Luciano Berio

A pioneer of electroacoustic music, Italian composer Luciano Berio has left a lasting imprint on the development of contemporary music, notably through his approach to studio recording, his work on sound matter and his treatment of the voice. Grandson of an organist and son of a pianist and composer for silent films who gave him his first lessons, Luciano Berio was born in Oneglia, Liguria, on October 24, 1925. After learning to play the piano and being drafted into the Italian army at the end of the Second World War, he resumed his musical studies at the Milan Conservatory with Giorgio Gherdini (composition) and Giulio Paribeni (counterpoint). Unable to pursue a career as a pianist due to an injury to his right hand during the war, he worked as an accompanist for singing classes and met soprano Cathy Berberian, whom he married in 1950, three years before the birth of their daughter Cristina. Already the author of pieces such as a Magnificat and the Concertino for clarinet, violin, harp, celesta and strings (1949), he travelled to Tanglewood, USA, to take part in a seminar by Luigi Dallapiccola, then to Darmstadt, Germany, a hub of contemporary music where Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Gÿorgy Ligeti and Mauricio Kagel rubbed shoulders. Back in Italy, he wrote Chamber Music for soprano, clarinet, cello and harp (1952), then in 1954, with Bruno Maderna, founded the Studio di Fonologia musicale, housed in the RAI building. The unit dedicated to acoustic research, which Luigi Nono joined, became an important center, welcoming visits from John Cage, Henri Pousseur and André Boucourechliev. One of the first electroacoustic pieces produced was Thema (Omaggio à Joyce), in 1958. In the same year, he began composing Sequenza for flute, the first in a series of fourteen pieces for solo instruments, completed in 2003. Director since 1956 of the contemporary music magazine Incontri musicali, Luciano Berio ceased his activities when he was appointed composer-in-residence at Tanglewood, before obtaining a professorship at Mills College in Darlington, California, two years later, and then at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where he worked from 1965 to 1971 and founded the Juilliard Ensemble. This American period was also prolific in terms of composition, particularly in the vocal field with Circles for soprano, harp and percussion (1960), Epifanie for soprano and orchestra on texts by Proust, Joyce, Brecht, Machado, Simon and Sanguineti (1959-1961), Folk Songs (1964), Laborintus II for voice, instruments and tape (1965) and the tribute to Martin Luther King, O King (1967). Even after their divorce in 1966, Cathy Berberian continued her collaboration, notably on Chemins II (1967) and Chemins III (1968). New episodes were also added to the Sequenza series, for harp, piano, trombone, oboe and viola. In 1968, he created one of his most frequently performed works, Sinfonia, for eight voices and orchestra, whose central movement, based on the Scherzo from Mahler's Symphony No. 2, is full of literary references. In 1970, he completed his first opera, Opera, a new world-work in four acts that multiplies sources as well as techniques and styles, premiered in Santa Fé, USA, on August 12, 1970. Berio's unblinkered approach allowed him to influence and quote various modern aesthetics, including serialism, which he had practiced in his early work Tempi concertati (1959), and which he continued to serve in his response to Stockhausen's Gruppen in Hallelujah II (1965-1968). Thus, after Recital for mezzo-soprano and orchestra and the two parts of Bewegung in 1971, Cries of London for six voices (1973-1974) and the imposing Coro (1974-1976), one of the peaks of his vocal work for 40 voices and 40 instruments, Luciano joined Pierre Boulez in Paris to head the electro-acoustic department of IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique), from 1976 to 1980. At the same time, he directed the Israel Chamber Orchestra from 1975 to 1977, before setting up Tempo Reale in Florence in 1987, another center dedicated to electronic musical research. In addition to institutional appointments, his honors include election to London's Royal Academy of Music (1988), the Ernst von Siemens Prize (1989), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994) and the Praemium Imperiale in Japan (1996). From 1994 to 2000, the composer lectured at Harvard University, then accepted the position of President and Superintendent of the National Academy of Saint Cecilia in Rome. These multiple activities did not, however, distract the composer from his primary occupation, and although works were spaced out over time, they nonetheless remained substantial, both in terms of stage music and orchestral works. In the former field, after Le Malade imaginaire inspired by Molière's comedy (1975), he produced the operas La vera storia, featuring acrobats (premiered at La Scala, Milan, March 9, 1982) and Un Ré in Ascolto (1979-1983), the ballet-recital Compass (1994) and the opera Cronaca del luogo, premiered in Salzburg on July 24, 1999, to a libretto by his third wife Talia Pecker Berio. Between 1980 and 2003, he also continued composing his Sequenze (I-XIVb), for clarinet, alto and soprano saxophones, trumpet, guitar, bassoon, accordion, cello and double bass. His latest orchestral works include Formazioni (1987), Continuo (1990), Ekprhasis (Continuo II) (1996) and SOLO for trombone and orchestra (2000). Other recent works include Korót for eight cellos (1998), Altra voce for flute, alto, mezzo-soprano and electronics (1999), Sonata for piano (2001) and Stanze for baritone, three male choruses and orchestra (2003). On May 27, 2003, Luciano Berio died in a Rome hospital at the age of 77.

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