Salvatore Sciarrino (born
PalermoPalermo is a historic city in Southern Italy, the capital of the autonomous region Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its rich history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
,
SicilySicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an autonomous region of Italy. Several much smaller islands surrounding it are considered to be part of Sicily....
, on April 4, 1947) is an
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
composer of
contemporary classical musicContemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.- Categorization :...
.
In his youth, Sciarrino was attracted to the visual arts, but began experimenting with music when he was twelve. Though he had some lessons from Antonino Titone and Turi Belfiore, he is primarily self-taught as a composer. In 1969 he moved to Rome, where he attended Franco Evangelisti's course in electronic music at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Osmond-Smith 2001).
In 1977, Sciarrino moved from Rome to Milan, where he taught at the conservatory until 1982.
Salvatore Sciarrino (born
PalermoPalermo is a historic city in Southern Italy, the capital of the autonomous region Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its rich history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
,
SicilySicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is an autonomous region of Italy. Several much smaller islands surrounding it are considered to be part of Sicily....
, on April 4, 1947) is an
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
composer of
contemporary classical musicContemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.- Categorization :...
.
Biography
In his youth, Sciarrino was attracted to the visual arts, but began experimenting with music when he was twelve. Though he had some lessons from Antonino Titone and Turi Belfiore, he is primarily self-taught as a composer. In 1969 he moved to Rome, where he attended Franco Evangelisti's course in electronic music at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Osmond-Smith 2001).
In 1977, Sciarrino moved from Rome to Milan, where he taught at the conservatory until 1982. By this time his compositional career had expanded to the point where he could withdraw from teaching, and he moved to
Città di CastelloCittà di Castello is a city and comune in the province of Perugia, in the northern part of the Umbria region of Italy. It is situated on a slope of the Apennines, on the flood plain of the river Tiber. The city is 56 km north of Perugia and 104 km south of Cesena on the S3bis...
, in
UmbriaUmbria is a region of central Italy. Its capital is Perugia. It has an area of 8,456 km² and about 900,000 inhabitants.- Geography :...
, where he has resided ever since. He nevertheless has continued to teach sporadically in
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence...
and
BolognaBologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of northern Italy...
, as well as in Città di Castello. Some of his notable students include
Lucia RonchettiLucia Ronchetti is an italian composer.After studying piano with Mario Bevilacqua, she attended the Conservatorio of S.Cecilia in Rome, where she obtained the diploma in Composition and Electronic Music in 1987...
and Mena Mark Hanna.
Musical style
Sciarrino's work is
avant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, and he is known for his use of isolated sonorities, extended playing techniques, frequent silences, and ironic or confrontational quotation of previous music (for instance, American pop music) or stories (such as in
Lohengrin).
His works include a large body of chamber music, including many pieces for wind instruments, five piano sonatas, and several operas or theatrical works:
Da gelo a gelo,
Infinito nero,
Macbeth,
Perseo ed Andromeda,
LohengrinLohengrin is an operatic monodrama by the Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino. Premiered in 1982 in Milan the work was later revised by Sciarrino and the new version was premiered in on September 9, 1984 in Catanzaro. The opera, which is less than an hour long, is loosely based on the plot of...
, and
Luci mie traditrici.