Giacinto Scelsi

Giacinto Scelsi (1905, La Spezia – 1988, Roma) will always be an atypical composer. Throughout his life, he carefully stepped away from the obligatory musical currents odecaphonism, serial music, etc.), using his fascination with pure sound and taste for asceticism to create naked, painful music on which silence has no appeasing effect. Extremely secretive (refusing to be photographed or even to sign his name), resolutely focused on mysticism, maybe converted to Buddhism, Scelsi has left a body of work that remains little known. However, this could prove to be some of the most beautiful and uncompromising works of our time. He had no mentor, no pupils, but he did shed a lasting light on upholders of spectral music.