Scelsi continues to be a modern composer of intense interest to me. Partly this is because he uses ideas from other stimulating music: Medieval, Indian, etc. Mostly, however, it is because he was able to achieve a coherent and compelling microtonal fusion technique. To make matters more amazing, he did this virtually from scratch, after an early period of composition in which he used the idioms of his era.
Most recently, I wrote some articles on Scelsi for the San Francisco Symphony, and these should make the best introductions:
The first two articles were written for North American premieres.
By way of reference, these lists are hopefully up to date:
The latter has now been "upgraded" to make better use of the HTML format and accommodate more detail. I should redo the former too, since it was typed nearly ten years ago (i.e. before HTML).
Finally, here are some old essays on Scelsi, which might still prove helpful to someone trying to discover his music. By way of disclaimer, I feel compelled to note that my ideas have often progressed considerably.
I guess that is everything for now.
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Todd M. McComb <mccomb@medieval.org> Updated: 27 January 2000