CONTENTS

IN THIS ISSUE ..., 3
BIOGRAPHY: Richard Rivera,4
BRAVI TO ..., 4

An Interview with George Walker,  Duffie, 5

LEGATO NOTES
No Restin’ at the Westin: The Busy CMA Conference, 2004  Kaufman, 6

LIVE EVENTS
In Brevity There Can Be Wisdom McBride, 9
Cosi Fan Tutte? Non Piu   McBride, 9
Ending with a Bang!  Liechty, 10
U.S.-Antillean Echoes Back and Forth
     de Clef Piñeiro, 10
Myriad Musical Minds  Cleary, 11
Music Without “Reason”   Cleary, 12
O que Orquesta tan rica!  de Clef Piñeiro, 12
The Long and the Short of It  Cleary, 13
“Intruder” in the Musical Landscape  Kroll, 13
Putting Harrison into Context  Pehrson, 14
Fiddler on the Roof of Technology  BLC, 14

Scelsi: “All of the Above”  Pehrson, 15
Marriage, Murder and Masochism   BLC, 16
…and So…they Played   Liechty, 17

DOTTED NOTES from…
Frank Retzel; Jon Liechty; John de Clef Piñeiro; Mark Greenfest; Peter Kroll; BLC, 17

SPEAKING OUT
LETTERS, 19
OP-ED  BLC, 19

RECORDINGS
An Ancient Instrument in Today’s World
      Kroll, 21
From Britain and Britten et al with Love
      Mitrano, 21
Setting the Themes  BLC, 21
Sax Act  Mitrano, 22

CDS IN BRIEF & RECENT RELEASES
Luis Antonio Escobar: Canticas y Madrigales       BLC, 22
Igor Stravinsky: FIREWORKS
      BLC, 23

THE PUZZLE CORNER:
Another outstanding winner, 24

COMPOSER INDEX, 26

BULLETIN BOARD, 27

WEB SUPPLEMENT

Gala Announcement

Who Will Be the Next New Music Champion? The Envelope, Please!
Gala 2004 will feature three new awards and celebrate with music, music, music!

Festival

Dresdener Tage des Zeitgenössisches Musik

Scelsi: "All of the Above"

by Joseph Pehrson ©2004

‘Giacinto Scelsi: Composer Portraits Series’ —ensemble Sequitur. Soloists: Michael Lowenstern, clarinet; Curtis Macomber, violin; Elizabeth Farnum, soprano; Paul Hostetter, conductor. Miller Theatre February 26, 2004.

I expected a curiosity. The general word is that the composer Giacinto Scelsi is an obsessed mystic, repeating single notes ad infinitum in a peculiar, but expressive minimalism. However, the pieces presented by Sequitur, in collaboration with George Steel’s Miller Theatre, showed a much broader portrait, one informed by currents of traditional European contemporary music. Yes, it is true that Scelsi was a bit—er—"peculiar." He didn’t, in later years, want to be called a composer, but instead a "messenger" or "medium" receiving sounds from... well, don’t ask.

Additionally, there is good evidence that he didn’t write down some of his own works. Maybe he didn’t have the traditional technique for that? Instead, he recorded his improvisations and aural visions on tape and he would hire amanuenses to notate the scores for him. (In an interesting twist of fate, some of these composer-assistants have come forward recently, as Scelsi has become famous, claiming they are the real "authors.")

So, there is little question why this composer, a wealthy count, was viewed in his lifetime as a musical dilettante. Almost all of Scelsi’s "mature" works have peculiar titles. Nobody seems to know what they mean. Nor is there information on the Internet, aside from the explanation that they are allusions to obscure Asian mythology. Scelsi, like many composers, had several different phases of his work. These included a brief .irtation with Serialism. However, the love affair soon soured and he had a nervous breakdown, caused, some say, by his rejection of Serialism’s rigid control. His therapy consisted of playing a single note over and over on the piano, listening to .ne gradations of tone and dynamic. These revelations led to his original and novel views of music, in addition to, most probably, oblique stares by the nurses at the institution where he was recovering.

He became a dedicated microtonalist...

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