Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 1 of 19

What do numbers tell us:the case of Giacinto Scelsi’s archives

(v.49 2014-02-16)

Nicola BernardiniAlessandra Carlotta Pellegrini

Fondazione Isabella Scelsi – Roma

TCPM 2013 Montreal October 11 2013

Copyright© 2013 Nicola Bernardini, Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini<nicb@sme-ccppd.org, direzionescientifica@scelsi.it>This work comes under the terms of theCreative Commons© BY-SA 2.5 license

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/)

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 2 of 19

Who was Giacinto Scelsi?

Italian Composer

Born in 1905, dead in 1988

Early uptaker of dodecaphony

Long creative crisis in the ’50s

Complete change of compositionalmethodology

Improvisations recorded on tape andtranscribed by “copyists”

Musical result “in between” Varese andXenakis

Strongly opposed to in Italy, recognizedworld–wide since the late ’70s

Misterious compositional trajectory of hiscompositions

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 3 of 19

The Archive

The Fondazione Isabella Scelsi archive holds

16000+ paper documents (scores, articles,correspondence)273 magnetic tapes of primary interesta yet–to–be–assessed quantity of magnetic tapes ofsecondary interest (expected to be around 430)

Recovery and maintenance digital transfer over tohigh-definition media (24–bit/96 kHz)

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 4 of 19

Original Recording Conditions

Recordings via microphone

Various sources: piano, ondiola, other (traditionalinstruments), turntable for vinyl and wax disks, etc.

Little or no information concerning the recording speed,recording devices, recording direction, etc.

Mediocre (sometimes really poor) recording quality

A lot of ambient noise (room resonance, birds, carsrunning in the street below, etc.)

Accidental sound sources (telephone ringing, radio showfragments – which can be dated, etc.)

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 5 of 19

Peculiarities of the Recovery

Difficulties in assessing the key elements needed by the actualdigital transfer (e.g. the recording speed and direction)

Strongly experimental creative context (e.g. research overforms, articulation and technology)

Usage of ancillary sounds (i.e.: sounds of the recordingtechnology, room response, car passage, bird singing, etc.) tocollect important information (speed and tape direction, season,time of the day, room, house, etc.) all leading towards arecording date or a recording period

Detailed preservation of the acoustic state of the tape: no“restoration” whatsoever

Logic placement hypothesis of fragments performed over eachitem

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 6 of 19

Sample I

Tape NMGS0079-591

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 7 of 19

Sample II

Graphic Layout of the logic “interpretation” of a transfer

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 8 of 19

Sample III

Tape boxes

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 9 of 19

The tape transfer process

approx. 700 tapes

350+. . . already transferred

273 available to researchers

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 10 of 19

The Jaecker Catalogue

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 11 of 19

Section 1: tapes with identified sections

174 tapes

57 tapes contain works identified by Jaecker

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 12 of 19

Section 1: identified titles

189 works in the manuscript catalogue

117 works in the printed/published catalogue

54 works recognized by Jaecker in the tape archives

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 13 of 19

Section 4: tapes not described

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 14 of 19

Used words (Jaecker)

klavier or piano: 114ondiola: 111improvisation: 110gestisch (gestural): 15anlich (close to): 14uberlagert (superimposed): 1

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

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Used words (Bernardini)

improvvisazione (improvisation): 882ondiola (ondiole): 588pianoforte (pf, piano): 474sovrapposizione/i (superposition/s): 129sembra (sounds like): 125gesto (gesti, gesta) (gestural): 0

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 16 of 19

Tape section subdivision

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 17 of 19

Future work

accumulate musicological notes on tapes

identifiy duplicates, near-duplicates, copies, etc.

tape (sketches, works, improvisations) genalogies

multi–dimensional scaling of works (proximity of sketchesto final works)

identify sketch fragments with actual work fragments

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 18 of 19

Thanks

the organizers of TCPM 2013: Nicolas Donin, MichelDucherneau, Johathan Goldman, Caroline Traube andCatherine Guastavino, and the Conseil de Recherches enSciences Humains (CRSH)

the Fondazione Isabella Scelsi and in particular NicolaSani (President), Mauro Tosti Croce (Coordinator of theArchive), and Ms.Barbara Boido (Board member);

the Istituto Centrale dei Beni Sonori e Audiovisiv and inparticular Massimo Pistacchi (Director), and BrunoQuaresima and Carlo Cursi (technical assistants) for thetape transfer process;

Friedrich Jaecker for his catalogue

Giacinto Scelsi

The FIS Archive

Original Conditions

Peculiarities

Examples

Numbers

Jaecker

Objectivequantitities

Future work

Thanks

Scelsi by numbers Montreal 11/10/2013 19 of 19

The END.Thank you.