Giacinto scelsi biography channel

Gavin Thomas introduces the work of Giacinto Scelsi (1905--1988).

Overview

Count Giacinto Scelsi D�Ayala Valva, aristocrat, poet and composer, was one of the twentieth century�s more unusual musicians.

Giacinto scelsi biography channel 7

Born in 1905, he grew up in the Scelsi family�s ancestral castle at Valva, near Naples, where his studies concentrated -- according to the composer�s own testimony -- on the noble pursuits of fencing, Latin and chess.

His youthful enthusiasms also included the piano, an instrument for which he formed a lifelong affection and at which he developed the habit of improvising for hours at a time -- a strange anticipation of his later composing method.

Although Scelsi never received any formal musical training, as a young man he frequented the house of Respighi in Rome, became an enthusiast for the Futurist music of Luigi Russolo, and later studied briefly in Vienna with a pupil of Schoenberg, writing the first 12-note music to be composed by an Ital