a r t i s t : Giacinto Scelsi-Frances-Marie Uitti
t i t l e : Natura Renovatur
d a t e : 2006
l a b e l : ECM
g e n r e : Avantgarde
r l s. d a t e : Nov/2007
t r a c k s : 08
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 68,2 MB
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Scelsi was obsessed with a certain sonoral quality and knew
exactly what he wished musically... I think he intuited a
sensitivity and propensity for losing myself in sound, an
advantage for playing his particular music. After all those
years of rehearsing and perfecting the Trilogy, he encouraged
me to abandon technical considerations and let the works fly
in freedom.ö
- Frances-Marie Uitti
Natura Renovatur (Nature Renewed), the first ECM New Series
recording entirely devoted to the revelatory music of Giacinto
Scelsi (1905-1988), is a voyage into the very heart of the
composerÆs work. Scelsi, who spoke about a third sonic
dimension, beyond pitch and duration, a dimension of
sculptural depth, is a particularly apt subject for an ECM
production, as both the performances and the recording itself
shed light upon his fascination with the inner life of tones,
with the overtone spectrum, with microtonal harmonic movement
and with timbral gradations.
There is no one else who plays Scelsi with the insight and
authority of Frances-Marie Uitti. The American cellist (now a
Dutch citizen) was living in Rome in 1975 and rehearsing music
of Anton Webern, when Scelsi first approached her. He invited
Uitti to visit him in his apartment on the Via San Teodoro,
where he showed her three works-in-progress for cello, pieces
which were to become his ôautobiography in soundö, his
Trilogy. ôYgghurö, heard here, was amongst those pieces. This
initial meeting with Scelsi led to thirteen years of
collaboration, until ScelsiÆs death in 1988. They worked
intensively together on the Trilogy and transcribed for cello
other works including the Three Latin Prayers (to which ôAve
Mariaö and ôAllelujaö belong), originally written for solo
voice.
Years later, Uitti archived the hundreds of tapes Scelsi left
behind (many of them featuring the improvisations which had
provided compositional source material) for the Isabella
Scelsi Foundation. After the ECM recording session, she
reflected on this work: ôI now remember one particular tape I
heard while transferring ScelsiÆs analogue ondiola
improvisations to DAT. Being a monodic instrument, several
improvisations were superimposed. The quality of these
acoustic tapes was at times very grainy, and it seemed that
there was also a version of the same superimposed in
retrograde, building a thick massive tonal centre of hoary
sound. Rough, chordal, powerful. When I attended the
recordings of the Munich Chamber Orchestra in the Sendling
church, I re-experienced that same æspreadingÆ and
transparency of sound. Giacinto often said that his music
should be played in a church, and it seems he embedded that
vision in the tapes.
ôIt was this experience with the MKO, just preceding my own
recording, that inspired me to unleash æYgghurÆ, to let it to
soar through the space as a performance, uninhibited by the
score, the microphones, fingers or strings- as I had done in
so many rehearsals with Giacinto...ö
The Munich Chamber Orchestra, under Christoph PoppenÆs
adventurous direction, had been giving arresting performances
of Scelsi in the 2004/5 season. With Frances-Marie Uitti
joining their rehearsals, they were able to go still further
into the material.
ôI was eager to work with Christoph,ö Uitti says, ôand also to
impart some of that special sonoral world that was the subject
of many working hours with Giacinto... The MKO is a remarkable
group; they are chamber musicians with a string quartet
mentality... I felt we could rehearse the most demanding
details without tiring the players. On the contrary, they
became more involved in the difficulties as the work
progressed. Scelsi would often concentrate on high tessitura
passages pushing them to almost unbearable tensile stretching,
only to break in with a flood of basses; a rush of warmth and
depth - his revelation of the third dimension in sound.ö
***
Amongst 20th century composers, Scelsi stands out as a unique
figure, his music in a world of its own, his biography surely
amongst the strangest. Born into the Italian aristocracy as
Count Giacinto Scelsi DÆAyala Valva, he grew up in his
familyÆs ancestral castle, and as a young man moved in
rarefied high society circles. His British wife Dorothy was a
cousin of the Queen of England; their wedding reception was
held in Buckingham Palace. In the art world, ScelsiÆs friends
included Salvador Dali, Henri Michaux, Paul Eluard.
Independently wealthy, he was never obliged to earn a living
with his music.
His compositional endeavour divides itself into two periods.
There is a rupture between the music of his First Period and
the Second Period, which begins around 1950. The earlier work,
of which the First String Quartet is the piece most often
played today, has its points of contact, critics have claimed,
to the music of, for instance, Berg, Stravinsky, Sorabji,
Messiaen. In the Second Period, however, ScelsiÆs composing
cut itself loose from all Western musical conventions, even
progressive ones. Simultaneously, he turned his back on his
old way of life, the socialite becoming almost a recluse.
After World War II, which the Scelsis had spent in
Switzerland, his wife returned to Britain, and had no further
contact with him. Henceforth Giacinto Scelsi lived alone,
usually in his tiny Rome apartment, developing his musical
ideas in isolation. Morton Feldman famously called Scelsi ôthe
Charles Ives of Italyö, in reference to the way in which he
developed an idiom of his own entirely outside the traditions.
Deeply interested in matters of the spirit, Scelsi studied
GurdjieffÆs philosophy - as well as that of Blavatsky, Sri
Aurobindo and other mystics. Also like Gurdjieff, he travelled
to the Middle East and Asia on musical-spiritual study trips,
and details of his itinerary are similarly sketchy and
rumour-shrouded. Did Scelsi really visit Tibet in the 1950s?
The rough grained texture of his writing for strings suggests
affinities with Buddhist chant... The emphasis on drones and
the way in which Scelsi wrests every shade of meaning from a
single tone anticipates the coming of the minimalists in
general and La Monte Young in particular.
Uitti says Scelsi believed in ôtransparency as the Way. Sound
became the grammatical focus of his later works.ö Scelsi saw
himself as the ôreceiverö of his pieces rather than their
creator. Snaring his ideas on the ondiola, his improvisations
were subsequently transcribed.
Of the musicians who played a role in ScelsiÆs rediscovery it
is notable that several were new music players or composers
(or both) who have, additionally, a connection to
improvisation. This is true of interpreter/improviser/composer
Frances-Marie Uitti and it is also true of Alvin Curran,
Fernando Grillo, and Joelle Leandre who also became part of
ScelsiÆs circle in Rome, and have also cited him as a mentor.
ScelsiÆs feeling for the tactile nature of sound, for its
sculptural qualities, make his work of compelling interest
also to followers of improvised music. For ScelsiÆs
compositions do not exist to illustrate a theory. They start
with sound and lead us, ever deeper, into it.
***
Frances-Marie Uitti was born in Chicago to Finnish parents,
and lives today in Amsterdam. She is the dedicatee of
Giancinto ScelsiÆs ôTrilogyö.
A revolutionary instrumentalist, UittiÆs playing, including
the developing of her two bows technique, has opened up new
horizons for the cello. She has worked closely with many of
the great modern composers û including John Cage, Iannis
Xenakis, Gy÷rgy Kurtßg, Elliott Carter and Luigi Nono, as well
as Scelsi.
Her first ECM recording was There is still time subtitled
ôScenes for speaking voice and celloö, a collaboration with
writer Paul Griffiths, released in 2004.
Frances-Marie Uitti appears in a special Scelsi festival at
RomeÆs Auditorium Parco della Musica on May 16th.
Detailed information about her wide-ranging musical activities
can be found on her web site www.uitti.org
Natura Renovatur is the sixth ECM CD to feature The Munich
Chamber Orchestra, following recordings with the music of Karl
Amadeus Hartmann, Sofia Gubaidulina, Bach/Webern (Ricercar),
Tigran Mansurian (Monodia), and Barry Guy (Folio). The
orchestraÆs persuasive live performances of Scelsi under
Christoph PoppenÆs direction paved the way for this recording.
In addition to directing the Munich Chamber Orchestra, Poppen
is a violinist of distinction, and he has toured the world
playing in the Morimur Bach project with the Hilliard
Ensemble.
***
Other New Series discs with music of Giacinto Scelsi are
Eduard BrunnerÆs clarinet recital Dal niente (ECM 1599), which
incorporates ôPreghiera per unÆombraö and Werner BΣrtschiÆs
piano disc Mozart/Scelsi/PΣrt/Busoni/BΣrtschi, with ôFour
illustrations of the metamorphoses of Vishnuö (ECM 1377).
CD package includes three language booklet with liner notes by
Herbert Henck and a Scelsi memoir by Frances-Marie Uitti, plus
rare early photos of the composer.
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01-ohoi for 16 strings (1966) [08:39]
02-ave maria for violoncello solo (1970) [03:49]
03-anΓgΓmin for 11 strings (1965) [07:13]
04-ygghur i for violoncello solo (1961) [06:57]
05-ygghur ii for violoncello solo (1961) [03:46]
06-ygghur iii for violoncello solo (1961) [05:01]
07-natura renovatur for 11 strings (1967) [12:35]
08-alleluja for violoncello solo (1970) [04:06]
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52:06 min