Giacinto Scelsi
 

Listening to The Orchestra Works 2 as performed by Peter Rundel and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and this is absolutely blowing my mind. I've had little to do with classical, modern or otherwise, outside of a bit of Rachmaninoff and sparing Scriabin, and neither one prepared me for this.

This is some of the most skin-crawling music I've ever heard. Where do I go with Scelsi after this?

I'm bumping this thread because I just remembered how ****ing sick Scelsi's work is, and a sample would probably help pique interest.

I've only heard the Orchestral Works 2 so far, which I've yet to find a copy of, so I've neglected the remainder of his work, but I get the feeling his piano and viola works are just as worthwhile.

Thank you for sharing this, that was definitely worth my time to listen to!

I was raised by people with disdain for twentieth century composers so I was never exposed to this stuff. I like it though so I hope those in the know will post some more here.

Child abuse!

As for Scelsi, I really like. Reminds me a lot of Ligeti's more out there works.

:laughing: Seriously! I thought my father would be proud when, as a kid, I tried to talk to him about Rites of Spring but he just kind of smirked and told me that Stravinsky doesn't count.

I found this, and think it's pretty great:

As fantastic as it is, I meant more stuff like this:

It's not bad but I'm a sucker for fast paced harpsichord music.
What you and Pedestrian have posted seems more like it belongs in the Post Rock thread.

Remember, also, they're doing this stuff with acoustic instruments. Which is an insane technical difficulty in comparison to making ethereal music by electrified means.

Especially when working with microtones which I believe is only technically achievable with stringed instruments, and electronics. Obviously, however, it's much easier with . Maybe it's possible with piano, but may require very fragile intricate tunings.

unless Scelsi invented his own instruments ala Harry Partch, it must have been a task alone to find string players who were willing, and able, to pull off that style of playing as it's only really possible on fretless string instruments.

Still mostly sounds like something GY!BE would make though.
But I like that band - and I'm not at all trying to degrade the musicianship of Scelsi or those who can play what he wrote.

Naw, I know. Not trying to bash post-rock which I have nothing really against.

Just thought I'd throw it out, though. Has to take a great deal of imagination to get those kinds of sounds out of acoustic instruments as it's not typically their nature. When you can sit in one place, and have the resonance relayed back to you, it's easy to hone it. When you're sitting at a piece of note paper with a piano, you have to draw simply from the sounds in your head.

Popular music does take things from classical, ambient music is no doubt another example. Often people think some popular music group is totally original in their sound, but often they are only really original within their genre, aspects of their music are often found in earlier more experimental music. That's why I think originality in popular music genres can get really overrated as people only look at something from the limited perspective of the more famous and publicised genre they are used to.

Fascinating :rolleyes:
I never thought of post-rock bands as sounding all that original but I suppose this explains why troglodytes like myself think Scelsi sounds like one?

Actually I wasn't specifically referring to you in my post, I have no idea what knowledge you may have of various areas of music.

A good recent example to me of my point is the Colin Stetson album. Some are amazed that a solo saxaphonist can do a virtuoso album like that, but jazz musicans have pushed the boundaries in that way for decades.

I sort of skimmed the dialogue, and I haven't heard Godspeed yet, so forgive me if this isn't really the point, but:

Post rock is predicated on the use of rock instrumentation to generate an atmosphere, is it not? So technically, Scelsi can't be classified as such, and if we want to go further, he was composing this music really before rock came about in the first place.

Though it's possible to have influenced post-rock? I wouldn't know. I just know he makes my skin crawl. Just got The Orchestral Works 2, very excited.

I suppose much of popular music that tries for larger scale music is influenced by classical which has been doing it for hundreds of years. The problem I have with quite a lot of post-rock is much of it doesn't sound as inventive or as deep as it purports and just ends up being a slow build up followed by a big crescendo of sound by the end of each track.