Salvatore Sciarrino

born in 1947 in Palermo, he began to compose in 1959. The first public concert of his work took place in 1962. Leaving his town he moved to Rome (1969), then to Milan (1977), and finally to Cittą di Castello (1983) where he now lives. Sciarrino did not attend any music schools. In spite of a few important contacts (with Antonino Titone, Turi Belfiore and Franco Evangelisti) he is self-taught. He won several prizes and at the age of thirty was appointed artistic director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (1978–80). The same precocity that revealed his unmistakable style produced this exceptionally large and diversified catalogue of works. Sciarrino treats sound as a living organism. His music begins at the very limits of the imperceptible, where physiology and silence emerge. The empty space breathes, dramatic tension is created, and every event (even the most tiny one) fills our mind. Regenerating perception is the main purpose that Sciarrino’s sound ecology wants to have. He makes us rediscover the spaces of nature, the daily noises and also the miracle of the human voice. Sciarrino’s music, whose unorthodoxy once seemed baffling, can now be set in today’s philosophical and scientific thought. And yet the term ‘psycho-acoustic music’, very useful in defining its conceptual implications, is either too narrow or vague to do justice to the complexity of the aesthetic experience generated by his compositions and stage works. Sciarrino’s discography, which amounts to almost 50 cds, is among the richest of any living composer. Teaching plays an important role in his life. Besides his master-classes, he taught in various conservatories since 1974: in Milan, Perugia and Florence. In 1996 he retired from official institutions. He has also devoted himself with energy to theoretical work and to the promotion of music. His books include Le figure della musica (Ricordi, 1998), and Carte da suono, writings 1981–2001 (cidim – Novecento, 2001).

Selected works (since 1984): Centauro marino for clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano (1984), Hermes for flute (1984), Allegoria della notte for violin and orchestra (1985), Appendice alla perfezione for 14 bells (1986), Esplo-razione del bianco I for double bass, II – for flute, bass clarinet, guitar and violin, III – for jazz percussion, according to Appendice alla perfezione (1986), Frammento e adagio for flute and orchestra (1986–92), Il motivo degli oggetti for two flutes and piano (1987), Sui poemi concentrici I, II, III for soloists and orchestra (1987), Tutti i miraggi delle acque for mixed choir (1987), Fra i testi dedicati alle nubi for flute (1989), Lettura lontano for double bass and orchestra (1989), 2 Arie marine for mezzo-soprano and synthetic sounds in real time (1990), Perseo e Andromeda, opera (1990), Sonata for Piano No. 4 (1992), Mozart a 9 anni for period-instruments orchestra (1993), Noms des air for live electronics (1994), Novulario for voice, flute, trumpet, percussion and two violas (1995), Omaggio a Buri for violin, flute and bass clarinet (1995), L’immaginazione a sé stessa for choir and orchestra to texts by Eugenio Montale (1995), Luci mie traditrici, two-act opera (1996–98), La bocca, i piedi, il suono for four contralto saxophones and 100 saxophones (1997), Il cerchio tagliato dei suoni for four solo flutes and 100 flutes (1997), Vagabonde blu for harmonium (1998), Waiting for the wind for voice and Javanese gamelan to texts by Helen Lucke (1998), Cantare con silenzio for six voices, flute, live electronics and percussion (1999), Sophisticated Lady for big band (arrangement of Duke Ellington’s tune; 1999), Il clima dopo Harry Partch for piano and orchestra (1999–2000), Studi per l’intonazione del mare for contralto, four flutes, four saxophones, percussion, orchestra of 100 flutes and 100 saxophones (2000), 2 Notturni crudeli for piano (2001), In nomine nominis for eight players (2001), Macbeth, three acts without name (2001–02), Altre schegge di canto for clarinet and orchestra (2002), Cavatina e i gridi for string sextet (2002).

Due smarrimenti
The autumn of 1903. Several days after arriving in Rome, Rilke writes a delayed answer to a letter which had been delivered to him also with a several months’ delay. The poet is not in a good mood; the fetish of the excessively venerated antiquity irritates him. Giving vent to his vexation, he expresses the opinion that the ruined walls to which unqualified workers are trying to give a face-lift do not mean anything. But beauty does exist; it pursues the visitor from every direction and enchants him with velvet winds and the richness of water streams flowing amidst the city’s alleys and stairways. Rilke is enthralled with the fountains and the murmur of falling water but prefers to evade people’s talkativeness. Despite the distance of one hundred years he does not forget to make a topical remark about the bad functioning of the Italian postal services.
Is it possible to assess any place without taking into account the people who live there and are in unity with it? It is possible to love the Italian climate without loving the Italians and their hurly-burly? ‘Bell Paese’ is not a model of effectiveness; there is no sense of organization, no concept of society. And when nothing functions well, can it be expected that individual citizens will function well? It is no coincidence that they remain indifferent to the idea of the common good; it is no coincidence that for the ordinary people a thief appears to be more likeable than a noble person. Such a perfidious mythology could be endemically created over
a century of bad governments. One should pose the question, though, why analogous mythologies characterize also the minds of so-called modern civilizations. Let us consider for instance the criminal epic, so strongly connected with the image of America, particularly of New York, a city in which the experiences of the people who are deep in despair give vent to their frustration only through social decay, in which the anti-hero triumphs.
Can one nurse resentment against one’s own country? According to the negative protagonists of currently fashionable views: yes. After all there are many people who feel alien in their homeland, as if they were foreigners. If such a state of mind persists for longer it is a symptom and cause of deeper alienation; one’s own identity becomes the object of
a struggle between fury and toxic suffering.
An artist experiences such a neurosis also as a result of his peculiar situation; unable to live within hackneyed patterns, he perceives himself as someone offered as prey to a hostile world. He easily loses himself. His ability to sense the world around is weakened as the result of the effort required by daily creative work. Indeed, the mastering of the language of art, which makes it possible to free oneself from trivial expression, is exhausting enough. At this point, the dialogue and perhaps the polemical controversy with Rilke is joined by Lorenzo Lotto, the Renaissance painter, an eloquent example of a solitary artist. He is not the type of the genius coddled by his own popularity, to quote Titian, his contemporary. And yet Lotto belongs to the group of sophisticated artists who create the great history of painting. That is why he is a symbolic figure, someone very close to me on account of his non-conformism, a central figure and at the same time disguised. In one of his painful, paranoid letters, Lotto confesses that he was not able to start painting, as if his hand had forgotten the simple rule which gave a new picture its structure and form. This is what he wrote to his principals in Venice on 7 February 1526.

‘...smarrita la misura
delle figure piĚ grande, ché da quelle
nasse tuto l'ordine dell'opera’

(...the measure of great figures, from which the work’s entire order is born, has been lost)
(From a letter by Lorenzo Lotto)
‘...lo smarrimento non Ź eccezione
per le poste italiane’

(…getting lost is hardly an exceptional case in the Italian postal service)
(From a letter by Reiner Maria Rilke)