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String Quartets / String Trio / Khoom

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Just when you thought that you knew everything that a string quartet could do, along comes Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi to turn everything upside down. These works are inspiring, perhaps the most important string quartet cycle to be written in the second half of the 20th century. (The Britten and Shostakovitch certainly are contenders as well, but they are musically from another era.) Scelsi's voice is well developed here, and his musical obsessions are well served by the string quartet medium. A stroll through these pieces is to watch the development of a composer and his musical world.

The first Quartet is the odd one out here. Written in 1944, it shows the influence of Schonberg, Dallapicola and other important expressionist composers. It is set in four movements which suggest the traditional quartet form. And yet, already many of Scelsi's mature gestures can be found in the work. Listen to the obsessive chords that open the first movement. The almost long silences between chords in the almost motiveless second movement, The alternations between single note lines and chords in the third movement. The stunner here is the last movement, where Scelsi moves into lines of unabashed tonal beauty, recalling the best of the past. Echos of Beethoven's Op132 and even farther back into the Renaissance can be found in the flowing lines.

Scelsi went through a much publisized nervous breakdown in the early 50s brought about, he said, by his involvement with the twelve note system. When he returned to composition, he began to create a series of works based on the properties of single tones. Using techniques of added resonance, he created a series of piano pieces that show the initial development of his mature style. But soon he found he was more interested in microtonal variations on the single tone and he turned to other instrumental combinations to work out his ideas. Of those combinations, the most important was undoubtedly the strings.

The String Trio is a product of this first experimental period. It is the starkest work on the CD. Each of it's four movements explores a different pitch. Variation is created only by pitch and timbral variations such as microtonal glissandi, vibrato, sul ponticello, tremelo and the like. The only exception to this starkness is found in the third movement, were a secondary tonal pole sets up the basic semblances of harmony.

The Second, Third and Fourth Quartets all develop this obsession with tone more fully. In each, the material becomes increasingly more complex. Though the single tone is always present, it often slowly slides up to a new pitch. And other pitches reinforce the harmonic overtones through techniques of added resonance. In the fourth quartet there is even some material that leans toward the melodic. However, concepts such as melody and harmony are really obsolete in Scelsi's work. All notes used in his pieces can really be looked upon as colorations of the basic tone rather than true harmony or melody.

Khoom shows some of Scelsi's variety. The work is scored for wordless soprano, strings, horn and percussion. The work has a ceremonial quality, as does most of Scelsi's vocal work. The percussion parts even show the influence of Sufi drumming styles. But the interest in the single tone is never far away, even in this music.

The final work on the CD is Scelsi's 5th Quartet. This is an astounding work, limited in it's material and powerful in it's impact. The work is based on a simple idea, a cluster chord, introduced by left hand pizzacato and trailing off into a pianissimo. This basic shape is repeated throughout the entire 9 plus minutes of the quartet. Variety is created through subtle changes in tone color and in the composition of the clusters. The overall effect is like the chanting of a sacred syllable in Hindu practice. You find your own breathing paralleling the sound on the CD. This is really less traditional music and more of an experience.

The performances on this CD are expert. The Arditti quartet has a long history of association with Scelsi. Irvine Arditti even helped Scelsi create some of his solo violin works. Michiko Hirayama is the voice for whom Khoom was written. Either you like it or you hate it, but her abilities are written into this piece.

If you are curious about the music of Scelsi, this CD is a great place to start. The Quartet cycle spans most of his career and shows his extrodinary development and the diversity that he can wrench out of simple materials. if you are a fan of the European avant-garde, or a person with open ears, it's well worth the money.

The first time I heard of Giancinto Scelsi, he was mentioned as as being famous for writing pieces that used only one note. As a novice to avant/experimental music, I was eagerly gorging myself with busy music packed with event, revelling in abrupt juxtaposition and unlikely hybrids. There was no room on my plate for the ascetic and the single-minded, so checking out Scelsi was low on my list of musical priorities. Now that my ears have been tuned to distinguish fine subtleties in sound, these pulsating singularities seem far from spartan. The key to appreciating this music is to listen to the inside of the sound. There's no forward motion or thematic development to be had here. Scelsi's music travels without moving. It's Leibnizian, in a way, a monad drawn within itself, projecting the sonic pseudopods of its internal logic as the entirety of its reality. Although, with the exception of the first quartet, all of these compositions are indeed comprised of a single note, Scelsi discovers an amazing amount of flexibility within this most restrictive of musical parameters. Now, I'm no expert on tunings, but this is the most subtle, and ultimately most affecting use of microtonality I've ever heard. In the allegreto movement of the 3rd quartet, in particular, the subtle throb from a rich, tempered note to the alien drone of a skewed tonality is breathtaking.It simultaneously evokes the centered calm of meditation, and the sublime expanse of a desert landscape. The 4th quartet, written a year later, both concentrates the piece into a more tightly packed form, and refines the microtonal and timbral subtleties. The further restrictions on development-in-time are compensated for with a wealth of new textures and overtones. Over twenty years later, Scelsi's 5th quartet (his final compositon) weaves the tiny internal vacillations into a surging mesh. The composer's personal soundworld has been thoroughly mastered, allowing him greater freedom to subtly vary the internal form of the variegated sound tissue.

Several years ago, I conceived of an exaggeration of minimalism, paring down the inessential until one arrived at a composition consisting of a single note. Unbenknownst to me at the time, Giacinto Scelsi had already explored the potential of this approach, achieving interest and "development" through microtones, octaves, and other methods.

Deceptively simple in description, the wrong execution can result in monotony. This is apparent in a recording I have of the "Quattro Pezzi per Orchestra" by the Ensemble Integration Saarbrücken on CPO. The pieces go nowhere, and the slight variations in tone serve only to call attention to what is missing - namely, tempo, and, unfortunately, other notes.

None of that is in evidence on this recording by the Arditti Quartet. I cannot explain how tension is built and released, nor how monotony is avoided - but these performances are successful while the aforementioned ones are not. The five quartets, despite having been written over a period spanning 40 years, were described by Alex Ross in a New Yorker article as a unified composition. Perhaps the Arditti players approached them in that way, thereby achieving a level of integration impossible if the pieces are performed as unique, disconnected works.

This is an altogether remarkable recording, and the liner notes, especially the essay by Harry Halbreich, are on a level rarely seen in the typical CD.

The Arditti have been living, re-living scouring fashioning the Scelsi string oeuvre for a few decades now, and it is some spectres of performative clarity and luminosity the capture,single isolated timbres always remain distinguisable here residing within each plyers sensibility, vertigious,colloquial approaches to one part,one contrapuntal offerings, Unity however as Theodor Weisengrund said someplace is where we find the truth moments in music,especially ones proclaiming the paradigm of modernity as Scelsi does so admirably. Tenebrous thoughts, string exultations disparate auguries of timbre, all compacted, all within classical shapes and gestures,for Scelsi's almost lifelong affinities with world cultures, the East his music never senses the sets of durational problematics that that world of endless infinite gesure implies.His music remains unaligned with these dimensions of that world, and yet it is all suggested here in his encapsulations,his timbral focuses around single tones,timbres,and gestural miniatures. Pure unadulterated shapes we find here in the latter Quartets,Three, Four and Five,The First Quartet I found overlylabored,timid and predictable, but then leave that aside as a stepping stone the sacrificial particle to creativity of larger dimensions.
de Sarem's cello is amazing here as well, DEAD tones, dull, unobtrusive, yet with a presence, like starring into the bleak face of the woman in the rocking chair in Beckett's ROCKABY.
Fits and states of tremoli as well, Arditti not afraid of entering the undiscovered worlds,leaving traditions aside. Emerson and Kronos can learn from this Arditti noise production machine, clean transparent, committed,lucent,tonsured, like pigeon gurgles, or mosquitoes buzzing around the quit limb of a tree.Arditti knows the arborescent pathways of the string rectitude,sibilant amphoras, trestles, caedmons of expressive language.

The Trio as well one gets the mpas the microscope to explore this occulted domain of the single tone, gentle, evocative yet virulent,inimical,barren frangpiani,palaquins of timbres.

Khoom with a lady's voice was too predictable, I prefer the solo unaccompanied works he had written for Soprano, Alto Tenor and Bass,all again specters hovering around single tones, allamanda around simple three metres. But the instrumental accopaniment did provide raw ochres, patches of interesting timbre.

The Fifth Quartet is also pulsed beginning with clustered world, glissandi, not misplaced at all, more clocktime is felt the power of the Chronos durational frame to allow impacted tones to speak,like lissome plunges of branches forward downward.

This is a truly important and indeed mandatory set for those at all interested in 20th century music, providing an excellent introduction (or survey) of the style of this seminal composer's revolutionary approach to music through his experiments based on single pitches. In fact, the first string quartet creates an effect somewhat similar to that obtained in Schönberg's second quartet, auguring a stylistic leap that stands to early twentieth century modernism in much the same manner as Schönberg's did to 19th century romanticism. The work is, in the first movements, somewhat reminiscent of Bartok - resourceful and inventive, strongly chromatic and expressive and generally rather abrasive. But in the last movement you already notice something radically new going on - figures based on two notes appear to blend and mingle in a contrapuntal manner not quite like anything else; then the music frenetically picks up pace until suddenly coming to a full stop, giving way to an otherworldly, near-modal invention sounding strangely like a distorted 17th century work.

The second quartet, dating from 18 years later, fully exhibits Scelsi mature approach; here the musical material is tautly minimized; the first movement is a study of the intervals between G sharp, A and A sharp but utilizing a wide variety of resources; changes in rhythm and timbre, microtonal oscillations and subtle shifts in color - those unfamiliar with the composer will be surprised by how much ingenious diversity it is possible to draw from such limited material. The third quartet dates from two years later and is simpler and, in a sense, more immediately approachable (the work even has a program, a movement towards liberation in the final movement) using - in Scelsi's manner - minor/major harmony and writing completely in microtones in the high registers. The ten minutes fourth quartet is, however, the crowning achievment, architectonically compact and taut and writing for the strings as individual instruments. The whole work is, in a sense, a chromatic wave beginning at C and ending at A. The fifth quartet is a reworking of Aitsi and eschews traditional development altogether, being based on a single chord, expanded and distended.

Khoom, from 1962, is one of Scelsi's most important works. A succession of narrative episodes where the vocalist is supported by instruments in various combinations, the "text" employs Scelsi's own invented language. The string trio dates from 1958; each of the four movement is a study on a single tone (adding up to a study of the tritone); the end result is an utterly absorbing work of extreme dramatic tension (!). The performances by the Ardittis are utterly convincing (I'll let someone else be the judge of to what extent they fully realize the musical elements at hand), and the sound quality is generally well-balanced and good. Urgently recommended.

I'm a pretty big fan of Scelsi's work. Anahit, for example, is a true masterpiece. This album, however, doesn't catch Scelsi in his best domain. The textural nature of Scelsi's work is very well suited to large ensembles with an assortment of instruments, where he works with the full sonic range of every instrument to create lush and diverse textures. This technique simply doesn't work with a small homogenous ensemble, such as the string quartet. I've never heard a two hour album that sounds so monotonous and repetitive. The performance is first rate, but I just can't recommend this album to anyone but the most devout Scelsi fanatic. Instead look to his larger orchestral works.