Luciano Berio, "Epifanie"

-- Liner Notes for RCA LSC-3189 --

In Italian an epifania (plural: epifanie, with both forms accented on the second
"i") indicates a sudden spiritual manifestation. Luciano Berio composed
his Epifanie between 1960 and 1963; the revised version recorded here dates
from 1965. Berio stipulates the possibility of performing the seven short
orchestral pieces and the five vocal pieces in ten different sequences. When
the American premiere of Epifanie took place in Chicago on July 23, 1967,
Berio had this to say about it:
"Epifanie is, in essence, a cycle of orchestral pieces into which a cycle of
vocal pieces has been interpolated. The two 'cycles' can be combined together
in various ways; they can also be performed separately. The texts of the vocal
pieces have been taken from Proust (L'Ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs),
Antonio Machado (Nuevas Canciones), Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist As a
Young Man and Ulysses), Edoardo Sanguineti (Triperuno), Claude Simon
(La Route des Flandres), and Brecht (An die Nachgeborenen).
"The significant connection between the vocal pieces can thus appear in
different lights according to their position in the instrumental development.
The chosen order will emphasize the apparent heterogeneity of the texts or
their dialectic unity. The texts are arranged in such a way as to suggest a
gradual passage from a lyric transfiguration of reality (Proust, Machado, Joyce)
to a disenchanted acknowledgment of things (Simon; for this text the voice
speaks and becomes gradually nullified by the orchestra). Lastly, the words of
Bertolt Brecht, which have nothing to do with the epiphany of words and
visions. They are the cry of regret and anguish with which Brecht warns us
that often it is necessary to renounce the seduction of words when they sound
like an invitation to forget our links to a world constructed by our own acts."
The score calls for an unusually large orchestra: 16 woodwinds; 6 horns,
4 trumpets and 4 trombones plus tuba, full strings, including three violin sections,
and a percussion section calling for a number of performers who address
themselves not only to glockenspiel, celesta, vibraphone and marimba
but also to spring coils, tam-tam, tom-tom, temple blocks, wood blocks, caisse
claire, bongos, timpani, cowbells, chimes, claves, guiro, censerros, cymbals,
snare drum, tambourine, etc., etc. -PAUL MOOR
Mr. Moor. Berlin correspondent for CBS News, has written extensively about the European
musical scene for the past decade as a contributor to High Fidelity and other publications.

Luciano Berio, "Sinfonia"

-- Liner Notes from Columbia MS 7268

Side 1
BERIO: SINFONIA (BMI) (Beginning)
Section I (6:31)
Section II (4:47)

Side 2
BERIO : SINFONIA (Conclusion)
Section III (12:21)
Section IV (2:58)

THE SWINGLE SINGERS
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
Conducted by the composer

Notes by Luciano Berio:
The four sections into which Sinfonia (composed in 1968) is divided are not to be taken as movements analogous to those of the classical symphony. The title, in fact, must be understood only in its etymological sense of "sounding together" (in this case, the sounding together of instruments and eight voices). Although their expressive characters are extremely diversified, these four sections are generally unified by similar harmonic and articulatory characteristics (duplication and extended repetition being among the most important).

I. The text of the first part consists of a series of short fragments from Le Cru et le cuit by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. These fragments are taken from a section of the book that analyzes the structure and symbology of Brazilian myths about the origins of water and related myths characterized by similar structure.

II. The second section of Sinfonia is a tribute to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Here the vocal part is based on his name, nothing else.

III. The main text for the third section includes excerpts from Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable, which in turn prompt a selection from many other sources, including Joyce, spoken phrases of Harvard undergraduates, slogans written by the students on the walls of the Sorbonne during the May 1968 insurrection in Paris (which I witnessed), recorded dialogues with my friends and family, snatches of solfege, and so on.

IV. The text for the fourth section, a sort of coda, is based on a short selection from those used in the three preceding parts.

The treatments of the vocal part in the first, second and fourth sections of Sinfonia resemble each other in that the text is not immediately perceivable as such. The words and their components undergo a musical analysis that is integral to the total musical structure of voice and instrument together. It is precisely because the varying degree of perceptibility of the text at different moments is a part of the musical structure that the words and phrases used are not printed here. The experience of "not quite hearing," then, is to be conceived as essential to the nature of the work itself.

Section III of Sinfonia, I feel, requires a more detailed comment than the others, because it is perhaps the most "experimental" music I have ever written. It is another homage, this time to Gustav Mahler, whose work seems to bear the weight of the entire history of music; and to Leonard Bernstein for his unforgettable performance of the Resurrection Symphony during the 1967-68 season. The result is a kind of "voyage to Cythera" made on board the 3rd movement of Mahler's Second Symphony. The Mahler movement is treated like a container within whose framework a large number of references is proliferated, interrelated and integrated into the flowing structure of the original work itself. The references range from Bach, Schoenberg, Debussy, Ravel, Strauss, Berlioz, Brahms, Berg, Hindemith, Beethoven, Wagner and Stravinsky to Boulez, Stockhausen, Globokar, Pousseur, Ives, myself and beyond. I would almost say that this section of Sinfonia is not so much composed as it is assembled to make possible the mutual transformation of the component parts. It was my intention here neither to destroy Mahler (who is indestructible) nor to play out a private complex about "post-Romantic music" (I have none) nor yet to spin some enormous musical anecdote (familiar among young pianists). Quotations and references were chosen not only for their real but also for their potential relation to Mahler. The juxtaposition of contrasting elements, in fact, is part of the whole point of this section of Sinfonia, which can also be considered, if you will, a documentary on an objet trouve recorded in the mind of the listener. As a structural point of reference, Mahler is to the totality of the music of this section what Beckett is to the text. One might describe the relationship between ' words and music as a kind of interpretation, almost a Traumdeutung, of that stream-of-consciousness-like flowing that is the most immediate expressive character of Mahler's movement. If I were to describe the presence of Mahler's "scherzo" in Sinfonia, the image that comes most spontaneously to mind is that of a river, going through a constantly changing landscape, sometimes going underground and emerging in another, altogether different, place, sometimes very evident in its journey, sometimes disappearing completely, present either as a fully recognizable form or as small details lost in the surrounding host of musical presences.

Luciano Berio was born on October 24, 1925, in Oneglia (now Imperia), Italy. He now lives in Weehawken, New Jersey.

Although he is firmly rooted in Italian musical tradition, Berio is a cosmopolite in his interests, his activities and his compositions. He is the third generation of composers in his family, his father and his father's father both having been church organists and composers. Young Luciano began his musical studies with his father and, like his father, completed his training at the Conservatory of Milan.

While carrying on his Conservatory studies, he was employed as coach and accompanist for the classes of two famous opera stars, Aureliano Pertile and Carmen Melis. Before graduating in 1950, Berio gained a wider practical experience as pianist coach, conductor (and occasionally timpanist) for a small touring opera company that played in northern Italian provincial cities and towns. The year after his graduation from the Conservatory, a Koussevitzky Foundation Fellowship enabled him to travel to the Berkshire Center at Tanglewood to study with his compatriot Luigi Dallapiccola.

On his return to Italy, Berio joined the staff of the Italian Radio, where in 1955 he established a Studio di Fonologia for study of and experimentation in electronic music. The following year he launched a series of concerts of contemporary music, which he called lncontri Musicali, and edited a progressive music magazine of the same name. He has also been active as conductor (chiefly of his music) at La Scala in Milan, the Teatro la Fenice in Venice, the Rome Opera, and he has conducted the Chicago Symphony. In 1965, Mr. Berio joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in New York City.

His compositions include chamber music for a great variety of instruments, orchestral works, vocal works for solo and chorus, and for magnetic tape. He has also written for the theatre and at present is working on three theatrical projects, one for the opera workshop of the Juilliard School, another for the Teatro Massimo in Palermo and a third for the Italian Radio. - Edward Downes, reprinted courtesy of the New York Philharmonic.

When Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia" was given its world premiere by the New York Philharmonic on October 10, 1968, the music press gave it unprecedented attention. Here, briefly, are some critical reactions:

TIME: It is a white-hot musical experience that invokes the malaise of the times better than all the sit-ins, beards, beads and clubbings that wrench contemporary life. Sinfonia. . . is pure surrealism, voiced in sound. The words of its text are employed as much for their acoustic qualities as for their semantic meaning. The result is a kind of anti-opera in which verbal and musical ideas constantly dissolve into one another, yet are finally apotheosized into a grand, compelling musical sonorama.. . . In one sense, the words do not matter; Berio is not interested in making a song. He is communicating a kind of life attitude that shrinks at the prospect of some unnamable terror. It is a musical collage of headlines persistently giving a warning of holocaust.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: It is a wild, four-movement work and shows the new direction music is taking. Gone are the strict constructions and parameters of serialism. Instead there is a concentration on pure sound-orchestral sound, vocal sound, amplified sound, sound. . . . With the Swingle Singers grouped around microphones, breaking the language (French and English, mostly) into bits of sound components, and with the orchestra often blasting away with fortissimo chords that contained all 12 notes of the scale, there was not a dull moment anywhere.. . .It is one of the musics of the future.-Harold C. Schonberg

NEW YORK MAGAZINE: His new score, which a great many Philharmonic subscribers warmly applauded (to their own great astonishment, I am sure) strikes me as a kind of milestone. It is, at once, a work that seems to pull together a great deal of what is concerning and interesting composers today: a broadening of the sound spectrum within non-electronic means to include both instruments and voices within a unified concept of orchestration, a sense of the musical experience as part of an over-all unity among the arts, a reaching-out to embrace within a musical framework elements of both popular and "sophisticated" culture. It is this, and also a big, exhilarating, moving (as in the second-movement threnody to Martin Luther King in which the singers pass back and forth the bare syllables of his name, nothing more) and communicative piece of music that can strike a listener immediately as both logical and exciting. . . . I can only urge upon you attention to Berio and the thing he is doing.-Alan Rich

THE NEW YORK POST: The New York Philharmonic's program for this week is not listed as a "happening" but it would almost certainly win first prize in a contest for the most sophisticated such event. And because of one piece: Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia," music as jauntily complex as its title is simple.. . . The style is irreverent, and yet Berio, being a highly trained and experienced composer, the effect is disarming but not offensive. He makes sense out of nonsense.. . . For a more seasoned judgment, I can only quote several anonymous Philharmonic musicians. They have practiced and played "Sinfonia" and they like it. They performed it with a brilliance and gusto that said as much.-Harriett Johnson

Engineering: Fred Plaut and Ed Michalski
Library of Congress catalog card number 70-750051 applies to MS 7268.

Berio, "Visage"

Authorship and Female Voices in Electrovocal Music, by Hannah Bosma
Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference 1996, Hong Kong

The next electrovocal composition of Berio, Visage (1961), is also a next step in the relationship of author and voice. Visage consists mainly, and most prominently, of the voice of Cathy Berberian, uttering all kinds of sounds, and only one word: `parole'. For this composition, Berio asked Berberian to improvise according to a few vague instructions (Berberian in Stoïanova 1985: 70). The recording of this improvisation forms the main part of Visage; Berio made a montage of it and added electronic sounds and manipulations in the background (Osmond-Smith 1991). Berberian's sighing, crying, laughing, moaning, groaning and stammering, and her many other impressive non-verbal voice sounds, are the most striking features of Visage. One can imagine that these sounds shocked the Radio of Milano: Visage was considered as `obscene' and `too pornographic' (Berberian in Stoïanova 1985; Osmond-Smith 1991); and though Visage was made in the Studio of Phonology of the Radio of Milano, it was not broadcast in full (Stoïanova 1985).

With Visage, an important promise of electronic sound technology is fulfilled: that is, features that previously were considered as part of performance, i.e., vocal production and improvisation, now form a permanent, reproduceable, distributable product - a composition. But still, Berberian is not considered as a co-composer or co-author. She is mentioned in the sleeve notes, but her place is far less prominent than Berio's. Indeed, although most of the pieces on this CD mainly consist of Berberian's voice, her name is not on the cover; only the names of composers Berio and Maderna.[6] And in Dreßen's (1982) analysis of Visage (just as in his analysis of Thema), Dreßen does not even mention that the voice in this piece is a female voice. Strangely, he does mention that in the end `a kind of electronic men's choir comes out' of the sound mass (92). (Otherwise, he only writes about `a voice'.) Stoïanova suggests that Berberian's art is unconscious by writing that `her voice' `invented the expressive utterances' (67). According to Stoïanova, `the author' (i.e., Berio) is `the owner of the body, matter, sensuality and compositional technique' and `composes a coherent version' by his `compositional cutting' (71).

According to the texts accompanying Visage, the male composer-author organised (i.e. predominantly the work of the mind) and `owns' the piece and is presented as most important. The female vocalist, who produced the most striking part of the composition by her vocal art, vocal sound production and improvisation (i.e., work of body and mind), is assigned a less prominent place. Though this avant-garde composition was made with the newest technology, the old hierarchic dualism is still found.

Osmond-Smith, David (1991), Berio. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Stoïanova, Ivanka (1985). Luciano Berio: Chemins en musique. Paris: Editions Richard-Masse.

Luciano Berio, "Concertino"

Notes From RCA ARL1-2291:

Luciano Berio's style in the 1950s, like that of his compatriots Luigi Nono and Bruno Maderna, emphasized post- Webern serialism and electronic techniques. His subsequent work, however, has shown a shift in interest to indeterminacy as well as to more traditional approaches. This has often been expressed in a highly personal eclecticism, sometimes involving tonally centered music in which quotations from other composers, no less than from himself, have been recycled. But the variety of approaches he has followed all bear the stamp of an intense personality touched by profound human concerns, particularly where the writings of others, such as Dante, Eliot, Joyce, Auden and Brecht, have fired his imagination.

Concertino dates from 1951, the year of the composer's graduation from the Music Academy in Milan, and is written for concertante solo clarinet and violin with a chamber ensemble consisting of celesta, harp and strings. It is a Janus-like work, borrowing, on the one hand, from both the Baroque and the early 20th century and, on the other hand, looking ahead to Berio's Webern-derived serial textures of the later '50s. In principle the work pays homage to the Baroque concerto grosso in its contrasting of unequal groups of instruments; again, some of its incisive dotted rhythms are characteristically Baroque as well. But the orchestral palette, especially the delicate sonorities of celesta and harp, not to mention the uses of silence, derive more immediately from Anton Webern. This is not to imply, however, that Concertina is a serial work. On the contrary, Berio's commitment to the key of C is unmistakable almost throughout, and the composition as a whole follows a ternary design (A-B-A) corresponding to the tempo scheme: Allegretto (J= 64)-Vivace (J=132)-Allegretto (J= 64). The coda, though suggesting disintegration, represents in fact a deft transformation and synthesis of intervallic relationships (thirds and seconds) originating in the work's opening measures.

Luciano Berio, "Nones"

Continued Notes From RCA ARL1-1674:

NONES: London Symphony Orchestra. Luciano Berio, Conductor

ALLELUJAH II: BBC Symphony Orchestra. Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio, Conductors

CONCERTO FOR TWO PIANOS: Bruno Canino and Antonio Ballista, Pianos. London Symphony Orchestra. Luciano Berio, Conductor

Produced by Charles Gerhardt
Recording Engineers: Robert Auger and Philip Wade

Luciano Berio has been strongly influenced by the works of Anton von Webern, about whose music Arnold Schoenberg perceptively commented, "Every glance is a poem, every sigh a novel." But unlike his contemporaries who have followed Webern only to lapse into a dry, academic structuralism, Berio has used Webernist techniques to evolve a style combining consummate craftsmanship with profoundly human concerns. Writers, including Auden, Joyce, Proust, Brecht and E. E. Cummings, have served as sources of inspiration for him.

Nones (the title alludes to 3 p.m., one of the canonical hours), completed in 1954, is a case in point. Although the work was originally conceived as an oratorio based on W. H. Auden's poem of the same name, Berio revised his plan in favor of a purely orchestral version, giving poignantly wordless expression to the searing lines. In his poem Auden sets the Good Friday Passion in a contemporary context of indifference, of business-as-usual.

... it is barely three,
Mid-afternoon, yet the blood
Of our sacrifice is already
Dry on the grass;....
The shops will re-open at four,
The empty blue bus in the empty pink square
Fill up and drive off: we have time
To misrepresent,....

Berio's pointillistic palette evokes an atmosphere at once somber and surrealistic. His work is constructed on a 13-tone row (the pitch of D is repeated) made up of two segments having the pitch of A-flat in common. Significantly, each of the two segments contains three-note cells within which the "traditional" intervals of major and minor third are contrasted. These cells provide a vital source for his motivic material: thirds (sometimes in chains), sixths and tenths. By departing in these respects from orthodox tone-row construction, Berio brings to mind the observation of his compatriot and former teacher Luigi Dallapiccola that the "12-tone method must not be so tyrannical as to exclude a priori both expression and humanity."

Drawing upon these materials Berio constructs a tightly integrated work consisting of a "theme" (perhaps better described as a complex of pitch relationships and rhythms) and five variations. The opening 12 measures, which present the essentials of pitch and motive, follow the row forms closely. Clearly audible in measure one, for example, are the first three pitches of the original form of the row: pitches one and two are given to the harp, pitch three to trombone and lower strings. And a few measures later the electric guitar sounds the motive of a rising third and falling sixth.

Taken as a whole, the "theme" and variations approximate an arch form. Tension approaches a maximum in the course of variations two through four, while the outer sections suggest relative stability and relaxation. This cycle of relaxation- tension-relaxation is perhaps best understood in terms of a complex of interactions. This involves the manipulation of pitch materials just described in conjunction with at least five other factors. These include: 1) a series of seven basic note values or durations affecting also the treatment of silence; 2) a series of seven dynamic values (ppp to sffz); 3) five modes of articulation or ways of sounding a note (legato, staccato, tremolo, etc.); 4) a related procedure, derived from Schoenberg's Klangfarbenmelodie (tone- color melody) concept, whereby each pitch of a chord or melodic line interlocks different instruments, each instrument playing that pitch with different articulation and note values; 5) the alternation of tense passages of rapid rhythm and dense chromaticism with relaxed moments of "polarization" on one pitch in octaves.

Luciano Berio, "Allelujah II"

Continued Notes From RCA ARL1-1674:

The general compositional procedures associated with Nones apply to Allelujah II as well, but with at least one important addition. Allelujah II (1956-58) belongs to what one might call the composer's "onion series." Berio's appetite for recycling material by adding layers to, or peeling them off of, earlier works can be seen in his Allelujah, Chemins and Laborintus series. He himself has commented that the various works of a series "relate to each other something like the layers of an onion... each layer creates a new, though related, surface and each older layer assumes a new function as soon as it is covered."

In the case of Allelujah I and II the "onion layers" apply as much to the physical deployment of players as to the actual musical materials. Both works are composed for antiphonally separated instrumental groups numbering six and five respectively. In the foreword to the score of Allelujah II Berio suggests four possible dispositions of the five groups, depending on local acoustical and architectural conditions. Each of these arrangements calls for the maximum possible separation of the five groups throughout the auditorium, requiring an additional conductor or conductors. In contrast, the groups required in Allelujah I, each of them smaller, are all deployed on a single stage. Allelujah II, however, not only demands a substantially enlarged percussion group, an extra trombone choir and some other additions but acquires greater antiphonal impact through the way instruments are placed within more widely separated groups.

These spatial considerations affect the design and dimensions of Allelujah II, expanding it to almost twice the length of Allelujah I. Aside from being a tour de force in its exploitation of antiphonal effects and instrumental densities, Allelujah II also depends on a tightly organized Webern-derived rhythmic serialization. This is a crucial factor in the sense of unpredictability it evokes in the listener. The opening six measures for example, show an extremely rapid rhythmic gradation, starting with the flute's sustained B-flat (also, incidentally, the final pitch of the work) in fact, Allelujah II as a whole shows greater extremes in note values than its earlier counterpart, moving from the initial sustained pitch to climactic melismatic patterns in 32nd notes in the body of the work. Like Nones, Allelujah II suggests an arch involving an interaction among similar compositional parameters. There are seven discernible sections, with the sixth suggesting a truncated reprise of sections one and two, and the seventh (much of it "peeled" intact from the parallel portion of Allelujah I) assuming the function of synthesis and coda.

Luciano Berio, "Chemins III"

Notes From RCA LSC-3168:

The three compositions on this record were written in 1968 in response to Walter Trampler's request for a piece for viola and orchestra. They are not a sketchbook for a concerto; rather, they represent a stepwise approach toward the viola-orchestra texture. Sequenza VI for viola solo becomes the basis of Chemins II, in which the viola is surrounded by a chamber ensemble; then Chemins II becomes the basis of Chemins III, in which the orchestra is added. (Chemins I, completed in 1965, follows a similar procedure by adding an orchestra to Sequenza II for harp solo.)

But Chemins III is rather surprising if one expects a concerto sound. Walter Trampler's extraordinary, Paganini-esque performance of Sequenza VI is not featured; instead, the surrounding instruments extend the material from Sequenza to the point where the viola often seems absorbed, though it remains the source of the work. (Paganini refused to play Berlioz' Harold in Italy because he thought the viola part wasn't sufficiently prominent; one shudders to think what his reaction might have been to his role in Chemins II or III.)

As Berio has said, "the three pieces relate to each other something like the layers of an onion: distinct, separate, yet intimately contoured on each other; each new layer creates a new, though related, surface, and each older layer assumes a new function as soon as it is covered."

Rather like an etude, Sequenza VI focuses on a single problem: the development of a kind of polyphony of different textures. Escaping the monodic limitations of various instruments has been a central feature in all of Berio's solo sequenze. In Sequenza III, for voice, there is a polyphony of different "vocal gestures" (laughing, crying, gasping, and so on); Sequenza IV, for piano, centers around the interplay between what is being played on the keyboard and harmonies held by the sostenuto pedal, while Sequenza V, for trombone, explores a polyphony of vocal vs. instrumental sounds.

So the instruments superimposed on Sequenza VI to form Chemins II are intended as an extension of the viola part. The tremolo that dominates much of Sequenza becomes flutter-tongue in the wind instruments, rolls on the percussion instruments and tremolo in the other strings; it also becomes sustained chords, which reflect its continuous aspect. Rapid, irregular figures dwelling on specific harmonies appear as extensions of what might be called "distributional tremolo," a technique by which the violist distributes tremolo over the four notes of the chords opening Sequenza (where it would be impracticable to sustain tremolo on all four strings at once). A slowed-down version of this technique occurs at the end of the three pieces, where the viola seems to suspend a chord in space by irregularly but repeatedly touching separate portions of it.

But the process by which Chemins II grows out of Sequenza VI is neither chronological nor conversational (as it tends to be in concertos): the ensemble doesn't react to Sequenza bit by bit as it goes along, extending only what the viola has presented. Many features of Sequenza are introduced by the ensemble well before the viola has stated them. To mention two examples: figures growing out of the distributional technique described above already pervade the ensemble before the viola shares them, and the trombone introduces glissandi long before they appear in Sequenza.

It is as if the extension of Sequenza VI takes place outside of time. The viola part has been transformed by its new surroundings from a time-dependent exploration of shifting contours and spaces into a time-independent object, any part of which can be taken up by the surroundings at any time. In a sense, all of Sequenza VI is simultaneously present through much of Chemins II, as if Sequenza were a painting or, better, a sculpture. The result is that parts of Chemins II have a peculiarly stationary quality.

But the use of the orchestra in Chemins III partially restores the temporal aspect of Sequenza. Much of the orchestra's role consists of punctuating chords, which by themselves recall the passage of time and restore a sense of motion where Chemins II seemed stationary; also, the timing of these chords depends on certain harmonic points basic to the structure of Sequenza VI. So the viola part has recovered some of the temporal dependence it had in Sequenza and which was played down in Chemins II.

And Chemins II is transformed by its new surroundings: the unitextural, tight-fisted chamber ensemble is suddenly set off in an expanded space of far less density. One thinks of the transformation in our perception of the earth brought about by the first photographs of it from halfway to the moon.

This shifting of roles, the perception of relationships between objects and their contexts, the awareness of how they act on each other, is a source of meaning. This kind of meaning is also explored in the third movement of Berio's Sinfonia, where the Scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony is treated much as Sequenza VI is treated in Chemins II and III. The Mahler undergoes constant transformation through the juxtaposition of shifting contexts, which are viewed as extension of the basic material.

Susan Berio, commenting on Chemins I, for harp and orchestra, develops the idea this way: ". . . everything we do extends and comments on something else . . . in that vast proliferation of paths that gives inevitable rise to more paths, each splitting its destiny into a web of trunks and branches, twigs and sub-twigs. And our place is here, on the sub-est of the sub-twigs, regarding the still burgeoning lines of meanings that can only be traced back or maybe forward, because forward they are still .nosing their three-million-nosed way, trying three million paths in the certainty that a dozen will lead elsewhere than to intersections with the other two million plus. . . ."

Extension and relation. Perhaps a single action or a single piece of music by itself is without meaning. Perhaps it is only through the manipulation of contexts that meaning can be developed. Awareness of each of the three pieces on this record transforms one's awareness of the others. On just one level: Sequenza VI is potentially Chemins II and Chemins III; Chemins II is extended, detemporalized Sequenza VI but potentially Chemins III; Chemins III is extended Chemins II, retemporalized Sequenza VI but potentially. . .

-STEPHEN MORRIS

Luciano Berio, "Concerto for Two Pianos"

Notes From RCA ARL1-1674:

...No such Webernist techniques apply to the Concerto for Two Pianos, a work written during 1972-73 on commission from the New York Philharmonic. On the occasion of its premiere, March 15, 1973, Berio commented: "...the relationship between soloist and orchestra is a problem that must ever be solved anew, and the word 'concerto' can be taken only as a metaphor." The work in fact suggests a highly mobile relationship between soloists and orchestra in that the soloists per se often assume the role of accompanists to individual players from the orchestra. But, despite the "new" relationship between soloists and orchestra, the rhythmic and tonal organization is more traditional. Not only are there rhythmic ostinati reminiscent of the early Stravinsky; there are also strong indications of a G-centered tonality.

The following is a guide to the sequence of events in the concerto:

A cadenza for the solo pianos (subsequently joined by a third orchestral piano) opens the work. This is an extended ruminating, quasi- impressionistic passage interrupted by occasional dissonant outbursts. It is built for the most part on an E pedal point, with passing references to related pitches. The culminating point of the section comes with an insistent repeated tritone motive (E-flat-A) played in a high register, which serves to usher in the orchestra. With its entrance this sonority is sustained. The flute is prominently heard and subsequently continues in a solo passage that expands on the tritone motive in a wide- ranging, rhythmically active portion over an A-flat pedal point. After some brass passages a solo violin comments further on the flute material amidst interjections from percussion and brass. A section of extreme dissonance for full orchestra begins a developmental passage that culminates in a climax suggestive of Ives in its polyrhythmic and polytonal complexity.

A piano cadenza follows with solo interjections from strings, flute, clarinet, trumpet, horn and other instruments. The denouement is approached by way of passages for flute, bass clarinet and tremolo strings (ponticello) revolving around the pitches of C and G. A muted trumpet introduces a climactic tritone passage for full orchestra pounding out the sonority of B-F in an aggressive motor rhythm. Extended piano tremolos follow. Though primarily G-centered, they form part of a polytonal texture in which chords on G, E-flat and A-flat are intermixed and superimposed. The point of final repose is reached with a series of insistent G-major chords played against an undulant background recalling the work's opening measures.

Bruno Canino and Antonio Ballista have been associated with the concerto since its premiere. They were both born in 1936 and have concertized widely as a duo ever since they met as students in Miian in 1953. Their repertoire includes works by Stravinsky, Cage and Pousseur as well as compositions by contemporary Italian composers such as Malipiero, Donatoni and Castiglioni. They have appeared at festivals in Paris, Venice, New York, Zagreb and elsewhere.


Ballista & Canino

-JOSHUA BERRETT

Luciano Berio, "Cries of London"

Notes From Decca Head 15:

Swingle II

Olive Simpson, Catherine Bott, sopranos
Carol Hall, Linda Hirst, mezzo-sopranos
John Potter, Ward Swingle, tenors
John Lubbock, David Beavan, basses

Recorded July 1976 in Decca Studio 3, West Hampstead, London
Recording producer: James Mallinson
Recording engineers: Martin Smith and Stan Goodall

These "Cries of London" for eight voices (two sopranos, two altos, two tenors, two bases) are a re-working of the composition of the same name written in 1974 for the "King's Singers" (two countertenors, one tenor, two baritones, one bass). In this new version the "Cries of London" becomes a short cycle of seven vocal pieces of a folk nature in which a simple piece regularly alternates with a musically more complex one and where the fifth "cry" is the exact repetition of the first (the text of which is also used in the third "cry"). The seventh piece, "cry of cries," is a commentary on the preceding "cries": although it uses the same melodies and the same harmonic characteristics it is musically detached as if recalling them from a distance... As a whole this short cycle can also be heard as an exercise in characterization and musical dramatization. The text is essentially a free choice of well-known phrases of vendors in the streets of Old London.

Cries 1 - 6, 7

Luciano Berio, "E Vó"

In Opera; Agnus is immediately followed by E Vó. A woman picks up the body of one of the slain children and, rocking it in her arms, begins to sing this lullaby to a traditional Sicilian text. The flavor of a piece of folk music is conveyed first through the nasal manner in which the music is sung and secondly by the quarter-tone inflections of an on-stage solo viola. The music begins calmly enough, but it soon becomes tense and then desperate. Unlike Melodrama, which displays a similar process of accumulation, E Vó has a "closed" structure, finally returning to the subdued mood of its opening.

Pieta, Glynn Williams

Luciano Berio, "Melodrama"

Continued Notes From RCA ARL1-0037:

The remaining four pieces all have their origin in Berio's stage work, Opera. Opera (the word is used in its literal sense of "works") has been described by the composer as a "celebration of endings." It consists of an almost cinematic cross-cutting between three parodied dramatic elements whose link is the fatality of their subjects: the Orpheus legend, the sinking of the Titanic and the terminal ward of a hospital (this last setting deriving from a production by the New York Open Theater).

The title of Melodrama refers to a musical form fusing speech and music that goes back as far as the grave-digging scene in Beethoven's Fidelio and the Wolfs-Glen music in Weber's Der Freischütz. More often, however, melodrama denotes a composition for speaking voice and piano. There are examples of such pieces by Schubert and Schumann-and above all, Richard Strauss' dramatic treatment of Tennyson's poem "Enoch Arden." Nearer our own time, Schoenberg was fascinated by the melodrama, and his use of Sprechgesang (notably in Pierrot lunaire and Ode to Napoleon) may be seen as an off-shoot of the genre. Berg's Lulu also contains an important melodrama.


Bugler @ the Titanic

Berio's Melodrama is basically a parody of such pieces; within the context of Opera it relates to the episodes concerning the Titanic and can be heard as an attempt at giving a public performance by a nervous and decidedly tourist-class artist (for this reason, the recording incorporates some less than discreet audience participation). The ensemble accompanying the singer is the type of band that might well be found on a large ocean liner: piano, electronic organ, percussion, flute, clarinet, cello and bass. The piece falls into two parts: in the first the performer attempts a rendering of part of a poem by Heine, the second note of which-a top G-presents him with an apparently insuperable problem; the second part develops toward a continuous lyricism, and here the artist, no longer weighed down by words or by the need to give a "performance" (he seems now to be singing to himself), is able to sing freely. Like Berio's Recital I, Melodrama moves from an inherently schizophrenic situation (the violent contrast between the Heine text and the deliberately cliché-ridden narrated incidents) toward a newfound tenderness and compassion. Harmonically speaking, the first part grows gradually outward in both directions from its pivotal note of G (the electronic organ, for instance, slowly builds up a held cluster throughout this section) until a point of maximum complexity is reached; the second section, by contrast, is harmonically static The alliterative spoken text of Melodrama is by Berio himself.

Luciano Berio, "El Mar la Mar"

Continued Notes From RCA ARL1-0037:

El Mar la Mar was not the first work in which Berio attempted to evoke the flavor of folk music, but it was one of the very first pieces in which he really found himself as a composer. Most of his earlier works, including Magnificat (1948), Concertina (1950) and the Two Pieces for violin and piano of 1951, are regarded by him as "exorcisms"-a means of ridding himself of the influence of such 20th-century masters as Bartok, Stravinsky and Hindemith. El Mar la Mar, on the other hand, is a completely individual piece, even though it combines its origin in folk music (these are particularly noticeable in the inclusion of an accordion in the instrumental clothing) with the seeds of the serial technique that was to preoccupy Berio, as well as other outstanding composers of his generation, during the early '50s.

The texts of El Mar la Mar are taken from "Un Marinero en Tierra" ("A Sailor on Land"), an early collection by the exiled Spanish poet, Rafael Alberti. As in many of Alberti's poems, their central symbol is that of the sea. The three texts Berio chose play phonetically on the Spanish word "mar'- the first wistfully, the second dramatically and the third humorously. They are scored for soprano and mezzo-soprano, with a small instrumental ensemble consisting of piccolo, two clarinets, accordion, harp, cello and double bass.

Rafael Alberti

Luciano Berio, "O King"

Continued Notes From RCA ARL1-0037:

The main characteristics of O King have been discussed above. The piece was written in 1968 as a form of threnody for the murdered civil rights leader. Harmonically, O King is very simple, being based largely on two whole-tone scales. Like Agnus, it treats its vocal line not in a soloistic manner but simply as a part of the overall instrumental texture (this integration is further enhanced by the fad that toward the end of the piece the instrumentalists themselves can be heard speaking the sounds with which the singer's "text" had begun). O King is recorded here in its original chamber scoring for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano; Berio later made an amplified version for eight voices and orchestra, and in this form it appeared as the second movement of his Sinfonia

Luciano Berio, "Air"

Continued Notes From RCA ARL1-0037:

Although Air is related to the Orpheus element of Opera, it is the one dramatic component of that work that does not end disastrously. At the beginning of each act a singer is seen being coached in the performance of a song; her interpretation slowly improves until at the start of Act IV she is able to perform the entire piece. The words of this Air are by Alessandro Striggio, taken from the prologue of his libretto for Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. Berio's piece (recorded here in its chamber version for soprano, piano, violin, viola and cello) begins with the simultaneous exposition of three seemingly irreconcilable compositional layers: a florid, melodious vocal line; a chord deep down on the muted strings, and a piano part consisting of sharp staccato chords over a smoothly moving left-hand line. As the piece progresses, the frequency band formed by the strings' cluster moves gradually upward, beginning to incorporate on its way snatches of material derived from the soprano line; Furthermore, the held notes of the strings break up into a tremolo that itself slows down until by the end of the piece its rhythm matches that of the singer. A similar process is applied to the piano. Even so, this gradual resolution and synthesis is in a sense contradicted by the very nature of Air the ceaseless repetition of patterns in the vocal line serves only to emphasize the falseness of the music's surface gaiety.

Luciano Berio, "Agnus"

Notes From RCA ARL1-0037:

From RCA ARL1-0037:

This album presents six of Luciano Berio's shorter vocal pieces, written over a period of 20 years. Not the least remarkable aspect of this music is the continuity of thought that lies behind it; although the earliest composition- El Mar la Mar-is the work of a young man of 27, it already bears unmistakably the stamp of its creator. Indeed, it shares with the newest piece here, E Vó (1972), an important feature: both are stimulated by the sound and atmosphere of folk music.

Since all of the pieces involve the human voice, it would seem relevant to touch, if only briefly, upon Berio's highly individual approach to the setting of words in general. He has never believed in the traditional syllabic method of setting a poetic text to music, because he feels that entails an inevitable dividing line between the meaning of the text and the sound of the music. instead, he has always preferred a more analytical process in which sound and meaning are fused through the use of the actual sound properties of the text as acoustical material permeating all layers of the musical structure. O King, for instance, is based entirely on a gradual "discovery" of the name Martin Luther King, which evolves from an exposition of its vowel sounds (a-i-u-e) into the complete name, heard only during the final bars of the piece. In addition, the hard "k" sound of "King" is suggested throughout in the sudden fortissimo attacks that emerge from the otherwise pianissimo dynamic level. (And here we meet another important facet of Berio's vocal art: the breaking down of the conventional barriers between vocally and instrumentally produced sounds. For Berio the human voice is itself an instrument of almost limitless possibilities, and an exploration of the common ground between vocal and instrumental lines forms the basis of several of his works, including Agnus.) In Melodrama the component vowels of a fragment of German text by Heine are again used to form an important layer of the composition. Even in the early El Mar la Mar we find, in the second song, that the mezzo-soprano sustains the "a" sound of the key word "mar" as a means of extending the soprano's vocal line.

Agnus and E Vó are both connected with an incident in Act II of Opera. A group of children is seen crossing and re-crossing the stage in an ever more tightly knit formation. Finally they run on screaming and are systematically slaughtered before the audience's eyes. It is at this point that Agnus begins. As in O King, the voices are treated as an integral part of the overall texture of the piece (and their complete integration is assured by their disposition on the platform: the two sopranos are placed between the three clarinets). Again as in the earlier piece, the words of Agnus are revealed only gradually during the course of the music. And like so many of Berio's works, Agnus sets out deliberately to destroy the distinctions between vocally and instrumentally produced sounds: the effect of the sopranos' changing vowel sounds on one note, for example, is paralleled by the clarinetists' producing a subtle change of color by playing the same note with alternative fingerings, and the rapid "dental" tremolos of the singers simulate the sound of instrumental fluttertonguing. Agnus revolves around the central pitch of B-flat, and the music is given an ethereal resonance, so to speak, through the additional presence of a high-pitched note-cluster that is sustained on an electronic organ throughout the piece.