Salvatore Sciarrino (b. 1947), a Sicilian living in Rome, is perhaps the best-known living Italian composer. A brilliant self-taught prodigy who mastered all the musical instruments on his own, he has deliberately created a world of barely glimmering musical breath, deep within the ruins of culture – a world of profound solitude, of a soul living on the brink of non-existence in a society that avidly consumes meanings long since lost in a sea of insignificant words. One is struck by the outward economy of means with which Sciarrino builds his worlds: otherworldly, quiet sounds of the winds, the rustle of bow hair, the barely audible whisper of the tiniest percussion. But what Sciarrino does is far removed from the fashionable construction of simulacra. His music demands exceptionally attentive listening to oneself, engaging our gift for reconstructing lost (or perhaps never existing) sounds, spurring on experience and imagination. If one listens very closely, the discreteness of the sound matter vanishes, and coherence and beauty appear.