Luciano Berio Research Articles

Un re in ascolto: Luciano Berio and Italo Calvino's Collaboration as a Memory of the Future

Un re in ascolto: Luciano Berio and Italo Calvino's Collaboration as a Memory of the Future

EXTENDED TECHNIQUE AND POLYPHONIC WRITING IN LUCIANO BERIO'S SEQUENZA XIV

AbstractThis article discusses the use of extended techniques by Luciano Berio (1925–2003), focusing on his Sequenza XIV, for cello, finished in 2002. Our analysis attempts to demonstrate how Berio uses new ways of playing the instrument to create a kind of polyphony. The article references a large number of writings by Berio himself, including sketches, drafts and early manuscripts of Sequenza XIV, including exchanges between the composer and Rohan de Saram, for whom he wrote the piece.

Модерн / Постмодерн. Перевод с французского, предисловие и примечания Ю.Н. Пантелеевой

The article “Modern / Postmodern” by the famous contemporary French composer, conductor and theorist Pierre Boulez, published for the first time in Russian, presents the text of his speech during the concert performed by the Ensemble InterСontemporain in Bordeaux in 1987. The typewritten original of text is kept in the Paul Sacher Foundation, and in printed form this material can be found in the second volume of the compilation of Boulez’ literary works Regards sur autrui, compiled by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and Sophie Galaise. The article is devoted to the issues of modernism/ postmodernism in music, the problems of musical language and compositional technique. Boulez reinforces the generalized view of contemporary European music with specific examples and examines works by three major avant-garde composers. The compositions in question are György Ligeti’s Trio, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza for violin and two compositions by Boulez himself — Domaines and Dialogue de l’ombre double. The translation of this text is dedicated to the next “anniversary” issue of the journal “Sovremenny problemy muzykoznaniya” [“Contemporary Musicology”], one of the scholarly themes of which is the 95th anniversary of professor of the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music Natalia Sergeevna Gulyanitskaya. The translator of the article, Yulia Panteleeva, had the honor of studying with this famous musicologist at the Academy on an individual basis in the late 1980s, and Pierre Boulez’ musical works comprised one of the first topics studied by her.

Luciano Berioʼs “Folk Songs”: Reconstruction of the Idea in the Context of Creativity

Relevance of the study. Luciano Berio’s vocal cycle «Folk Songs» for mezzo-soprano and seven instrumentalists (1964) was considered for the first time in Ukrainian musicology. The relevance of the research is determined by the imbalance between the high degree of performance demand of the work in the modern cultural space and the insignificant activity of its musicological study. The purpose of the study. The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the creative idea of the vocal cycle «Folk Songs» by Luciano Berio in the context of the composer's searches, their mutual influences and interaction. Methods. The article uses historical, cultural and biographical methods (to study the stages of the formation of the idea of the work in the context of the composer’s creative biography), source studies (to find the sources of multinational folk songs that became the basis of the vocal cycle), methods of comparison and analogy (to propose a hypothesis about the origins of the creative idea of «Folk Songs») and the method of theoretical generalization. The results and conclusions. The biographical context and stages of creation of Luciano Berio’s «Folk Songs» are studied in detail, the sources of folk songs from five countries of the world (USA, France, Italy, Armenia, Azerbaijan) used by composer in the vocal cycle are determined. The main features of the formation of the unity of the cycle are considered: the general logic of the construction, the content of the texts, the composition of the instrumental ensemble, metro-rhythmic features. A hypothesis is proposed about the combined influence of the performing skills of Cathy Berberian and the linguistic and stylistic features of John Cage’s «Aria» (1958) on the formation of the idea of Luciano Berio’s «Folk Songs». The manifestation in the vocal cycle of Luciano Berio’s interest in the linguistic (phonological) aspect of creativity, which became active in his work from the 1950s, is emphasized. Based on the results of the research, it is proposed to perceive and realize «Folk Songs» as a link of two «lines» of Luciano Berio’s creative interests, manifested in his work — interest in multinational folklore and phonological features of different languages. Vocal cycles created in the 21st century based on the model of Luciano Berio’s «Folk Songs»: «Ayre» by Osvaldo Golijov, «Worksongs» by Samuel Blaser and «Chanzuns Popularas Romanchas» by Oscar Strasnoy were identified. These works indicate possible prospects for the continuation of the research topic.

Schubert’s “Tenth”: an Interpretation Between Construction and Restitution

Abstract In Franz Schubert’s creation the fragment takes on various forms of manifestation, ranging from the fragmentary reception of an already constituted piece to the fragmentary notation, in the form of a sketch, of a work that has not yet been completed. A special place belongs to the Tenth Symphony in D major, D 936A, by Schubert, left unfinished; we received it as a sketch, in a convolute, together with two other unfinished symphonies in the same key: D 615 and D 708A. The present study aims to expose three artistic interpretations of these sketches, materialized in completed musical works, with a distinct approach. The intention of the British composer and conductor Brian Newbould was to finish the symphony in the way that Schubert himself would have done, anchoring the musical ideas from the sketches in the composer’s style. Peter Gülke approached the sketches through the eyes of the researcher and the analyst, with the intention of obtaining their most accurate and authentic reproduction, emphasizing the materialization of some of Schubert’s possible intentions. Finally, Luciano Berio manages in Rendering to musically render the sketches per se, imagining a musical fresco where the concrete musical ideas, written by Schubert, are deliberately mixed with the provisional character of the manuscript.

Тембровые новации в хоровых сочинениях Хайнца Холлигера: от Dona nobis pacem к Die Jahreszeiten

The article is devoted to the three most famous works for chorus by contemporary Swiss composer Heinz Holliger (b. 1939) composed during the course of ten years – from 1969 to 1979. Departing from the field of experiments in the field of vocal articulation of the representatives of the post-war avant-garde, Holliger was able to enrich to a considerable degree the timbral element of vocal composition with new performance techniques. The latter include singing through inhalation, singing with emptied lungs, voiced exhalation, etc. The systematization of Holliger’s timbral techniques presented by the author of this article sets as its goal the continuity between Holliger’s choral works and those by his older colleagues. While the analysis of Dona nobis pacem demonstrates the development of the techniques of phonemic composition which are present in the works of Mauricio Kagel, Luciano Berio and Gyӧrgy Ligeti, in Psalm and in the cycle Die Jahreszeiten Holliger generates new methods of vocal articulation, which were later reflected in the works of not only his younger, but also his older contemporaries. The main accentuation in this article is placed by the study of the cycle Die Jahreszeiten – Holliger’s largest and most significant choral composition. Analyzing the timbral and textural structure of the pieces comprising the cycle, the author arrives at the conclusion about the composer’s wish to approach the reflection of the automatized “impersonal” writing of Scardanelli (which was Hölderlin’s pseudonym in the late period of his poetical creativity, when he was suffering from mental affliction) by means of his compositional resources. The phenomena of the soundless word and fragmented statement of the musical material bring a number of pieces from Holliger’s cycle closer to the identical musical discoveries by Luigi Nono in his works from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as in his late works composed from the influence of reading Hölderlin-Scardanelli’s poetic works. Thereby, the study of Holliger’s musical compositions makes it possible for us to examine the Swiss composer’s choral works not only as an organic continuation of his colleagues’ experiments, but also as a genuine culmination in the development of Western European choral writing in the 1970s manifested in the greatest amount of enrichment of the timbral side of modern choral composition.

Sequenza IV в контексте фортепианного творчества Лучано Берио

The Italian composer Luciano Berio, a classic of modern music, is distinguished by a rare variety of creative solutions and a wide range of interests. Sequenza I, written by Berio in 1958, marked the beginning of a series of 14 pieces. They are dedicated to contemporary interpretation of possibilities of various instruments and voice in the genre of a solo concert piece. The Sequenzas are an example of virtuosity and an encyclopedia of the development of Berio’s aesthetics in the period from 1958 to 2002. In most of the pieces, Berio uses a combination of experimental instrumental techniques and dramatic elements. He calls his Sequenzas “extremely sophisticated gestural exercises”. Sequenza IV (1965) is one of the pieces with a more traditional approach. Berio avoids an experimental manner of playing and sound touche and continues to develop his own concept of a polyphonic composition. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of Sequenza IV, briefly focuses on the other Sequenzas and explores some aspects of Berio’s creativity.

Berio’s Duetti per due violini: An introduction

Abstract This article is the summary of a workshop on the violin duets of Béla Bartók and Luciano Berio, and the pedagogical implications of the works. Bartók’s Forty-Four Duos are based on folk melodies, and in this workshop, we explored how the text of certain melodies are recreated using tone-painting in the music. Luciano Berio’s 34 Duetti were inspired by the Duos of Bartók, and each duet focuses on a specific technique or concept in twentieth-century music. Like Bartók did with his Duos, Berio also intended his pieces to be performed by children as well as professionals. In addition, Berio’s duets are each inspired by a person, story, or event. All duets refer to a person with their surname, including Béla [Bartók] (no. 1), Pierre [Boulez] (no. 14), Edoardo [Sanguinetti] (no. 20), Vinko [Globokar] (no. 22), Igor [Stravinky] (no. 28) or Lorin [Maazel] (no. 33). In this workshop we explored how Berio recreates these inspirations in his music.

Visualizing Berio’s Sinfonia: Choreographing Animation for Indeterminate Narratives

In 1968, a year of massive political and cultural upheaval, Luciano Berio composed a score that would shape his legacy. Entitled Sinfonia, which literally means sounding together, the symphony was sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King. Heralded as “the ultimate pre-postmodernist musical palimpsest” (Service, 2012). Sinfonia reverberates with the political assassinations and massive protests punctuated by police repression that marked 1968. In late 2019, I was offered an animated projection commission with a primary voice in choosing a piece for live symphonic performance/projection. After some researching, I found Berio’s Sinfonia. It had what I was looking for - a “contemporary” piece, it resisted illustration, linear narrative and 19th century romanticism while eschewing the rigid formality of serialism. Instead, it embraced two core Modernist principles – fragmentation and use of the archive. Berio quoted/sampled disparate chunks of literature, music, and events of 1968 in the service of the political and the poetic to discover unity in the heterogeneous. His score seemed ripe for visual interpretation - and exposition - with animation as the prime driver. Following Berio’s lead, I chose visual sampling as my entre and turned to Google. By animating in and out of iconic (and lesser known) images in the orb of 1968, I created a commensurate puzzle piece that mirrored the suggested avant-garde intent I found in Sinfonia – “Where now? Who now? When now?” (Beckett, 1965, p. 291).

„Ja” na pięć głosów rozpisane? Wielogłosowość madrygału od 1950 roku

Surprisingly, since 1950, at least 500 works connected to the madrigal, and among them at least 454 madrigals, have been written. Unfortunately, a comprehensive musicological or theoretical-musical approach to that issue has been lacking so far. Using the genre studies perspective, the article aims to show how some composers working in the second half of the 20th–century and in the 21st–century respond to the early madrigal in terms of one of the most important madrigal characteristics – its polyphonic scoring and texture. That aspect, criticised by theorists at the end of the 17 th century, became the source of diverse musical reinterpretation in contemporary pieces by, among others: Luciano Berio, Christophe Bertrand, Harrison Birtwistle, George Crumb, Beat Furrer, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Paul Hindemith, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Henri Pousseur, Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil, John Rutter, Johannes Schöllhorn, Salvatore Sciarrino, Marek Stachowski, Alfred Schnittke, Pēteris Vasks, Agata Zubel. A number of aspects of polyphony are taken into consideration: type of polyphonic means (canons, fugue, passacaglia, etc.), their function (structural, semantic, emotional, etc.), and their meaning (c.f. their role in the process of constructing the subject of given works).

Симфонические искания в финской музыке 1960-х: «Arabescata» Эйноюхани Раутаваара и Первая симфония Хенрика Отто Доннера

The article is devoted to the 1960s, a time of mastery of newest techniques of musical composition in Finland, when many composers aspired to reintonate with their means the genre of the symphony – one of the most important genres for Finnish music history. The directions of its transformation are demonstrated by the example of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Fourth Symphony Arabescata (1962) and Henrik Otto Donner’s First Symphony (1964). Rautavaara’s Symphony is the only Finnish orchestral composition which is entirely serial in its technique. During the process of analysis, the peculiarities of structural organization are shown and the features which designate the work as a symphony are highlighted. The fate of Arabescata is connected with the change of status for the genre: the composer included it into the symphonic massif twenty-four years after having composed it. At the same time, the composition initially comprised a hierarchically constructed cycle in which the semantic invariant of the genre (to use Mark Aranovsky’s term) is guessed rightly. Donner’s Symphony, on the other hand, having preserved its traditional indication, swayed to a considerable degree from the typical content. Presenting in itself a collage formed by twenty quotations from classical music, pop music and jazz, it forestalled a few years before the appearance of the landmark examples of collage polystylistics – Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia (1968) and Alfred Schnittke’s First Symphony (1972). Donner’s solution was natural for him and absorbed into itself his experience of working in electronic studios: the symphony demonstrates a view of the musical material as an acoustic object and a reliance on the collage principles of composition. The two examined works, following the traditions of the history of the Finnish symphony in different ways, have fulfilled analogous functions: having surpassed the limitations of Sibelius’ influence, they have shown new horizons of interpretation of the genre. Keywords: Finnish symphonies from the 1960s, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Henrik Otto Donner, serialism, stylistic pluralism, the semantic invariant of the symphony

Celebrating Electronics: Music by John Bischoff (Concert) and John Bischoff: Bitplicity (Album)

Celebrating Electronics: Music by John Bischoff (Concert) and John Bischoff: <i>Bitplicity</i> (Album)

Eco and Berio between Music and Open Work

Although Eco was deeply interested in music, his bibliography does not include a work entirely and exclusively dedicated to this theme. However, references to the problems of musical production, listening, interpretation and transmission are scattered in numerous essays, and are often implicitly or explicitly linked to the theoretical and compositional work of his friend and composer Luciano Berio, who in turn dialogued with the developments of Eco’s thought. This article reconstructs the intellectual relationship and friendship between Eco and Berio, originated in the fifties at the Rai studios in Milan; then it examines the passages in Eco’s work dedicated to music, from The Open Work (1962) to Kant and the Platypus (1997). Finally, the article focuses on the controversies raised by the concept of open work, conceived by Eco starting from some musical works including Berio’s Sequenza I for solo flute (1958). With respect to the freedom left to the performer in the 1958 score, Berio’s rewriting in traditional notation in the Nineties seems to undermine at its roots the idea of openness which, according to Eco, distinguishes contemporary poetics. This circumstance provoked some musicological, philological and philosophical controversies, which allowed Eco (2012) to return to reflect on the concept of open work, specifying and clarifying the aesthetic conception underlying it.

Object-oriented methods of analyzing the parameters of interaction of speech and music language

The article considers the methodological principles of analyzing the parameters of interaction of speech and music language in the context of object-oriented methods of Astafiev&amp;rsquo;s intonation theory, Yavorsky&amp;rsquo;s concept of music speech, the views on and ideas about the intonation basis of speech of Bonfeld, Medushevsky, Aranovsky and Nazaikinsky, and the new system of interaction of speech and music in the works of Helmut Lachenmann and&amp;nbsp; Luciano Berio. Music language and speech are the phenomena allowing for various intersections, complementarities and mutual interferences. These factors manifest themselves in various aspects spotlighting particular sides of these parameters characterizing speech and music language. Since there&amp;rsquo;s no unified methodology for analyzing these parameters at the moment, it is reasonable to study a music composition as a text (in a broad sense) using various methods of analysis. The author suggests considering the parameters of interaction of speech and music language in terms of object-oriented methods. In the works of composers, music and speech have different forms of interaction and, consequently, need to be studied via different analytical approaches. Comprehensive consideration of a piece of music as a text (by means of various approaches) allows considering it as an intercultural universum representing the code of the epoch. Based on the peculiarities of interpretation of voice as an instrument, and speech as music, and the opportunities it gives, the author formulates the classification of creative methods and principles and the system of analysis which can be used in musicology.&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;

Novi zvuk i naslućivanje nepredočive stvarnosti - Sequenza III Lučana Berija

This paper examines how composer Luciano Berio with his composition Sequenza III per voce femminile (1965/66) succeeded in exploring something that is reality behind reality through the unique treatment of artistic material, in this case musical and verbal, much like certain avant-garde artists. It is a search for something that listeners cannot see because of the complex psychological mechanism of the human organism and which is deeply covered by ideologies, spoken language, ideas and similar elements. It is what the painter Pit Mondrian refers to as "the sublime reality", for example. I employ naturalized components of psychoanalytic theory in this study, therefore the expressions "reality behind reality" or "sublime reality" are also related to the psychoanalytical term "Reality" according to Lacan. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate, using a specific musical example, how art, in this case musical art, can attain outcomes that have been attempted by researchers from other fields, artistic or scientific.

Electronic composition of Luciano Berio «Visage»: between tradition and experiment

The purpose of the article is to trace the interaction of innovative sound material and the embodiment of traditional principles of a musical organization in L. Berio's electronic play «Visage». The methodology of the study is based on the structural-functional methods, that allow identifying the components of the musical fabric, which serve as material for development. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian musicology the patterns of creation and deployment of electronic sound complexes in L. Berio's play «Visage» were revealed, the method of analyzing electronic compositions without the author's score was improved. Conclusions. Analysis of L. Berio's electronic piece «Visage» demonstrates an organic combination of experimental searches and traditions renewed in accordance with specific sound material. Innovative trends prevail in the selection of sound elements. The sound space «Visage» is realized by means of electronic synthesis and taped voice. The vocal and electronic layers are not opposed to each other, but, on the contrary, coexist in unity. Using acoustic objects of different types, selected at the pre-compositional stage, L. Berio builds a thematic profile of the piece – from noises to the deployment of wide bands of electronic continua. The connections between the elements are provided not by the sound pitch identity, but due to sound, in particular phonetic, similarity. The connection with the art of previous eras is manifested in the desire to reveal deep philosophical ideas, which are carried out through the deployment of thematic fields, localized in certain compositional sections. The dramatic profile of the work, realized by electronic means, directs the vector of the perception to reveal the author's intention.

«Visage» Лучано Берио в свете его музыкальной фонологии

Статья посвящена особенностям уникальной художественной системы итальянского композитора Лучано Берио (1925-2003) под названием музыкальная фонология, представленной на примере сочинения «Visage» (1961). В 1950-х годах Берио и его коллеги по электроакустической студии Studio di Fonologia Musicale были увлечены фонологией как разделом лингвистики, опираясь на фундаментальный труд Н. С. Трубецкого «Основы фонологии». Основные аспекты данной книги Берио творчески интегрировал в сочинения для голоса и постепенно выработал новый подход к единству слова и музыкального звука. The article is devoted to the features of the unique artistic system of the Italian composer Luciano Berio (1925-2003) called musical phonology, presented on the example of the composition “Visage” (1961). In the 1950s, Berio and his colleagues at the electroacoustic studio Studio di Fonologia Musicale were interested about phonology as a branch of linguistics, based on the fundamental work of N. S. Trubetskoy “Fundamentals of phonology.” The main aspects of this book Berio creatively embodied in compositions for voice and gradually developed in his work a new approach to the unity of words and musical sound.

Compositional Procedures in Electronic Music and the Emergence of Time Continuum

We introduce an analytical methodology to approach the perception of time in the electronic works Thema: Omaggio a Joyce (1958), by Luciano Berio, and Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–6), by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Such works have already been widely analysed and discussed. Moreover, similarities between them have been pointed out, such as the use of the voice as their main compositional material and the search for a continuum between the voice and electronic sounds. Despite their similarities, we argue that the perception of time in those works is significantly different. For that purpose, we bring theoretical references such as time concepts related to complex dynamic systems, and the perception of time according to the Gestalt theory. We discuss segmentation and texture evolution in time of both works employing graphical representations based on perceptual audio descriptors such as the mel scale and the volume. In addition, aiming to find recurrences, repetitions and variations of the spectral material in time, we apply phase space graphs addressing the values of the descriptors employed in the analysis. The features found will lead to conclusions on the emergence of time perception in which the continuity depends on the presence of similar events, periodicities and pregnancies, while discontinuity is given by the presence of more variation, instability and saliences. We emphasise the differences of form perception in those pieces, arguing that they are the result of the manipulation of sound materials and organisation in time by the composers.

Italian singer Daisy Lumini as an interpreter of the post-avant-garde music

Italian singer Daisy Lumini as an interpreter of the post-avant-garde music

La pratica degli affetti - The practice of affections

Research question: How the relationship between seconda prattica (Claudio Monteverdi) and poetica del gesto (Luciano Berio) can be absorbed in a singing study process and which are the practical results/vocal consequences? Abstract: This research wants to investigate through a personal vocal approach the nature of the connection between music and text in Claudio Monteverdi’s and Luciano Berio’s compositions. It started with my personal wish as a singer to be able to express feelings behind words in such a way that the relation between both becomes more clear. I found in the connection between these two composers the perfect ground to build this vocal study path which I documented with recordings. This vocal path has proven to be full of inspiration and stimuli: on one side the open, honest and modern full of love language of Monteverdi, which shapes the harmony according to the meaning of the text (pone l’armonia serva all’orazione). On the other side the inspiring, rich, creative and fascinating writing of Luciano Berio that with his poetics of the gesture seems to reveal in a direct and elegant way a world of infinite possibilities of colorful combinations between musical sounds and words. This research exposition, is divided in four main chapters. The first one is an introduction to Monteverdi and his seconda prattica in which the doctrine of affections is exposed with a special focus at the Lamento d'Arianna along with my research about vocal interpretation. The second chapter describes the musical context in Italy at the beginning of the 20th-century observing how the new composers looked back at the past and in particular at Monteverdi and his contemporaries; in the third chapter Luciano Berio's poetics of gesture will be exposed and it will be observed how some of his composition refer to Monteverdi's seconda prattica. A final chapter will show, with a video recording, my vocal research during the approach to their music.