Luciano Berio

by

Thomas Peattie

• LAST MODIFIED: 24 October 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0325

Introduction

Luciano Berio (b. 1925–d. 2003) was a leading figure in the postwar avant-garde. His subsequent reception and ongoing contributions to the history of 20th-century music during his own lifetime have only confirmed his reputation alongside Luigi Nono as one of the most important Italian composers of his generation. Berio studied composition in Milan with Giorgio Federico Ghedini and briefly at Tanglewood with Luigi Dallapiccola. The emergence of a distinct compositional voice by the early 1950s was shaped by an ambivalent if nevertheless foundational encounter with serial procedures, an engagement with folk materials, his experience in the electronic studio, lessons drawn from the fields of linguistics and semiotics, experiments with the human voice, and the idea of transcription. From the 1950s onward collaborative work assumed an important place in his creative practice, initially in the context of the Studio di Fonologia with Bruno Maderna and Umberto Eco. Collaborations with several prominent Italian writers soon followed, including Edoardo Sanguineti and Italo Calvino, both of whom provided texts for Berio’s most important stage works. A lifelong interest in collaborating with performers is best exemplified in his extraordinary creative partnership with Cathy Berberian (1925–1983). An extended stay in the United States (1960–1971), during which time he held teaching positions at Mills College and Juilliard, precipitated a return to Italy where he was once again able to devote the bulk of his energies to composition. During his final decades he received numerous awards and honors, including his appointment as the Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University (1993–1994). Berio’s compositional practice was guided by a set of specific concerns that included pursuing the wide transformational trajectory of a musical idea and imposing an inner logic and unity on heterogenous materials. A belief that counterpoint and analysis served as the basis of a composer’s craft is connected to his interest in the history of music, something that also informed his practice of reworking earlier pieces through the addition of layers of commentary that possess an “analytical” dimension (as in the Sequenzas recomposed as Chemins). Scholarship on Berio has long reflected a decidedly formalist orientation often rooted in sketch studies. While other perspectives have hardly been absent, more recent scholarship that situates his music in the larger social and political context of its time represents a welcome development. Although Berio’s music has given rise to a vast secondary literature in French, Italian, and German, the emphasis here is placed on English-language sources.

General Overviews

Despite Berio’s prominent place in the history of 20th-century music there are only two book-length overviews of the composer. Stoïanova 1985 offers coverage of most major works written before 1980 but eschews chronology in favor of a topically oriented approach that highlights many of the most important threads in Berio’s creative practice. Osmond-Smith 1991 effectively pairs relevant biographical detail with insightful discussions of individual works but places more emphasis on Berio’s handling of musical materials than on the personal, historical, and cultural context in which his music was written. Osmond-Smith 2013 was published only after the author’s untimely death and brings to light the only surviving fragments of his unfinished “creative biography” of the composer. The fully drafted first chapter stands as the only detailed account of Berio’s early life (1925–1953).

• Osmond-Smith, David. Berio. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

  Remains the standard introduction to the composer. Concise accounts of individual works paired with relevant biographical detail are presented in a roughly chronological fashion and focus on Berio’s treatment of musical materials through the lenses of melody and harmony, commentary techniques, voice and language, as well as electronic and folk music. Particular attention is given to Epifanie, Sequenza VI, Chemins II, Coro, La vera storia, and Un re in ascolto.

• Osmond-Smith, David. “Two Fragments of ‘The Music of Luciano Berio.’” Twentieth-Century Music 9.1–2 (2013): 39–62.

  The only two surviving fragments of Osmond-Smith’s unfinished book-length study of Berio: a draft of the opening chapter that offers a detailed if not fully fleshed-out biographical account of Berio’s early life (1925–1953) and an overview of the proposed contents of the remaining ten chapters. Reveals Osmond-Smith’s goal of pairing “creative biography” with a topic-based approach to the composer’s major creative obsessions. Includes a valuable introduction by Talia Pecker-Berio.

• Stoïanova, Ivanka. Luciano Berio: Chemins en musique (La revue musicale nos. 375–377). Paris: Éditions Richard-Masse, 1985.

  Retains historical significance as the first published overview of Berio’s music. Offers coverage of most major works composed before 1980, albeit in varying degrees of detail. Organized around topics (multiplicity, voice, citation, the stage, paths/progressions) rather than chronologically. The text is supplemented throughout by a parallel column of uncited quotations taken from interviews conducted by the author with Berio, Sanguinetti, Eco, Berberian, Boulez, and others.