Composed in 1953, just a year or so after emerging from the artistic and psychological collapse he suffered in the late 1940s, Giacinto Scelsi's Quattro illustrazioni (Four Illustrations) for piano solo are full-blooded manifestations of his new musical and spiritual directions. These four illustrations "on the Metamorphosis of Vishnu" are composed—as is typical for Scelsi from 1952 on—around a mystical Eastern topic and in the searching, rhythm-oriented, anti-traditional style of his so-called Second Period (ca. 1952 - 1960). Perhaps "composed" is the wrong word for what Scelsi has done: from the time that he emerged again in the early 1950s onward, Scelsi maintained that he was not a composer at all, but rather a creative "intermediary" between two different worlds.

The Quattro illustrazioni had to wait many years—almost a full quarter century—before being heard in public. The world premiere was given on December 15, 1977, by pianist Yvar Mikhashoff at the American Academy in Rome.

The first Illustration is called "Shésha—Shàyí Vishnu," and it has two basic structural-textural elements: an opening episode (Sostenuto) built from an idea in tritones, stated at first by two middle-register voices in complex but homophonic rhythms, with more voices later being added; and then a poco più mosso, during which these strands diverge from one another to become fractured and nonlinear.

Illustration 2 is "Varaha—Avatàra." It has just one fundamental contrapuntal voice at the start, a rolling active bass line that leaps around a great deal from which colorful but short-lived offshoots grow from time to time. Eventually, these offshoots gain enough momentum, however, so that true melodic "mirrors" of the primary voice begin to appear and move on their own.

No. 3, "Rama—Avatàra," is marked Con eleganza e seduzione, and contains the first extended episodes in the upper register of the piano. Illustration 4, "Krishna—Avatàra," is made from a throbbing, glowing melodic ember.

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