PAX

"Pax" is a central concept in Giacinto Scelsi's work. In Tre canti sacri, the word is impressively set to music in the Gloria text, and in Konx-Om-Paxit reappears in the title. Furthermore, Pax stands for a mediating attitude that is characteristic of Scelsi: between East and West, between improvisation and notation, between sound and construction, between transcendence and immanence.
This volume attempts to provide a detailed analysis of the published scores of Scelsi's two works, Tre canti sacri and Konx-Om-Pax. The focus is on the fact that Scelsi's contribution to music history is manifested quite concretely in the development of his own conception of form, harmony, and compositional technique. Despite its individuality, this musical language and its semantics stand in a tense but close relationship to the history and present of Western art music.

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