Sinfonia Sequenzas Voci

The news came to me via email, with the subject header "Mort de Luciano Berio". Italy's foremost composer and one of the pivotal figures of the Post-War avant-garde had passed away at the age of 77. While I never knew Berio personally, the loss of such a towering figure of contemporary music was sobering.

I had studied with one of Berio's students, Pulitzer prize-winning composer Bernard Rands, in a month-long series of master classes at the Aspen Music Festival back in the mid-'90s. Rands used Berio's pieces as reference points and teaching tools. Dissatisfied with the students' conservatively written compositions (none more so than mine at the time, I am ashamed to say), Rands held up Berio as an antidote; studying his scores and recordings became a way to absorb the many extended techniques and approaches of modernity and post-modernity. We paid special attention to Circles, an evocative and imaginative chamber composition. Though it still took me a while to embrace full-on the music and aesthetics of the avant-garde, the seeds were sown there, and I can honestly say that I never listened to music (nor wrote it) the same way thereafter.

For those interested in knowing more about Berio's life, Paul Griffiths's obituary article for the New York Times is a finely-written starting place (May 28, 2003), while David Osmond-Smith's Berio, is an excellent, if somewhat out-of-date, full length study. Rather than focus on biographical details, I thought that I would devote this column to some highlights of Berio's compositional career. For those not familiar with his music, this can serve as a Luciano Berio "Starter Kit"; for those who already know and love his work, perhaps this will send you scurrying to your CD shelf to play something in memory of him. Of course, this is only a jumping off point, and it was difficult to winnow the list down to a manageable few. Hopefully it will at least whet your appetites.

Sinfonia -- Conducted by Pierre Boulez on Erato
Perhaps Berio's most famous orchestral composition, this work features the composer's interest in deconstructing music from the past and his fondness for juxtaposing different musical styles within the same piece. Written for a large orchestra, and for eight singers, the piece was originally performed using the Swingle Singers, most famous for their recordings of jazz scatting the music of J.S. Bach, as vocal soloists. In addition to both classical and jazz vocal stylings, Sinfonia's third movement features the singers "commentating" on a performance of the Scherzo from Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony. The Mahler is taken apart piece by piece, with the Swingles giving us play by play and Berio sneaking in references from throughout the Western musical canon, as well as a copious helping of his own fingerprints. An indispensable example of Post-Modernism at its most inventive.

Sequenzas -- Ensemble Intercontemporain on Deutsche Grammophon
The Sequenzas were a series of thirteen solo pieces for different instruments (and voice). This recent two-CD recording not only features the original pieces, but also recordings of alternate versions —- transcriptions of the pieces for instruments not included in the original thirteen. The performances, by members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, are absolutely superlative.

These compositions exhibit the height of virtuosity; each also requires its performer to tackle numerous extended techniques. The Sequenzas were a kind of compositional laboratory for Berio, wherein he pushed instruments to their limits and, indeed, created new limits for their performers. However, they are no mere technical etudes. In them, Berio also explores the dramatic element of being alone as a solo performer on stage -- the dynamic of being exposed and without a safety net. These pieces may be much smaller in scale than a work like Sinfonia, but feature an equally involved conceptual framework.

Circles -- Cathy Berberian et al on Wergo (elusive disc)
This is the recording that began my own familiarity with Berio through close study rather than casual listening. It is not an easy find, but well worth the effort required to seek it out. This 1960 work was written for Berio's first wife, mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, as well as harp and two percussionists. The poetry set is by e.e. Cummings, and its abstraction affords Berio (and Berbarian) the opportunity to explore a myriad of approaches to vocal declamation, from sung through spoken and everywhere between. The battery of percussion instruments and their deployment was a 20th century orchestration lesson in and of itself (as composer Bernard Rands taught me). For the uninitiated, this may be like being tossed headfirst in the deep end of the pool, but it is well worth the swim!

Voci -- Violist Kim Kashkashian, percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, and the Vienna Radio Symphony, conducted by Dennis Russell-Davies, on ECM
This, the most recent of the recordings surveyed here (released in 2001), contains two works by Berio, written in the 1980s, that employ the viola. On both Voci and Naturale, the viola's soulful and voice-like timbre is featured, as is another of Berio's omnivorous musical passions -- folk music. Indeed, both of the works utilize material drawn from Sicilian folk music.

With characteristic thoughtfulness, ECM includes historical recordings of the Sicilian folk tunes that Berio used as source material, placing them between the disc's two works as a kind of ethnomusicological intermezzo. Voci serves as a kind of viola concerto, with a large orchestra, whereas Naturale is a more intimate duo, for viola and a single percussionist playing marimba and tam-tam (there is also a tape part, recordings of a Sicilian folk-singer). It is fascinating to hear these works side by side, treating the melodies and affects of folk music, on the one hand on a grand scale, and in a far more intimate, chamber setting. The way that keen-eared Kim Kashkashian so ably imitates the glissandi of the folk singer, sliding from note to note and exploiting the microtones present in so much folk music from a variety of traditions, is a special component of the performance.

It is fitting that this recording was made late in Berio's career, as it draws together so many of the concerns of his compositions. For Berio, unlike some of the most extreme of the Post-War avant-garde, contemporary music did not have to turn its back on musical or cultural tradition. Instead, Berio demonstrated a capacity to find new ways to venerate and utilize earlier music, and he balanced innovation with a reverence for the idiomatic capabilities of instruments and voices alike. He also brought two traits to his work that are sorely needed in today's musical landscape: heart and an unwavering vision.

-- Christian Carey