a r t i s t : Marianne Schuppe
t i t l e : Incantations: The Art of Song of Giacinto Scelsi
d a t e : 2005
l a b e l : New Albion (NA129)
g e n r e : Vocal
r l s. d a t e : Aug/2006
t r a c k s : 13
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 60,9 MB
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H⌠ ù Taiagar∙ ù Sauh
The art of song of Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988)
'Songs without lachrymose, sentimental lyricisms, being
instead "phonetic gestures", cries, screams, exhalations;
pantings, whisperings, cascades of syllables, a carpet of
ornaments in sound; lines curling round each other and
repeating each other in circles, similar to each other, but
not the same; that is why this music is nature-like, why it
moves us and moves itself'. Shortly after the death of
Giacinto Scelsi in 1988, Jⁿrg Wyttenbach recorded these
impressionsùimpressions that he had received at a performance
of Taiagar∙ and other works by the singer Michiko Hirayama in
1976 (see dissonanz / dissonance No. 18, November 1988, p.
12). Wyttenbach's description includes a word that is
astonishing, for Scelsi's hagiographers would like best of all
to see it banned from discussion of his work: 'Lieder'
('Songs'). The West German discovery of Scelsi in the 1980s
was an event of Messianic character that was welcomed in a
choice of vocabulary that was correspondingly devoid of
inhibitions. He was celebrated as a manifestation that was far
removed from the framework of Eurocentric descriptions of
music history, in order to be used as a figure of
identification by the adherents of a numinous poetics. The
ennoblement of Scelsi's technique as 'incommensurable
composing' (Heinz-Klaus Metzger) remains the measuring rod
used by many today. His music is still regarded as 'impossible
to analyse' (see, for example, the article on him in the
dictionary Komponisten der Gegenwart ù Contemporary
Composers), which opinion has received dubious confirmation in
a furore of ever-growing numbers of musicological
investigations of his workùnot least as a defence against
campaigns waged by certain of his transcribers in an effort to
trivialize him.
In this atmosphere, a word such as that used by Wyttenbach has
a cathartic effect. Neither Scelsi nor his music came down to
us from heaven. Of course, these pieces for voice are not
'songs' after the manner of the Western systematisation of
different genres, nor are they beholden in any manifest way to
any song tradition. But there are characteristics that can
support Wyttenbach's sacrilegious definition, whether it be
the unity of the musical character of many of the solo vocal
works, their 'songlike', often diatonic or pentatonic
vocabulary (many of the pieces unfold out of the circling
around a simple, 'analysable' intervallic core, as for example
H⌠ II or Taiagar IV), the virulence of figuration-like topoi,
or the latent presence of simple song forms. It must also be
considered, however, that Wyttenbach was perhaps not even
thinking primarily of the 'art-song' in his remarks, but
possibly rather of the 'chanson' or other 'simple' musical
forms of expression.
This does not mean that there is nothing unusual about these
songs. Oddly enough, their unusual qualities lie in their
instrumental aspect. If one believes the legends (probably
true, as it happens), then they are transcriptions of
improvised instrumental music (Giacinto Scelsi, Count of Ayala
Valve, played, taped what he played, and then had it
'transcribed') ù though the concept of 'transcription' should
perhaps be termed more precisely 'transcomposition', to use a
word coined by the composer Christoph Delz (1950-1993). In a
recently published article ('The Amateur and the Professionals
ù Giacinto Scelsi, Vieri Tosatti & Co.' in MusikTexte No. 104,
February 2005, p. 27ff.), Friedrich Jaecker argues quite
convincingly that the 'transcribers' of Scelsi's tapes did not
just have to listen to and notate the undoubtedly 'musical'
layers (i.e. not just the 'normal' instrumental sounds), but
also ù quite specifically ù the unintentional sounds on the
recording (the crackling of the magnetic tape, the noises of
turning on and off, doors slamming, car horns in the
background, and other everyday sonic emissions). This is a
convincing indication that it was not just a matter of
transcribing tape recordings as faithfully as possible (in
which case one could have just left the music as recorded on
the tapes), but rather of treating the transformation of the
recorded improvisation into another medium itself as an
aesthetic process (for which reason I draw the somewhat daring
comparison with Christoph Delz, who 'transcomposed' into music
concrete sounds such as the noise of building sites and the
jungle).
This observation is more than a mere matter of musicological
nitpicking. For it shows the compositional product in the
light of a process of production that one can without doubt
describe as an interpretation of sound events ù and this is,
not least, an observation that can be valuable to the
performers of the score. Marianne Schuppe's singing
corresponds thoroughly to the idea of an 'interpretative
transcomposition' of what is notated, and she was expressly
encouraged in this by Michiko Hirayama, with whom Scelsi
himself worked closely. As Hirayama has said, Scelsi made
clear to his interpreters that a high degree of fidelity to
the text was not the most important thing, regarding the
manner of phonetizising his music, as developed by him and
Hirayama together, as not the one and only valid solution, but
rather just one of many possibilities of making his music
'speak'.
Some of the pieces on this CD are revisions ù interpretations
ù of concrete instrumental solo pieces. The first song of H⌠,
for example, is a new version of the fourth of the Four Pieces
for Trumpet (1956), while the fourth song of Taiagar∙ (1962)
is a vocal version of the third of the Four Pieces for Horn
(1956). A piece such as that for trumpet mentioned above is an
excellent example of Scelsi's manner of realizing complexly
articulated music on the basis of only a few notes (his famous
'one-note style'). In other words, the music is not
articulated by constant changes of pitch, but in the
multifarious changes of articulation itself, and the smallest
possible fluctuations of pitch, as for example by often using
a mute ('usare sordina variabile').
In his subtle differentiation of solo wind notes, Scelsi came
upon certain technical hurdles at the close of the 1950s. He
soon profited from the possibilities of articulation offered
by the human voice, which allows for a fundamentally greater
differentiation in the production of sounds. In H⌠ I, Scelsi,
however, does not just succeed in achieving a technical
differentiation from an instrumental sound. More fundamental
is the shift into the realm of language, in which the chains
of sounds cannot simply be reduced to their purely
articulatory function. A vocal vibrato possesses a different
emotional impact from that of a trumpet, while vowels and
consonants and composed-out phonetic structures are not just a
matter of tone colour, but have a semantic import. H⌠ I is the
compositional expression of the origin of linguistic sounds
and sound connections (an early cantata by Scelsi in fact
bears the title The birth of the word). It is an expression of
'shifting movements of the organs of articulation' (thus Hans
Rudolf Zeller) that is the basis ù though in very different
ways ù of all the pieces gathered on this CD. The eloquent
character of these processes does not lie simply 'hidden' on
the micro-level of the music, but is also brought to
expression in the most varied ways ù the emotional, affective
spectrum ranges from the most intimate, introverted sounds to
wild, extrovert gestures, and it is a spectrum that is used to
the full in Taiagar∙.
Sauh presents a reduction of the figurative riches of the
earlier cycles. The two Sauh 'liturgies' here are given with
solo voice and tape. This is the first time that they have
been recorded in two- and four-part versions; using third
relationships, the characteristics of a single voice are here
given in a stretto with themselves (by means of duplication on
tape). This is a matter of the composing-out of many changes
of articulation that itself multiplies the possibilities of a
specific voice (with its own individual sound profile). This
is thus by no means 'choral music', but the expansion of a
solo voice into a whole band of sound. The possibilities that
Scelsi found he could create with a simple solo voice are here
simultaneously expanded, are made more flexible. The result is
a polyphony, not of the voices, but of their means of
articulation and the changes thereof. It is not a dialogue,
but an immense differentiation and unfolding of sound
transformations that can be perceived intensely, thanks to the
reduced scope of the tonal space involved.
Genre descriptions such as 'liturgy' or 'evocations' betray
the fact that Scelsi did not regard his songs just as an
instrumentally motivated microscope in sound, but accords to
them a real 'function'. Although he eschews 'comprehensible'
words, he nevertheless ù in his songs as in his instrumental
music ù wants to give linguistic expression to something.
Peter Niklas Wilson is quite right when he describes Scelsi as
an 'Expressionist', as a 'conversationalist' in sound, whose
rhetoric begins with the very character of sound itself ù
these remarks being made specifically with regard to the Four
Pieces for Orchestra (1959). The 'inner' sound that is so
often and so extensively conjured up is not celebrated
ominously, but relinquished. In her interpretations here,
Marianne Schuppe is careful to express the 'direct speech' of
Scelsi's music ù and this succeeds clearly, for example, in
the parlando passages of Taiagar∙. The introspective,
meditative side of Scelsi's music is clearly overestimated. It
is this thoroughly hedonistic speech-character, which defies
popular desubjectivization rituals, that finds a real 'voice'
in Scelsi's music.
ùMichael Kunkel
(English translation Chris Walton)
(http://www.newalbion.com/NA129)
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01-Sauh I [06:41]
02-Sauh II [06:17]
03-Sauh III [06:50]
04-Sauh IV [07:00]
05-Taiagar∙ I [02:55]
06-Taiagar∙ II [02:17]
07-Taiagar∙ III [03:00]
08-Taiagar∙ IV [01:56]
09-Taiagar∙ V [03:07]
10-H⌠ I [01:54]
11-H⌠ II [02:44]
12-H⌠ III [03:29]
13-H⌠ IV [02:43]
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50:53 min