writer Matsuo Bashi) (1644-94). The three-line poems, which Sciarrino translated into Italian him-self, revolve around themes from nature: the sea, islands, waves, rocks, crickets, larks. The organ of perception in which these elemental statements find their echo is sound itself. The meditative text and the sparse, clear sign language of the music fuse into a new unity. The result is a highly objectified form of depiction from which the composer largely pulls back with his subjective emotions and observes the interplay of text and music as if from a distance. What the composer has said of his relationship to the material in general is particularly true of his 12 Madrigali: "In Western culture, artistic language is supposed to express the artist's subjectivity. He says: 'This is what I feel, and I pass these feelings on to you. But I see it differently. I do not say: `These are my sounds: but rather: 'These are sounds 1 find exciting. And you, what happens with you?' My sounds are not simply sounds but rather signals. They are signals of com-munication between people; they refer to the environment, to human activity, to day and even more to night - to reality in general"

This was not the first time that Sciarrino worked with the concentrated imag-istic language of Japanese haiku. His early vocal compositions up to his first work for the stage, Amore e Psiche (1971-72), were nearly all haiku settings - as if he were already looking for models against which his later reductive musical idiom could be measured. Texts by Matsuo BashO are the basis for, among other works, the three-part composition Aka Aka to for soprano and 12 instruments, which was premiered in Palermo in 1968 under the direction of Gianpiero Taverna (with the soloist Michiko Hirayama, who also made a name for herself as a Scelsi interpreter).


A New Ecology of Sound


Salvatore Sciarrino prefaced the score of 12 Madrigali with an extensive com-mentary in which he did not so much discuss the specific construction of the pieces as fundamental aspects of his idiom of vocal music, which, as he wrote, achieved a new quality in these pieces. This precise explanation of this compo-sitional means represents a high degree of artistic self-reflection; many of his statements have the character of an artistic manifesto. It is worth citing several of its core ideas here:

In an act of radical thinking, he traced the problems of vocal composition back to its most elementary premises. Song, this "mysterious and powerful unity of sound and word," does not, in his view, result simply from "compos-ing for voice:' First, it is necessary to "purify thinking and recapture from the intervals the transparency that is filled up by mountains of songs, by music from the whole world - by all these gigantic garbage dumps amid which we live:' And he called for a new ecology of sound, born of a new consciousness: "ecology of sound certainly means a return to silence but also and especially the regaining of a form of expression without emotional coldness and without rhetoric. When the voice is entrusted to silence, all that remains is the mouth, the oral cavity and saliva. The opening lips, boundary to a dark void, to thirst and to hunger:'

For Sciarrino, the focus of musical communication is the listener. To describe the relationship between music and the listener he fell back on a saying from the Talmud: "If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who? - That is what my music says to anyone listening to it. It calls for an encounter and invites the listeners: Open your minds, sharpen your consciousness. Or simply: Follow me! I lead listeners into my music in order to attract their attention with the tiniest of events."


The Unfaithful Mirror


The large-scale form of 12 Madrigali is determined by the fact that each of the six haiku is set twice. This results in six related pairs, yet they are not placed together but instead grouped into a series of two times six pieces. The second half relates to the first like an "unfaithful mirror" ("a specchio infedele"), in two respects: First, the second series of six is not the retrograde of the first but its linear repetition; second, the individual madrigals are by no means detailed reflections of one another; the second versions are retellings that offer the same story in a different way and present it again, sometimes using differ-ent means.

Sciarrino took up again the procedure of his early haiku settings Aka, Aka to I, II, 111, which were also multiple versions - in that case three - of the same idea. "Like Sehnsucht, composed four times: he said, with reference to Beethoven, who set Goethe's Lied der Mignon four times in completely different ways. This procedure is an interesting adaptation of the idea of a variation. The traditional variation form is structured hierarchically; the each part is merely a "variation"
24
of the basic idea and is directly dependent on it. In Sciarrino's - and Beethoven's -procedure of multiple variants, by contrast, there is no central theme as a point of reference. 'Ihey stand side by side as coequals, and hence are compiled para-tactically (coordinating) and not hypotactically (subordinating).


Brief Overview of the Individual Madrigals


What these variations look like can be briefly described using the example of Madrigals Nos. i and 7. The text of both is: "Quante isole! / In frantumi / lo specchio del mare" (How many islands! / Broken / the mirror of the sea). Even their enigmatic tempo indications make them an asymmetrical pair: "Tempo d'altro spazio" (Tempo of the other space) for No. i and "Tempo d'altro mare" (Tempo of the other sea) for No. 7; quite incidentally, this also evokes associa-tion with Luigi Nono's utopian "altri spazi" (other spaces). In the first madrigal, the exclamation "Quante isole!" is repeated up to about the middle of the piece several times with very long note values by the three female voices, in a unison that comes apart briefly at just a few points. At first the male voices repeat these words only as very brief, fragmentary interjections. In Madrigal No. 7, the male and female voices exchange roles in a kind of double counterpoint: the long held notes of "Quante isole" are sung by bass, baritone, and tenor, and the inter-jections come from the women. Now, however, the interjections are no longer brief and disconnected but also long held notes: an unfaithful mirror.


A clear asymmetry can also be observed by comparing the two halves of the madrigals. On the text "in franturni lo specchio del mare: the lines get all curly, and finally the calm surface breaks down into small motivic fragments. In Madrigal No. i, this process is initiated by the male voices and gets going only gradually. In Madrigal No. 7, it is initiated by the female voices, which is in keeping with the idea of symmetry, but it begins much earlier and then quickly leads to an excitement that seizes all the voices. This animated expres-sion now dominates the sound image for long stretches; the polarity of calm and excitement is not longer depicted in temporal sequence as in No. i but rather simultaneously. That means that whereas in Madrigal No. i there is still an approximate balance between the first and second halves, in No. 7 the focus shifts to the second half, in which the antitheses are dramatically emphasized. Characteristically for the majority of these pieces, this conflict occurs in very quiet registers, with only the occasional, sudden forte accent intervening. Similar forms of untrue reflection can be observed in the other pairs of madri-gals as well. For example, in Nos. 2 and 8, "Ecco mormorar l'onde / e ritmo / di vento profumato" (Here the waves' murmur / is rhythm / of perfumed wind): The second madrigal does indeed begin quietly murmuring, with a sequence of solos circling around the central note of E. The eighth, by contrast, begins with a compact, repeated cry of all the voices: "Ecco!" And whereas in the first of these two madrigals lines 2 and 3 are barely set at all, and the word "ritmo" is broken down into onomatopoetic sequences of accents produced by the singers' hands, in the second madrigal these lines provide the impetus for an emphatic soprano solo of considerable length.


Numbers three and nine (Chirping of the crickets) are distinct from the other pieces in that they correspond most to a polyphonic type of writing. The other pieces are dominated by a variously refracted and frayed monody, rhythmic chords, complexly layered small motifs, and hocketlike shapes. In these two numbers, however, Sciarrino uses the already musical sequence of syllables of "Ah, la cicala" to produce a polyphonic web of lines in which the voices enter in stretto and fill out a pitch space of as much as three octaves. The rhythmi-cally complex set of tiny motifs in both madrigals is once again worked out in completely different ways.

Madrigals Nos. 4 and so are fundamentally different in tempo. The image of the red autumn sun losing its power is evoked once "with momentum" and once "very slowly" In addition to this "lentissimo," the writing of No. s o becomes increasingly thin, so that at the end all that is heard are brief solos on very long downward glissandi in the deep voices.

The theme of Madrigals Nos. 5 and is is the singing of larks. In No. 5 ("high-flying") the text, broken down into vocalises, is transformed into a series of brief melodic fragments. In No. is ("Drops of words"), precisely the opposite occurs: the text is chanted in widely separated, staccatolike chords that are connected by a single held voice. Only toward the end does it become an onomatopoeti-cally trilling melody in the soprano part.

The most prominent feature of Madrigals Nos. 6 and 12 is the ostinato rhythms that lend them a strong character and create an exciting contrast with the me-lodic, rhythmically free parts. In Madrigal No. 12, which concludes the cycle, there is an exchange of identities that is very much in the spirit of Bashes Zen poetry: The "sea of crickets" articulated in endless ostinatos of sixteenth notes ossifies into a rocklike structure, while at the end, on the words "bevono le rocce" (the rocks drink), the soprano swings into the heights with a sensitive melodic line: the difference between organic and inorganic matter blurs.

Max Nyffeler
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on September 08, 2020, 03:25:16 AM
And the text of the madrigals in  Italian

QuoteQuante isole!
In frantumi
lo specchio del mare


Ecco mormorar l'onde
è ritmo
di vento profumato


La cicala!
Assorda nella voce
un'aura di campane

Rosso, così rosso
il sole fugge
vento d'autunno

O lodola
non basta al canto
un lungo giorno


Sole alto
mare di cicale
bevono le rocce

And now in English

Quote12 :Madrigals
How many islands!
Shattered
the mirror of the sea !

This murmur of waves
rhythm
of the scented wind


The cicada!
Deafening in sound
an aura of bells


Red, so red
the sun takes flight
autumn wind


Oh skylark
the song is not done
in a long day


Empyrean sun
sea of cicadas
the rocks are drinking
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on October 18, 2020, 09:42:46 AM
This is the latest piece by Sciarrino I can find --    Dialoghi sull'ultima corda for a couple of cellos. You know what to expect, it's quote long though.


https://www.youtube.com/v/18Tz85oJYZU&ab_channel=divertimentoensemble
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on February 25, 2021, 08:02:06 AM
(https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1385714316_7.jpg)

We all know that towards the end of their lives, when they become old men (yes, it's always men), composers can acquire a strange and wonderful sadness. It happened to Feldman, I'd say, and also to Schoenberg and Liszt. This quartet, Sciarrino's latest, his 9th, shows me that it is happening to him. The second movement, 20 minutes, is astonishing for its moments of chaos, which remind me of the exposition repeat of the first movement of D960. Out of the groaning and weeping world comes a point where nothing can hold and things fall apart, a breakdown. But he goes on Beckett style - I must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.


The quartet is strangely recorded. The website of the company which released it says they did it in a church in silence - they had to communicate only with music, no words were allowed. I guess they've tried to capture the ambience of the church and I'm not sure that was such a good idea. Strangely it sounds best on my system with the least bass - little  Rogers speakers.

But sound is not what matters, this is a masterpiece, if an uncomfortable one to hear. No doubt about it.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: bhodges on February 25, 2021, 08:27:43 AM
Quote from: Mandryka on February 25, 2021, 08:02:06 AM
(https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1385714316_7.jpg)

We all know that towards the end of their lives, when they become old men (yes, it's always men), composers can acquire a strange and wonderful sadness. It happened to Feldman, I'd say, and also to Schoenberg and Liszt. This quartet, Sciarrino's latest, his 9th, shows me that it is happening to him. The second movement, 20 minutes, is astonishing for its moments of chaos, which remind me of the exposition repeat of the first movement of D960. Out of the groaning and weeping world comes a point where nothing can hold and things fall apart, a breakdown. But he goes on Beckett style - I must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.


The quartet is strangely recorded. The website of the company which released it says they did it in a church in silence - they had to communicate only with music, no words were allowed. I guess they've tried to capture the ambience of the church and I'm not sure that was such a good idea. Strangely it sounds best on my system with the least bass - little  Rogers speakers.

But sound is not what matters, this is a masterpiece, if an uncomfortable one to hear. No doubt about it.

Thank you so much for posting this. I've been a little out of touch with Sciarrino's work for awhile, and this sounds like a good way to renew the friendship. (Not to mention, always eager to hear a quartet new to me.)

Your comments on end-of-life compositions resonate, too. In addition to the examples you cite, I'm thinking of Schnittke's skeletal Eighth Symphony.

In any case, thanks again, and I will seek this out soon.

--Bruce
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: not edward on March 02, 2021, 05:48:04 PM
There's a short new piece for solo horn on one of five new composer portrait discs from Klangforum Wien (the others feature Aperghis, Neuwirth, Saunders and Hosokawa).

[asin]B08SYL9DY6[/asin]

The other material is familiar--with the partial exception of a new saxophone arrangement of Canzona di ringraziamento--but it's certainly well-played.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on May 31, 2021, 04:33:22 AM
I just found a recording of Sciarrino's first piano trio on the web. Does anyone know where it may have come from?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on May 31, 2021, 04:51:33 AM
And here's a rarity, the earliest music by Sciarrino I've heard - the sonata for 2 pianos, 1966.

https://www.youtube.com/v/lzZAYDOIm_k

It turns out to have been recorded commercially here

(https://www.hbdirect.com/coverm/thumbnails/8011570370587.pt01.jpg)
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: not edward on May 31, 2021, 05:34:11 AM
Quote from: Mandryka on May 31, 2021, 04:33:22 AM
I just found a recording of Sciarrino's first piano trio on the web. Does anyone know where it may have come from?
Interesting. Thanks for the alert: I found it too, but no evidence of where it came from, nor that it's ever been commercially recorded.

It really is a very different piece from the other piano trio; more reminiscent of the piano sonatas, I'd say.

Quote from: Mandryka on May 31, 2021, 04:51:33 AM
It turns out to have been recorded commercially here

(https://www.hbdirect.com/coverm/thumbnails/8011570370587.pt01.jpg)
That's a good collection. All of the composers appear in very representative works.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on May 31, 2021, 07:59:27 AM
Quote from: not edward on May 31, 2021, 05:34:11 AM
Interesting. Thanks for the alert: I found it too, but no evidence of where it came from, nor that it's ever been commercially recorded.

It really is a very different piece from the other piano trio; more reminiscent of the piano sonatas, I'd say.
That's a good collection. All of the composers appear in very representative works.

So who are the most exciting contemporary (I mean now!) Italian composers?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: not edward on May 31, 2021, 11:55:10 AM
Quote from: Mandryka on May 31, 2021, 07:59:27 AM
So who are the most exciting contemporary (I mean now!) Italian composers?
I really am losing touch with the younger generations, but a few names for me:

Clara Iannotta would very comfortably be the first name on my list. I wasn't so impressed by the earliest works she's produced but she's been developing very fast, and the recent string quartets as recorded by the JACK Quartet blew me away.

Luca Francesconi is older and I think a bit uneven, but the violin concerto from about ten years back I thought was outstanding.

Pierluigi Billone does the post-Lachenmann thing; I've found myself stubbornly resistant to his music but people I respect love it.

I don't think much of Marta Gentilucci's music has appeared on disc but I've liked what I've heard.

Lucia Ronchetti is an interesting continuation of the theatrical side of the avant-garde, with a lot of vocal works.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on June 01, 2021, 04:59:34 AM
I didn't realise that Clara Iannotta is Italian (I just assumed she was in America!)  Listening to Marco Fusi play some Pierluigi Billone now -- what's not to like?!

https://www.youtube.com/v/F584HnxMGCU&ab_channel=ScoreFollower
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on July 01, 2021, 01:19:01 PM
I have to say that La Perfezione di Uno spiritto sotille is a major masterpiece of music, about 40 minutes, for voice and flute, characteristically Sciarrinoesque mostly, but he makes the flute growl like a wolf, pop like a claret cork . . . I don't know what she's singing about but it's very nice!

Here

(https://img.discogs.com/glmKQb5MEuiHavxJ3DS_gUtrk-k=/fit-in/500x417/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6224957-1578079010-4281.jpeg.jpg)
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on July 01, 2021, 01:30:08 PM
Quote from: not edward on May 31, 2021, 11:55:10 AM
I really am losing touch with the younger generations, but a few names for me:

Clara Iannotta would very comfortably be the first name on my list. I wasn't so impressed by the earliest works she's produced but she's been developing very fast, and the recent string quartets as recorded by the JACK Quartet blew me away.

Luca Francesconi is older and I think a bit uneven, but the violin concerto from about ten years back I thought was outstanding.

Pierluigi Billone does the post-Lachenmann thing; I've found myself stubbornly resistant to his music but people I respect love it.

I don't think much of Marta Gentilucci's music has appeared on disc but I've liked what I've heard.

Lucia Ronchetti is an interesting continuation of the theatrical side of the avant-garde, with a lot of vocal works.

Have you come across Stefano Gervasoni?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: not edward on July 02, 2021, 08:10:19 AM
Quote from: Mandryka on July 01, 2021, 01:30:08 PM
Have you come across Stefano Gervasoni?
Yes. Heard a couple of discs; wasn't blown off my feet, should probably try again some time.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on January 11, 2022, 05:51:15 AM
This (La Bocca, I Piedi, Il Suono for 4 alto saxophones + 100 moving saxophones) showed up as CD+DVD (can't tell whether the DVD is video or DVD-audio) at Berkshire.

(https://www.col-legno.com/pics_db/shop/2_20701_sciarrino_labocca.jpg)

Not going to buy it, but will watch the Youtube video about rehearsal/performance.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: CRCulver on January 12, 2022, 01:21:46 PM
Quote from: T. D. on January 11, 2022, 05:51:15 AM
This (La Bocca, I Piedi, Il Suono for 4 alto saxophones + 100 moving saxophones) showed up as CD+DVD (can't tell whether the DVD is video or DVD-audio) at Berkshire.

(https://www.col-legno.com/pics_db/shop/2_20701_sciarrino_labocca.jpg)

Not going to buy it, but will watch the Youtube video about rehearsal/performance.

It's a DVD-A (that forgotten format) with uncompressed 5.1 surround sound. I recommend it if you're a Sciarrino fan.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on January 17, 2023, 01:04:36 AM
Any thoughts from anyone about Sciarrino's relation to repetitive minimalism?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on January 20, 2023, 10:27:28 AM
I only bought this old one a couple of months ago. It is without a doubt the best Sciarrino recording I have heard, and this is from someone who wouldn't touch orchestral music with a barge pole normally. If anyone wants an intro to the Sciarrino cult, this is the place to start I would say

(https://www.kairos-music.com/sites/default/files/cds/0012802KAI_Sciarrino_webcover_0.jpg)

https://www.kairos-music.com/cds/0012802kai
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on January 20, 2023, 02:22:27 PM
Way back when, these recordings got me interested (2nd piece on first recording is a piano concerto of sorts).

(https://i.discogs.com/XvEcn-xToyAL9Qh6IZga4WIwq0Nmo_r7cYDryAm_eTA/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:560/w:555/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQxNDc2/NDktMTQzNzQyMDc4/OS02Mzk0LmpwZWc.jpeg)
(https://i.discogs.com/vOUX-ysDMAPCjn8jWsABukVHH-gJolAekD8cEN1T0oM/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:590/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTg4MDIz/MzEtMTU4OTgwOTcz/NS04NTE2LmpwZWc.jpeg)

Ship may have sailed on these releases, but there are no doubt others, even Youtube videos (Lohengrin).
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on January 21, 2023, 02:22:47 AM
Quote from: T. D. on January 20, 2023, 02:22:27 PMWay back when, these recordings got me interested (2nd piece on first recording is a piano concerto of sorts).

(https://i.discogs.com/XvEcn-xToyAL9Qh6IZga4WIwq0Nmo_r7cYDryAm_eTA/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:560/w:555/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQxNDc2/NDktMTQzNzQyMDc4/OS02Mzk0LmpwZWc.jpeg)
(https://i.discogs.com/vOUX-ysDMAPCjn8jWsABukVHH-gJolAekD8cEN1T0oM/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:590/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTg4MDIz/MzEtMTU4OTgwOTcz/NS04NTE2LmpwZWc.jpeg)

Ship may have sailed on these releases, but there are no doubt others, even Youtube videos (Lohengrin).

Can you understand the Italian in Lohengrin?

The piece I'm enjoying most right now is called Il Suone e Il Tacere.
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: T. D. on January 21, 2023, 06:13:12 PM
Quote from: Mandryka on January 21, 2023, 02:22:47 AMCan you understand the Italian in Lohengrin?

The piece I'm enjoying most right now is called Il Suone e Il Tacere.

No, but there are subtitles in this video:

Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on January 22, 2023, 02:18:02 AM
Excellent, just what I needed. Now it all makes sense.


And what effect does the moonlight have on my beauty?
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on February 04, 2023, 03:14:22 AM
I saw Arditti Quartet play yesterday and came away particularly impressed by the cellist Lucas Fels. Searching for his recordings I came across this, another wonderful piece of orchestral music from Sciarrino which, because I don't do orchestral music, I've ignored up to now. That was my loss.

Once again the relationship between Feldman's type of minimalism and Sciarrino's is interesting to think about. What they do with perceived time in their music.  In Sciarrino, there's often this indeterminate pitch in the background - something organic - the sound that Cage heard when he went into the echo chamber - the sound of heart beat and blood flow. And that sets a pulse which, if you submit, can draw you in.

(https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2732cee37289f0e67ab2e59d67b)
Title: Re: Lo Spazio Sciarrino
Post by: Mandryka on February 28, 2023, 08:10:05 AM
This book is worth reading

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/2747505960?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details