The Sonorism In Gaicinto Scelsi’s Four String Quartets And Its Reallization

Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) was one of the greatest Italian composers in twentieth century. His creations are diversified, and he is best known for the technique "single note". Giacinto Scelsi has especially distinguished views upon music theory, which deeply influenced many composers’ understanding of "sound" and "music". Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that Giacinto Scelsi greatly inspired his peers who cooperated with him, as well as new musician generations, by not only his creative language, but also his musician philosophy.The career path of Scelsi can be divided into two different periods:modernist period and sonorist period. Ideas of sonorism and Scelsi’works written during sonorist period received remarkable regard by musicians and researchers around the world, although there are few researches combining theory and practice. This thesis emphasized on the ideas of sonorism of Giacinto Scelsi and the adaption of the ideas in his musical works. Within six chapters, the author focused on four sonoristic works of Giacinto Scelsi, interpreted the ideas of sonorism embedded in the music as well as the generation of the ideas, demonstrated the characteristics of "sonorism" in Giacinto Scelsi’s compositions, and revealed the aesthetic ideas and methods which he used to create the expected sonoristic effect. The author tried to combine the aesthetic ideas and compositional techniques of Giacinto Scelsi in order to reflect a more comprehensive understanding of sonorism, and to provide solid evidence for the significance of Giacinto Scelsi’sornorism in the development of modern music.The author chose four String Quartets as research objects. Giacinto Scelsi created five pieces of String Quartets during his life. Except "String Quartet No.l" that was created in his modernist period, the other four pieces of String Quartets are sonoristic style. These four String Quartets were chosen because they are excellent musical works with distinctive characteristics of sonoristics and they match the research aims and methods of this thesis. Moreover, the scores of four String Quartets have been fully published, which will provide complete and comparable information for reliable and objective analysis.It is important to note that the author has attached an appendix of detailed analysis on "String Quartet No.1" at the end of the thesis."String Quartet No.1" is a masterwork in the early period of Giacinto Scelsi, and analysis of it would significantly enhance people’s understanding of changes in Scelsi’s compositional techniques after the transformation of his aesthetic ideas. Although the appendix is independent of the thesis, it provides complemented analysis of a different compositional technique during modernist period of Scelsi.In sum, this thesis is comprised of two parts. The four chapters in the first part mainly introduced and summarized sonoristic opinion and original thoughts of Giacinto Scelsi. Chapter one is an introduction that covers development of genre String Quartet in history of western music, and the characteristics of "sonorism" in Giacinto Scelsi’s four String Quartets. Key opinions of sonoristism and their generations are explained in Chapter2,3and4. These three chapters will enhance understanding of compositional opinions and aesthetic ideas of Giacinto Scelsi. Whereas in the second part, four aspects of composition techniques are analyzed, which includes tone organization, sound expression, rhythm feature and music form, to summarize Scelsi’s unique sonoristic techniques. In the end, the author concluded Giacinto Scelsi’s significant influences on the development of genre String Quartet in music history from a perspective of maco-history.