Attacca Percussion Ensemble - Giacinto Scelsi: Music For Wind Instruments And Percussion (1994)

This collection of the late Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi marks the recorded debut of many of his smaller works. Ranging from 1954-1966, Scelsi's elongated tonal studies are given a rapt performance here by a nameless Dutch ensemble that carries off the task without flaw or unnecessary adornment (a constant temptation, it seems, with Scelsi's work). Included here are three fragments of I Riti, the ritual march from the composer's Funeral for Achilles. Non-rhythmic timbral patterns, spare in posture and deep in resonance, constitute an interior motion. On Ko-Lho for flute and clarinet, from 1966, Scelsi concentrates on the variations in similar whole tones the instruments are capable of producing. These variations may be timbral, or that may be in the embouchure itself, but they sound at times so remarkably similar as they exchange semi-quavers that it is nearly impossible to tell them apart. Likewise, Rucke di Gluck for piccolo and oboe from 1957, while much more primitive in feel and approach, offers the turning of tone from one pitch to the next as a meeting place for timbral investigation. Also from tense, varying durational statements, harmony is explored not as a device for unification but rather as a spatial consideration of interstitial elements. The truly revelatory works occur near the end of the set with Hyxos for alto flute, gongs, and cowbell from 1955 and Quattro Pezzi for trumpet solo from 1956. In both these works, Scelsi looks past serialism's limited investigations of tonal dissonance and finds a type of consonance in duration and pitch without regard for scalar mathematics. These are gigantic leaps in the consideration of spatial relationships in compositional technique and sonic placement in the tonal one. This is a highly rewarding and necessary addition to the Scelsi canon, and an excellent introduction to the "aegis mysterium" that Scelsi created in 20th century music.