The brooding music and cryptic mysticism of Giacinto Scelsi combine to make him a legend among modern composers, with all the potential to provoke skepticism and misunderstanding that usually attends legends. Disputes over the authorship of some of his dictated works and puzzlement over his reclusiveness and hermetic religious thought make it easy to write Scelsi off as an eccentric who staked his reputation on personal revelations, rather than on musical genius. However, anyone who has followed Stradivarius' multi-volume ...
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The brooding music and cryptic mysticism of Giacinto Scelsi combine to make him a legend among modern composers, with all the potential to provoke skepticism and misunderstanding that usually attends legends. Disputes over the authorship of some of his dictated works and puzzlement over his reclusiveness and hermetic religious thought make it easy to write Scelsi off as an eccentric who staked his reputation on personal revelations, rather than on musical genius. However, anyone who has followed Stradivarius' multi-volume survey of Scelsi's music may have found much substance in his works, or at least enough to dispel most doubts. Aiôn for percussion, timpani, and orchestra, subtitled, "Four Episodes in a Day of Brahma," leads off the third volume of the series, and its expansive drones and intense microtonal layers make it an unsettling listening experiences. Yet this music is strangely compelling for its air of anticipation and hypnotic stasis; despite the emergence of patterns that periodically...
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