Photo: Pitichinaccio · CC BY 2.5 · credits
Tier 3 · vertical & regional
Salvatore Sciarrino
Person · male · Italy · Palermo · born 1947 · recording since 1993
Italian composer
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Also known as Salvador Sciarrino · 萨尔瓦托雷·夏里诺
Timeline
17 events▣ Album 14◦ Birth 1★ Debut release 1✦ Award 1
1940s
1990s
· Debut release
Debut release: Complete Piano Works
First documented Album in the MusicBrainz discography.
source: musicbrainz
2000s
· Album
Album: Adderley: Cloud of Unknowing / Sciarrino: Introduzione all'oscuro / Grenager: Pendulum / Husby: Sandwich Metaphor / Ness: Bryllupsmusikk
Album
source: musicbrainz
2010s
2020s
Biography
English biography595 words · 3 sectionssource: wikipedia-en · licence CC BY-SA 4.0 · revision 1377401719
Biography
Salvatore Sciarrino (born 4 April 1947) is an Italian composer of contemporary classical music. Described as "the best-known and most performed Italian composer" of the present day, his works include Quaderno di strada (2003) and La porta della legge (2006–08).
Biography
A native of Palermo, the young 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. After his classical studies and a few years of university in his home city, in 1969 he moved to Rome, where he attended Franco Evangelisti's course in electronic music at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.
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 Castello, in Umbria, where he has lived ever since. He nevertheless has continued to teach occasionally in Florence and Bologna, as well as in Città di Castello. Some of his notable students include Francesco Filidei, Lucia Ronchetti, David Monacchi, and Maurizio Pisati. See: List of music students by teacher: R to S#Salvatore Sciarrino.
He has composed for: Teatro alla Scala, RAI, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Biennale di Venezia, Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, Fondazione Arena di Verona, Stuttgart State Opera, Brussels La Monnaie, Oper Frankfurt, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, London Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Suntory Hall. He has also composed for the following festivals: Schwetzingen Festival, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Witten, Salzburg, New York, Wien Modern, Wiener Festwochen, Berliner Festspiele Musik, Holland Festival, Alborough, Festival d'Automne (Paris), Ultima (Oslo).
His music was published by Ricordi from 1969 to 2004. Since 2005, Rai Trade (now RaiCom) publishes Sciarrino’s works.
Sciarrino’s discography is extensive: there are over 70 CDs, many of which have won awards and released on labels such as Kairos, Neos, and Stradivarius.
Apart from being the author of most of the librettos of his operas, Sciarrino has written many articles, essays and texts, some of which have been chosen and collected in Carte da suono, CIDIM – Novecento, 2001. His book about musical form: Le figure della musica da Beethoven a oggi (Ricordi 1998) is particularly important.
From 1978 to 1980, he was Artistic Director of Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Academic of Santa Cecilia (Roma), Academic of Fine Arts of Bavaria and Academic of the Arts (Berlin).
He has been teaching at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana since 2013; beforehand he held a composition class in 1983 and in 2002.
Sciarrino has won many awards, among the most recent are: Prince Pierre de Monaco (2003) and the prestigious Feltrinelli Prize (2003). He is also the first prizewinner of the newly created Salzburg Music Prize (2006), an International composition prize established by Salzburg. He received the 2011 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards of Contemporary Music for renewing the possibilities of vocal and instrumental music and for the singularity of his sound materials. Sciarrino has developed a new and unique syntax and a manner of combining extreme synthesis with richness of detail.
Musical style
Pietro Misuraca, in one of the most recent books on the composer's music (2018), wrote: A stranger (also for reasons of age) to the pointillist-structuralist phase of the New Music, Sciarrino, along with Iannis Xenakis and György Ligeti, was among the voices most lucidly critical of Darmstadt's orthodoxy, its contradictions and its limits, animated by that concrete desire for "sound" that some other composers were developing in those years.
Discography & profile
Normalised profile
Percentiles are computed over every artist in the database, so a tier-3 artist can still sit in the 95th percentile on a single axis.
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 22 | 83.8th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 14 | 84.5th |
| Studio albums | 14 | 94th |
| Awards recorded | 2 | 92.6th |
| Timeline events | 17 | 92.4th |
| Recording span (years) | 29 | 64th |
| Genres | 7 | 93th |
Percentiles are computed at render time; missing values mean the artist has no data on that axis.
Discography (14 release groups · 14 studio albums)
Albums · 14
1993 · studio album
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Tracklist · 11 tracks · 1:09:48
1Prima Sonata12:582Sonata II10:133III Sonata11:224IV Sonata10:395Prélude1:516De la nuit4:067Esercizio1:028Etude de concert2:109Variazione su uno spazio ricurvo3:0610Perduto in una città d'acque9:2711Anamorfosi2:542000 · studio album
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Tracklist · 5 tracks · 1:00:56
1Lo spazio inverso7:352Muro d'orizzonte11:203Omaggio a Burri12:594Codex purpureus11:145Introduzione all'oscuro17:48Le voci sottovetro / Infinito nero
2000 · studio album
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Tracklist · 8 tracks · 52:34
1Le voci sottovetro: Gagliarda del Principe die Venosa1:412Lettere poetiche: A Girolamo Mercuriale, Padova3:503Le voci sottovetro: Tu m'uccidi, o crudele3:274Lettere poetiche: A Maurizio Cataneo, Roma5:015Le voci sottovetro: Canzon francese del Principe4:476Lettere poetiche: A Giovan Battista Cavallara2:287Le voci sottovetro: Moro, Lasso4:418Infinito nero26:392001 · studio album
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Tracklist · 5 tracks · 51:52
1Cloud of Unknowing13:502Introduzione all'oscuro13:533Pendulum8:574Sandwich Metaphor10:485Bryllupsmusikk4:24Pagine & Canzoniere da Scarlatti
2003 · studio album
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Tracklist · 19 tracks · 1:08:10
1Madrigal “Itene miei sospiri”2:472Madrigal “Tu m’uccidi, o crudele”2:593Fughetta sur “Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot”1:194Kyrie “Gott Vater in Ewigkeit”2:005Sonate en la mineur, L223/K532 (Allegro)3:436Sonate en mi majeur, L257/K206 (Andante)8:087Adagio de la Grande Partita, KV 3614:538I’ve got you under my skin5:309O Virgo Splendens2:4810Très dous complains3:3411Who cares?1:3412Sonate en re mineur, L213/K120 (Allegrissimo)3:4613Sonate en la majeur, L238/K208 (Adagio e cantabile)4:1214Sonate en fa majeur, L230/K350 (Allegro)2:1815Sonate en la mineur, L222/K404 (Andante)5:0616Sonate en la majeur, L428/K209 (Allegro)4:2517Sonate en ut majeur, L439/K255 (Allegro)4:1018Sonate en ré majeur, L448/K359 (Allegrissimo)3:0319Sonate en sol majeur, L445/K153 (Vivo)1:552005 · studio album
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Tracklist · 8 tracks · 49:51
1Il tempo con l'obelisco7:092Quintetto n°12:553La malinconia5:324Il silenzio degli oracoli4:115Le ragioni delle conchiglie11:586Codex purpureus9:037Quintetto n°23:238Centauro marino5:402005 · studio album
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Tracklist · 13 tracks · 42:25
1Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Se non ora, Quando?2:292Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): … lo Smarrimento2:463Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): … smarrita la Misura3:214Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Disse un Poeta2:125Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Se spera che i Sasi1:516Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Dove andarono la sera i Muratori2:207Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Anno 4105:218Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): La rosa che si Disfa5:109Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Piove1:3710Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Donato Creti Scrisse3:4711Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): A filo del Violino2:4712Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Fior di Kencùr5:4913Quaderno di strada - 12 canti e un proverbio per baritono e strumenti (2003): Du cose al mondo (Proverbio)2:552008 · studio album
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Tracklist · 9 tracks · 2:48:18
Disc 11Variazioni22:512Allegoria della notte17:083Frammento e Adagio: Frammento10:064Frammento e Adagio: Adagio7:07Disc 21Morte di Borromini27:092I fuochi oltre la ragione31:41Disc 31Recitativo oscuro16:442Il suono e il tacere17:353Shadow of Sound17:57Donaueschinger Musiktage 2009, Vol. 1
2011 · studio album
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Tracklist · 11 tracks · 1:06:37
1Libro notturno delle voci: I. In val d’abisso11:172Libro notturno delle voci: II. Fauci dell’emozione9:473Libro notturno delle voci: III. Mario Caroli e l’iridescenza di un re10:564Apon: I.8:345Apon: II.8:526Incubus III: I. Cast2:017Incubus III: II. Shadow2:448Incubus III: III. Sleep2:469Incubus III: IV. Waltz2:0210Incubus III: V. Thrusting5:5311Incubus III: VI. Gasping1:452012 · studio album
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Tracklist · 11 tracks · 1:47:23
Disc 11ATTO I, Scena I5:512ATTO I, Scena II10:023ATTO I, Scena III6:094ATTO I, Scena IV10:115ATTO II, Scena I9:466ATTO II, Scena II10:48Disc 21ATTO III, Scena I22:102ATTO III, Scena II17:433La perfida (intermezzo)1:314ATTO III, Scena II4:565Congedo8:16Quartetto N.7 / Quartetto N.8 / Sei quartetti brevi
2012 · studio album
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Tracklist · 8 tracks · 46:28
1Quartetto no. 79:432Quartetto no. 818:283Sei quartetti brevi: I4:104Sei quartetti brevi: II1:255Sei quartetti brevi: III3:556Sei quartetti brevi: IV2:257Sei quartetti brevi: V3:058Sei quartetti brevi: VI3:172013 · studio album
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Tracklist · 5 tracks · 59:16
1Notturno N. 1 (1998)4:502Notturno N. 3 (1998)6:243V Sonata (1994)16:414Perduto in una città d'acque (1991)8:525I Sonata (1976)22:292019 · studio album
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Tracklist · 6 tracks · 58:16
1Let Me Die Before I Wake10:002Quintet in B minor, op. 115: Allegro13:343Quintet in B minor, op. 115: Adagio10:534Quintet in B minor, op. 115: Andantino4:515Quintet in B minor, op. 115: Con moto10:136Nebenstück: Andante con moto8:45Musiche per il "Paradiso" di Dante
2022 · studio album
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Tracklist · 3 tracks · 1:16:16
1Musiche per il "Paradiso" di Dante (1993), Musiche di Scena per Soli e Orchestra: Alfabeto Oscuro5:092Musiche per il "Paradiso" di Dante (1993), Musiche di Scena per Soli e Orchestra: L'invenzione della trasparenza1:05:573Musiche per il "Paradiso" di Dante (1993), Musiche di Scena per Soli e Orchestra: Postille5:10
Stats & PK
Percentile within all 23,672 published artists.Put Salvatore Sciarrino head-to-head →
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 22 | 83.8th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 14 | 84.5th |
| Studio albums | 14 | 94th |
| Awards recorded | 2 | 92.6th |
| Timeline events | 17 | 92.4th |
| Recording span (years) | 29 | 64th |
| Genres | 7 | 93th |
Awards & honours
| Year | Award | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award | won | |
| — | Feltrinelli Prize | won |
Where this record comes from
portrait—Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.5 · retrieved 11 October 2026
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SalvatoreSciarrino_%28cropped%29.jpgaliases/urls—musicbrainz · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/78101aad-d417-4e39-b2b9-6779950d9c6bdiscography—musicbrainz · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/78101aad-d417-4e39-b2b9-6779950d9c6bcore—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q439786genre—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 11 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q439786seed-list—wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Sciarrinobiography—wikipedia-en · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Sciarrino
Why this artist is in the database
- List of composers by name
Tier rule: curated genre/region list
Image: Pitichinaccio · CC BY 2.5 · Wikimedia Commons
Wikidata: Q439786 · MusicBrainz: 78101aad-d417-4e39-b2b9-6779950d9c6b
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