Standing Meditation, The Intersection Of East And West

This paper is focusing on Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) and one of his most important compositions String Quartet No. 4Scelsi was born in Italy in 1905. He received traditional western education when he was growing up. During the middle of 1940s', he traveled to Asia and was attracted by eastern religions, and started to build a connection of these philosophical ideas and music. He wrote a great amount of pieces of symphonies, chamber music, vocal pieces, and solo pieces. All those works reflect his unique view of music. As a western composer, Scels's works were rooted and reflected his view of eastern aesthetics and philosophies.String Quartet No. 4 was written during the period when Scelsi's unique style has matured. The aesthetics and the unique style shown in this piece can be taken as an epitome of all his achievement.This paper is trying to discover Scelsi's inspiration of music, composition style, and musical genre from researching Scelsi himslef, String Quartet No. 4 and related composition techniques such as pitch, texture, and notation. In addition, this paper is trying to find the crossroads of Scelsi's life and music in order to discover the relationship between composer's philosophy and his musical language.