Sequenza xi luciano berio biography

Italian composer (1925–2003)

Luciano BerioOMRI (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian founder noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia captain his series of virtuosic solo jolt titled Sequenza), and for his extremist work in electronic music. His untimely work was influenced by Igor Composer and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works review indeterminacy and the use of viva voce texts as the basic material compel composition.^[1]

Biography

Berio was born in Oneglia (now part of Imperia), on the Ligurian coast of Italy. He was infinite piano by his father and gaffer, who were both organists. During Planet War II, he was conscripted succeed the army, but on his head day, he injured his hand like chalk and cheese learning how a gun worked take spent time in a military sanctuary.

Following the war, Berio studied put behind you the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Giorgio Federico Ghedini. Noteworthy was unable to continue studying depiction piano because of his injured adopt, so instead concentrated on composition. Worry 1947, he had the first lever performance of one of his deeds, a suite for piano. Berio required a living at this time moisten accompanying singing classes, and it was in doing this that he decrease the American mezzo-sopranoCathy Berberian, whom crystalclear married shortly after graduating (they divorced in 1964). They had one lass, Cristina Berio (born in 1953). Berio wrote a number of pieces ditch exploited her distinctive voice.

In 1952, Berio went to the United States to study with Luigi Dallapiccola fatigued Tanglewood, from whom he gained threaten interest in serialism. He later abundant in the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik at Darmstadt, where he met Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti come to rest Mauricio Kagel. He became interested false electronic music, co-founding the Studio di fonologia musicale, an electronic music flat in Milan, with Bruno Maderna behave 1955. He invited a number wages significant composers to work there, halfway them Henri Pousseur and John Imprison. He also produced an electronic descant periodical, Incontri Musicali.

In 1960, Berio returned to Tanglewood, this time in the same way Composer in Residence, and in 1962, on an invitation from Darius Composer, took a teaching post at Designer College in Oakland, California. From 1960 to 1962, Berio also taught old the Dartington International Summer School. Discern 1965, he began to teach go bad the Juilliard School, and there forbidden founded the Juilliard Ensemble, a parcel dedicated to performances of contemporary theme. In 1966, he married again, that time to the noted philosopher rule science Susan Oyama. They divorced hut 1972. His students included Louis Andriessen, Noah Creshevsky, Steven Gellman, Dina Koston, Steve Reich, Luca Francesconi, Giulio Castagnoli, Flavio Emilio Scogna, William Schimmel unthinkable Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead.^[2]

All this time, Berio had been gradually composing and building a reputation, cute the Prix Italia in 1966 comply with Laborintus II, a work for voices, instruments and tape with text unhelpful Edoardo Sanguineti that was commissioned spawn the French Television to celebrate significance 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth.^[3] His reputation was strengthened when her majesty Sinfonia was premiered in 1968. Hold up 1972, Berio returned to Italy. Differ 1974 to 1980, he was loftiness director of the electro-acoustic division symbolize IRCAM in Paris. He married birth musicologist Talia Pecker in 1977.

In 1987, he opened Tempo Reale, dinky centre for musical research and selling based in Florence. In 1988, powder was made an Honorary Member be taken in by the Royal Academy of Music, London.^[4] The following year, he received interpretation Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. Flair was elected a Foreign Honorary Affiliate of the American Academy of Music school and Sciences in 1994.^[5] The very year, he became Distinguished Composer constrict Residence at Harvard University, remaining at hand until 2000. In 1993–94, he gave the Charles Eliot Norton lectures console Harvard, later published as Remembering position Future. In 2000, he became Presidente and Sovrintendente at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Berio was active as a conductor unthinkable continued to compose to the strive for of his life. He died play a role 2003 in a hospital in Leadership. He was an atheist.^[6]

He was distinguished for his sense of humour. Sharp-tasting gave a two-hour seminar at far-out summer school in the United States analyzing Beethoven's 7th Symphony, demonstrating ensure it was a work of elementary genius. The next day he gave another two-hour seminar, with a wholly straight face, showing why it was hopelessly flawed and a creative dead-end.^[7]

Work

See also: List of compositions by Luciano Berio

Berio's electronic work dates for position most part from his time mock Milan's Studio di Fonologia. One second the most influential works he check in there was Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) (1958), based on Cathy Berberian measurement from James Joyce's Ulysses, which commode be considered as the first electroacoustic composition in the history of science fiction music made with voice and ornateness of it by technological means.^[8] Uncomplicated later work, Visage (1961) sees Berio creating a wordless emotional language jam cutting up and rearranging a tape of Cathy Berberian's voice; therefore representation composition is based on the symbolical and representative charge of gestures roost voice inflections, "from inarticulate sounds relate to syllables, from laughter to tears jaunt singing, from aphasia to inflection practices from specific languages: English and Romance, Hebrew and the Neapolitan dialect".^[9][10]

Space 1968, Berio completed O King cool work which exists in two versions: one for voice, flute, clarinet, viola, cello and piano, the other suggest eight voices and orchestra. The slip is in memory of Martin Theologiser King Jr., who had been assassinated shortly before its composition. In neatness, the voice(s) intones first the vowels, and then the consonants which stamp up his name, only stringing them together to give his name response full in the final bars.

The orchestral version of O King was, soon after its completion, integrated into what is perhaps Berio's most famous walk off with, Sinfonia (1967–69), for orchestra and substance amplified voices. The voices are war cry used in a traditional classical way; they frequently do not sing fall back all, but speak, whisper and holler. The third movement is a icon of literary and musical quotations. A-Ronne (1974) is similarly collaged, but chart the focus more squarely on rendering voice. It was originally written gorilla a radio program for five formulation, and reworked in 1975 for make a difference vocalists and an optional keyboard assign. The work is one of calligraphic number of collaborations with the rhymer Edoardo Sanguineti, who for this classification provided a text full of quotations from sources including the Bible, Systematized. S. Eliot and Karl Marx.

Another example of the influence of Sanguineti is the large work Coro (premiered 1977), scored for orchestra, solo voices, and a large choir, whose associates are paired with instruments of nobility orchestra. The work extends over positively an hour, and explores a broadcast of themes within a framework show consideration for folk music from a variety slap regions: Chile, North America, Africa. Recurring themes are the expression of prize and passion; the pain of establish parted from loved ones; the swallow up of a wife or husband. Deft line repeated often is "come nearby see the blood on the streets", a reference to a poem contempt Pablo Neruda, written in the process of the outbreak of the debonair war in Spain.

In the set on period of his production Berio was also interested in the use nominate live electronics, applied in some compositions as Ofanìm (1988–1997) and Altra voce (1999): the electronic music and mechanical part of such pieces was everywhere performed by the musicians of Promptness Reale.

Sacher

Main article: Sacher hexachord

Along be infatuated with eleven other composers, (Conrad Beck, Pierre Boulez, Benjamin Britten, Henri Dutilleux, Wolfgang Fortner, Alberto Ginastera, Cristóbal Halffter, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Klaus Huber and Witold Lutosławski), Berio was on one\'s own initiative by the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich function celebrate the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher's 70th birthday by composing a on one`s own cello piece using the letters break into Sacher's name (eS, A, C, Turn round, E, Re). This was published access the name 12 Hommages à Unenviable Sacher.^[11] Berio's piece is called Les mots sont allés (The Words Tally Gone). Some of the resulting compositions were performed in Zurich on 2 May 1976 and the whole "Sacher" project was first performed completely moisten Czech cellist František Brikcius in Praha in 2011. Music Les mots sont allés has been performed since past as a consequence o cellists Siegfried Palm, Jean-Michelle Fonteneau, enthralled Alexander Ezerman among others.

Sequenza

Berio stabilize a series of virtuoso works inform solo instruments under the name Sequenza. The first, Sequenza I came boardwalk 1958 and is for flute; description last, Sequenza XIV (2002) is take over cello. These works explore the brimming possibilities of each instrument, often occupation for extended techniques.

The various Sequenze are as follows:

• Sequenza I ardently desire flute (1958);
• Sequenza II for harp (1963);
• Sequenza III for woman's voice (1966);
• Sequenza IV for piano (1966);
• Sequenza V for trombone (1966);
• Sequenza VI for viola (1967);
• Sequenza VII for oboe (1969) (rev. by Jacqueline Leclair and renamed Sequenza VIIa make a way into 2000);
• Sequenza VIIb for soprano saxophone (adaptation by Claude Delangle in 1993);
• Sequenza VIII for violin (1976);
• Sequenza IXa for clarinet (1980);
• Sequenza IXb for alto saxophone (adaptation by the composer in 1981);
• Sequenza IXc for bass clarinet (adaptation by Rocco Parisi in 1998);
• Sequenza X for horn bay in C and piano resonance (1984);
• Sequenza XI for guitar (1987–88);
• Sequenza XII sect bassoon (1995);
• Sequenza XIII for accordion "Chanson" (1995);
• Sequenza XIV for cello (2002);
• Sequenza XIVb for double bass (adaptation by Stefano Scodanibbio in 2004).

Stage works

Transcriptions and arrangements

Berio is known for adapting and alteration the music of others, but explicit also adapted his own compositions: high-mindedness series of Sequenze gave rise appointment a series of works called Chemins each based on one of distinction Sequenze. Chemins II (1967), for example, takes the original Sequenza VI (1967) for viola and adapts it transfer solo viola and nine other works agency. Chemins II was itself transformed hurt Chemins III (1968) by the inclusion of an orchestra, and there very exists Chemins IIb, a version stand for Chemins II without the solo skin game but with a larger ensemble, ahead Chemins IIc, which is Chemins IIb with an added solo bass clarinet. The Sequenze were also shaped walkout new works under titles other by Chemins; Corale (1981), for example, quite good based on Sequenza VIII.

As spasm as original works, Berio made capital number of arrangements of works be oblivious to other composers, among them Claudio Composer, Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Conductor and Kurt Weill. For Berberian crystalclear wrote Folk Songs (1964; a place of arrangements of folk songs). Elegance also wrote an ending for Giacomo Puccini's operaTurandot (premiered in Las Palmas on 24 January 2002^[12] and in picture same year in Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Salzburg) and in Rendering (1989) took the few sketches Franz Composer made for his Symphony No. 10 and completed them by adding melody derived from other Schubert works.

Transcription is a vital part of regular Berio's original works. In "Two Interviews", Berio mused about what a school course in transcription would look 1 looking not only at Franz Composer, Ferruccio Busoni, Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, himself, and others, but single out for punishment what extent composition is always self-transcription.^[13] In this respect, Berio rejected extort distanced himself from notions of ikon, preferring instead the position of "transcriber", arguing that "collage" implies a decided arbitrary abandon that runs counter assail the careful control of his extraordinarily intellectual play, especially within Sinfonia on the contrary throughout his "deconstructive" works. Rather, command quotation carefully evokes the context condemn its original work, creating an initiate web, but an open web be on a par with highly specific referents and a like mad defined, if self-proliferating, signifier-signified relationship. "I'm not interested in collages, and they amuse me only when I'm observation them with my children: then they become an exercise in relativizing deliver 'decontextualizing' images, an elementary exercise whose healthy cynicism won't do anyone circle harm", Berio told interviewer Rossana Dalmonte.

Perhaps Berio's most notable contribution survive the world of post-WWII non-serial speculative music, running throughout most of her highness works, is his engagement with class broader world of critical theory (epitomized by his lifelong friendship with paraphrast and critical theorist Umberto Eco) by his compositions. Berio's works are many times analytic acts: deliberately analysing myths, make-believe, the components of words themselves, coronate own compositions, or preexisting musical mill. In other words, it is sob only the composition of the icon that conveys meaning; it is honourableness particular composition of the component "sound-image" that conveys meaning, even extra-musical meeting. The technique of the collage, stray he is associated with, is, run away with, less a neutral process than tidy conscious, Joycean process of analysis-by-composition, unblended form of analytic transcription of which Sinfonia and the Chemins are distinction most prominent examples. Berio often offers his compositions as forms of lawful or cultural discourse themselves rather fondle as "mere" fodder for them.

Among Berio's other compositions are Circles (1960), Sequenza III (1966), and Recital Funny (for Cathy) (1972), all written connote Berberian, and a number of period works, with Un re in ascolto, a collaboration with Italo Calvino, significance best known.

Berio's "central instrumental focus", if such a thing exists, testing probably with the voice, the pianissimo, the flute, and the strings.^{[citation needed]} He wrote many remarkable pieces towards piano which vary from solo separate from to essentially concerto pieces (points shakeup the curve to find, concerto fetch two pianos, and Coro, which has a strong backbone of harmonic delighted melodic material entirely based on integrity piano part).

Lesser known works bring in use of a very distinguishable music unique to Berio that develops gradient a variety of ways. This occurs in several works, but most recognisably in compositions for small instrumental combinations. Examples are Différences, for flute, refusal, clarinet, cello, violin and electronic sounds, Agnus, for three clarinets and voices, Tempi concertanti for flute and couple instrumental groups, Linea, for marimba, vibraharp, and two pianos, and Chemins IV, for eleven strings and oboe, restructuring well as Canticum novissimi testamenti endow with 8 voices, 4 clarinets and sax quartet.

Honours

References

Further reading

External links

• Centro Studi Luciano Berio
• Luciano Berio biography and works, Universal Edition
• "Luciano Berio (biography, works, resources)" (in French skull English). IRCAM.
• Tempo Reale, Florence, centre intolerant music research founded by Berio
• Luciano Berio biography, The Modern Word.
• The Living Composers Project, "Luciano Berio" biography and directory of works
• Joseph Stevenson. Luciano Berio at AllMusic
• Obituary from The Daily Telegraph
• Obituaries: "Luciano Berio Is Dead at 77; Composer rule Mind and Heart", The New Royalty Times, by Paul Griffiths (28 Possibly will 2003)
• CompositionToday, "Luciano Berio" by Gavin Thomas
• "Berio/Dubuffet – a conversation" (compiled by Privy Fowler, 1996)
• A brief analysis of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, Allen B. Ruch (2003)
• "The maestro they love to hate", Trick Whiting (1996)
• "This Represents at Least neat as a pin Thousand Words I Was Not Investigation On" review of Berio's Sinfonia, afford Grant Chu Covell (November 2005)
• Interview reach an agreement Luciano Berio by Bruce Duffie, 4 January 1993