Luciano Berio

• Born: October 24, 1925
• Birthplace: Imperia, Oneglia, Italy
• Died: May 27, 2003
• Place of death: Rome, Italy

Italian classical composer

An important avant-garde and electronic composer, Berio is best known for the quotation, the deconstruction, and the transformation of preexisting musical materials.

The Life

Luciano Berio (lew-CHYAH-noh BEH-ree-oh) was born in Oneglia, Italy on October 24, 1925. His father and grandfather were organists, and Berio received both formal and informal music training. Studying piano, Berio performed in chamber settings from the age of nine, and though he began composing in his teens, he remained primarily a pianist until young adulthood. Forced into military service in Italian leader Benito Mussolini’s army, Berio injured his hand in an explosion during his military training, ending his career prospects as a pianist.

After the war, Berio returned to study composition at the Milan Conservatory. Accompanying provided a small income for him, and it was while accompanying a voice class that he met Cathy Berberian, an American studying voice in Milan on a Fulbright Fellowship. They were married in 1950, and she was extremely influential on his compositional development, premiering several of his most important works in the 1960’s.

After Berio returned from a trip to the United States in 1951, where he studied with Luigi Dallapiccola at the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, he took on work at RAI, an Italian radio and television network. In 1955, along with Bruno Maderna, he cofounded Studio Fonologia, and he invited important composers such as John Cage to work there. In 1960 Berio returned to the United States to teach at Tanglewood. Later he substituted for Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, California, and in 1965 he began teaching at the Juilliard School, where he remained until 1972. He was an important teacher, and his students included Louis Andriessen, Steve Reich, and Bernard Rands.

While teaching, Berio also maintained an active traveling schedule, attending premieres around the world. Divorced from Berberian, Berio married an American psychologist, Susan Oyama, in 1965, with whom he had two children. Eventually his busy traveling schedule caused him to stop teaching, and he returned to Italy in 1972. He was the director of IRCAM, the institute for the scientific study of music and sound, in Paris from 1974 to 1980, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez. Berio founded the Tempo Reale studio in Florence in 1987 after he and his third wife, the musicologist Talia Pecker, settled outside Siena. Though he served as the Distinguished Composer in Residence at Harvard University from 1994 until 2000, it was primarily at his Italian home that he composed until his death in 2003.

The Music

Berio actively composed from the 1950’s until his death in 2003, and he remained intellectually curious throughout his life. Berio held a lifelong fascination with reinterpretation and transformation, both in individual pieces as well as between pieces. Parts of works reappear in later works, and many works were later revised, reorchestrated, or arranged for different performance mediums. Ideas or themes from electronic works influenced his acoustic ones and vice versa. He composed fourteen Sequenzas for solo instruments from 1958 through 2002. For each one he fastidiously studied the physical components and requirements of performance on each instrument. Thus, many embody the extreme possibilities of performance virtuosity.

Early Works. At the Milan Conservatory, Berio was a member of the composition class of Giorgio Federico Ghedini, an Italian composer who proved a major influence on him. Berio studied the works of Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg, and Sergei Prokofiev, among others, and he experimented with serialism. As was the case for many other young Italian composers, Dallapiccola served as the model for serial composition. After Berio studied with him at Tanglewood, many of his works displayed Dallapiccola’s influence. Chamber Music is the most well known of these. In the early 1950’s, Berio also began to experiment with electronic music, and Mimusique No. 1 for tape was his first electronic work. However, the three most important stylistic works from the 1950’s are Thema: Omaggio a Joyce for tape, in which Berio electronically manipulated the words of James Joyce and Cathy Berberian’s voice to provide an aural parallel to Joyce’s textual world; Sequenza No. 1 for flute and the first of fourteen Sequenzas for solo instruments; and Différences for flute, clarinet, harp, cello, and tape, in which Berio manipulated recordings of the instruments to merge the tape with the acoustic instruments rather than juxtaposing the two.

Circles. Written for Berberian in 1960, Circles takes its text from three poems by E. E. Cummings. Employing the same compositional techniques used two years earlier in the tape work Thema: Omaggio a Joyce, but using only acoustic instruments, Berio scored this for female voice, harp, and two percussionists. The work stands as a testament to Berio’s fascination with cycles, symmetry, and intertextuality.

As the detailed performance notes specify, the singer is positioned at the front of the stage for the beginning of the piece, but, as the song cycle progresses, the singer gradually recedes into the ensemble. The vocalist is asked to play various percussion instruments, such as finger cymbals and claves, and the instrumentalists are asked to imitate the voice throughout, blurring the division between the singer and the players. As is found in later Berio works, the text is broken into phonemes that the singer is asked to sing, whisper, or speak. Eventually the line between poetry and music, singer and instrumentalist has been erased as the percussionists sing and the singer is simply a member of the ensemble.

Composed as an abcb’a’ arch, the musical material is recycled throughout. When the second poem reappears, it is accompanied by fragments from the first song, and musical themes are interwoven. This type of intertextuality is an important aspect of Berio’s style, a technique he used throughout his life. For example, the Sequenzas were recycled and transformed into another series, Chemins, and in his opera La vera storia, the text from one act is musically reinterpreted in another.

Sinfonia. Having established himself as an important composer through his work in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Berio received many commissions in the late 1960’s. Sinfonia was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, and it was dedicated to its conductor, Leonard Bernstein. The first four movements premiered on October 10, 1968, with the Swingle Singers, the New York Philharmonic, and Berio conducting. It was originally written in four movements, and a fifth movement was added in 1969.

Throughout the five movements, Berio quotes not only text but also music from earlier composers, such as Hector Berlioz, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Gustav Mahler, as well as Berio’s contemporaries, such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The second movement is an earlier work, O King, written in 1967 in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and using the vowels and consonants from his name. Sinfonia is often called the first postmodern work because the most salient features of the piece are its references to preexisting musical sources rather than the resultant harmony or texture. The music of Arnold Schoenberg may be heard with text from the theorist Claude Levi-Strauss, and the singers sometimes seem to comment on the musical references themselves. Whereas Berio engages in textual deconstruction in Circles and the tape work Visage, here he deconstructs the music, creating not a pastiche or collage so much as a transformation of the sonic elements. In doing so, Berio calls into question the definition of an original musical work.

Points on the Curve to Find. With Sinfonia, Berio received unusually wide popularity for a contemporary composer. However, many of Berio’s works from the 1970’s emphasize less his deconstructionist techniques and more his interest in musical process and static harmonic fields. Points on the Curve to Find is scored for piano and twenty instruments. The title refers to a geometric curve, and in the work, the piano functions as the curve.

The piece lasts just more than eleven minutes, and the piano part features rapid thirty-second notes and other figures that Berio designates should be played as quickly as possible. The other instruments resonate aspects of the piano’s curve, by doubling it in spots, echoing it in others, and frequently passing it back and forth among themselves. The piano part consists entirely of a ten-note musical sequence that cycles throughout. During each cycle, different pairs of the sequence are trilled, so that different harmonic fields are emphasized. What emerges is a constantly evolving, fanciful work, full of frenetic energy and ornamentation. It is often linked to other works from this period, such as Linea, for two pianos, vibraphone, and marimba, because of its emphasis on limited pitch material, musical process, and static harmonic fields. Berio remained committed to traditional formal structures, and this work exhibits a remarkable ability to fuse strict compositional methods with traditional dramatic formal shape.

Sequenzas I-XIV. Beginning in 1958 with Sequenza I for solo flute, Berio finished his last Sequenza, written for cello, in 2002. The fourteen Sequenzas provide a rare insight into the wide-ranging compositional interests and styles of the composer over an almost forty-five-year period. Each is intended as a study in what is possible on the instrument, and all require virtuosic performers. For each, Berio fastidiously studied the possibilities for performance. For Sequenza III for solo voice, Berio mapped out various resonant spots inside the mouth, and he requires the soloists to perform octave jumps, arpeggios, glissandi, and trills. Sequenza XII for bassoon solo requires circular breathing, among other extended techniques. The last cello Sequenza has a melancholy quality and folklike pizzicato rhythms.

Musical Legacy

Berio’s intellectual curiosity led him in many stylistic directions over his career, but throughout he recognized the theatricality inherent in any musical performance. He sought to blur boundaries, using serialism if it suited the work, but he never prescribed to a specific orthodoxy. Credited with being hugely influential in electronic music, not only because of his work in founding his own electronic studios but also because of his employment of new electronic techniques to musical ends, he also influenced later generations of composers through his refusal to restrict his music to a singular style. Rather than capitalizing on the huge success of Sinfonia by continuing to write music that deconstructed the musical canon, he turned to more traditional compositional concerns, such as harmony and economy of musical means. Though he was the Italian representative of the Darmstadt School generation in the late 1950’s, he was not part of the political infighting that characterized many composers from that period. He actively collaborated with other composers, and his work will forever be linked with his intellectual contemporaries in other fields, such as Bertolt Brecht, Levi-Strauss, and Umberto Eco.

Principal Works

ballets (music): Linea, 1974 (for two pianos, vibraphone, and marimba; choreography by Félix Blaska); Per la dolce memoria di quel giorno, 1974 (choreography by Maurice Bejart).

chamber works:Toccata, 1939 (for two pianos); Divertimento, 1946 (for string trio); Tre pezzi, 1947 (for three clarinets); Différences, 1959 (for flute, clarinet, harp, viola, cello, and tape); Sincronie, 1964 (for string quartet); Memory, 1970 (for electric piano and electric harpsichord); Musica leggera, 1974 (for flute, viola, and cello); Duetti, 1983 (thirty-four pieces for two violins); Accordo, 1981 (for four groups of wind instruments); Voci, 1984 (for viola and instrumental ensemble); Call, 1985 (for brass quintet); Naturale, 1986 (for viola, tam-tam, and tape); Ricorrenze, 1987 (for wind quartet); String Quartet No. 3, 1993 (Notturno).

operas (music): Mimusique No. 2, 1955 (libretto by Roberto Leydi); Allez-Hop!, 1959 (libretto by Italo Calvino); Esposizione, 1963 (libretto by Edoardo Sanguineti); Passaggio, 1963 (libretto by Sanguineti); Opera, 1970 (libretto by Alban Berg); Diario immaginario, 1975 (radio opera for chorus, orchestra, and tape; libretto by Vittorio Sermonti); Duo (teatro immaginario), 1982 (radio opera for baritone, two violins, choir, and orchestra; libretto by Calvino); La vera storia, 1982 (libretto by Calvino); Un re in ascolto, 1984 (libretto by Calvino); Outis, 1996 (libretto by Dario del Corno); Cronaca del luogo, 1999 (libretto by Talia Pecker-Berio).

orchestral works:Preludio a una festa marina, 1944; Concertino, 1949; Nones, 1954; Variazioni, 1954; Allelujah I, 1955; Variazioni “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen,” 1956; Serenata I, 1957 (for flute and fourteen instruments); Allelujah II, 1958; Sequenza series, 1958-2002; Tempi concertati, 1959; Quaderni I, 1959; Quaderni II, 1961; Quaderni III, 1962; Chemins I, 1964; Chemins II, 1967; Chemins III, 1968; Concerto, 1973 (for two pianos and orchestra); Still, 1973; Eindrücke, 1974; Points on the Curve to Find, 1974; Chemins IV, 1975; Corale on Sequenza VIII, 1975 (for violin, two horns, and strings); Il ritorno degli snovidenia, 1977; Encore, 1978; Chemins V, 1980; Fanfara, 1982; Requies, 1985; Formazioni, 1987; Concerto II, 1989 (Echoing Curves); Continuo, 1989; Festum, 1989; Rendering, 1989; Alternatim, 1997 (for clarinet, viola, and orchestra); SOLO, 1999 (for trombone and orchestra).

piano works:Wasserklavier, 1965; Luftklavier, 1985; Feuerklavier, 1989; Brin, 1990; Leaf, 1990; Sonata, 2001.

instrumental works:Gesti, 1966 (for recorder); Comma, 1987 (for clarinet); Psy, 1989 (for double bass).

tape works:Mimusique No. 1, 1953; Ritratto di città, 1954 (with Bruno Maderna; for one-track tape); Mutazioni, 1955 (for one-track tape); Perspectives, 1957 (for two-track tape); Thema: Omaggio a Joyce, 1958 (for two-track tape); Momenti, 1960 (for four-track tape); Visage, 1961 (for two-track tape); A-Ronne, 1975 (radio documentary for five actors; based on Edoardo Sanguineti’s poem).

vocal works:O bone Jesu, 1946 (for chorus); Tre canzoni popolari, 1947 (for female voice and piano); Tre liriche greche, 1948 (for solo voice and piano); Due pezzi sacri, 1949 (for two sopranos, piano, two harpsichords, timpani, and bells); Magnificat, 1949 (for two sopranos and orchestra); Opus Number Zoo, 1951 (for speakers, wind instruments, and French horn; lyrics by Rhoda Levine); El mar la mar, 1952 (for two sopranos and instruments; based on texts by Rafael Alberti); Chamber Music, 1953 (for female voice, cello, clarinet, and harp; based on James Joyce’s poetry); Circles, 1960 (for female voice, harp, and percussion; based on texts by E. E. Cummings); Epifanie, 1961 (for female voice and orchestra; based on texts by Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Antonio Machado, Claude Simon, Bertolt Brecht, and Edoardo Sanguineti); Folk Songs, 1964 (for soprano and seven instruments); Traces, 1964 (for soprano, mezzo-soprano, two actors, chorus, and orchestra); Laborintus II, 1965 (for voices and orchestra; libretto by Sanguineti); Rounds, 1965 (for solo voice and harpsichord); O King, 1967 (for solo voice and instruments); Air, 1969 (for soprano and orchestra; libretto by Alessandro Striggio); Questo vuol dire che, 1969 (for three female voices, small chorus, instruments, and tape); Sinfonia, 1969 (for eight solo voices and orchestra); Agnus, 1971 (for two female voices, three clarinets, and a drone); Bewegung, 1971 (for baritone and orchestra); E vo’, 1972 (for soprano and instruments); Recital I, 1972 (for solo voice and instruments; libretto by Berio, Andrea Mosetti, and Sanguineti); Folk Songs, 1973 (for soprano and orchestra); Calmo, 1974 (for soprano and instruments; based on texts by Homer); Cries of London, 1974 (for six solo voices); Chants parallèles, 1975; Coro, 1976 (based on folk texts by Pablo Neruda); Ofanim, 1988 (for female voice, children’s chorus, instruments, and electronics); Canticum novissimi testamenti, 1989 (for voices, four clarinets, and four saxophones).

Bibliography

Berio, Luciano. Remembering the Future. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. This short work provides Berio’s insights into his works and the works of other composers.

Osmond-Smith, David. Berio. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1991. A thorough overview of Berio’s life and works, including a description of his musical language, his use of computers at IRCAM and Tempo Reale, the importance of folk music, and more.