Giacinto Scelsi

Born on 8 January 1905 in Pitelli near La Spezia, he studied in Vienna with Arnold Schoenberg's pupil Walther Klein and became the first Italian exponent of twelve-tone technique before abandoning it entirely. After a mental breakdown in the late 1940s he turned to Eastern mysticism, Theosophy, and extended meditation, developing a compositional method focused on the inner life of a single note explored through microtonal oscillations, timbre changes, and dynamics. His Quattro pezzi su una nota sola (1959) exemplifies this approach. He died on 9 August 1988 in Rome, his work largely unrecognised until the final years of his life.