The work of Giacinto Scelsi It is considered a “singularity” in the history of contemporary music. The next stage concert of the Ensamble Arthaus, on June 8 and 9 at Bartolomé Miter 434, is dedicated to this Italian composer, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, creator of cult and radical and powerful works. In A line, a circle, a shadow, instrumentalists and dancers join in a different concert which is inspired by the signature-ideogram of this composer, who did not use his name but a simple circle underlined by a line. The direction of the show is Diana Theocharidis, choreographer and stage director, who had the privilege of sharing with the musician not only his work, but also endless conversations at his home on Via di San Teodoro 8 in Rome.
The interpreters of A line, a circle, a shadow They will be Mariano Malamud on viola, Pedro Salerno on double bass, Amalia Pérez on flute and Federico Landaburu on clarinet (all soloists of the Arthaus Contemporary Music Ensemble) along with the dancers Mariana Banfi, Aníbal Jiménez, Lourdes Fernández Marcón, Sofía Gaetani and Lucía Bargados .
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), misunderstood by most of his contemporaries and admired by György Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman and John Cage, He was one of the precursors of spectralism. His most characteristic musical works are fundamentally based on a single note, altered by the treatment of its harmonics and through microtonal, timbral, dynamic, volume, density and tempo inflections.
Arthaus, at Bartolomé Miter 434. Photo: Constanza Niscovolos
At the end of the 1940s he suffered a profound crisis that led him to question all of his previous compositions, including his own notions of composition. During a stay in a psychiatric hospital He only played a single note on the piano. (an A flat), whose sonorous possibilities with the harmonics caused by sympathetic vibrations he never ceased to explore.
Scelsi destroyed a part of his works, considered by him as too academic, and did not reveal his new aesthetic to the public until 1961, with the premiere in Paris of Quattro pezzi its a single note, directed by Maurice Le Roux. In this work for orchestra, written two years earlier, in 1959, each of the four movements is structured around a single note -F, B, G sharp and A-.
“The most interesting thing for me, in Scelsi’s music, is the concentration on a single sound or on a very limited situation of musical tones. It is something so extreme that it cannot be imitated: few people do what he did. I don’t know anyone else who does it. But it is by going to such extremes that truly important work is achieved,” he said of him John Cage pioneer of random music, electronic music and the non-traditional use of musical instruments.
The composer and pianist Lucas Fagin, in charge of Music in Arthaus, explains: “This show proposes us to immerse ourselves in the transcendental world of Scelsi through the vision of the choreographer Diana Theocharidis and the set designer and lighting Gonzalo Córdova. A group of dancers outline and occupy the space and transport us to a parallel universe together with the musicians of the Arthaus Ensemble. Let’s see how Mariano Malamud’s viola seems to become an Armenian Duduk while Pedro Salerno’s double bass emulates a deserted electronic synthesizer. At the same time, Amalia Pérez on flute and Federico Landaburu on clarinet face several duets that recreate a world that no longer exists nor will exist except in the living memory of a few.
*The Arthaus Ensemble is presented on Saturday, June 9, at 8:30 p.m., and Sunday, June 9, at 6:30 p.m., at Arthaus, Bartolomé Miter 434. Tickets are on sale at Alternativa Teatral.
