Page 319 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

CONTEMPORARY 317

See also: Magnus liber organi 28–31 ■ Ives’s Symphony No. 4 254–255 ■
Symphonie pour un homme seul 298–301 ■ Gruppen 306–307

third movement, which consists of to stand alone. “O King,” the work’s
a whirl of musical quotations from second movement, was written in
Bach to Pierre Boulez. Running 1967 as a tribute to the Reverend
throughout its 12 minutes is the Martin Luther King Jr. After
largest quotation of all: the dancing, King’s assassination in April 1968,
spinning Scherzo from Mahler’s Berio decided to incorporate it
Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.” into Sinfonia, expanding that into
a work for four singers and full
The quotation technique orchestra and serving now as a
Composers had used quotation and memorial to the Civil Rights leader.
even collage techniques before; as Its text simply repeats King’s name, Luciano Berio
early as 1906, and before artists separated into “phonemes” (the
such as Picasso and Braque had smallest individual sounds of a Berio was born in the town
painted visual collages in the early word) and stretched across wide of Oneglia, Italy, in 1924. His
1910s, Charles Ives had layered intervals of time, as though father and grandfather, who
different melodies and musical evaporating into the air. were both organists, taught
styles in “Central Park in the Dark.” him to play the piano. After
More recently, John Cage had Other influences World War II, he went to study
begun experimenting with playing Sinfonia’s fourth movement is also at the Milan Conservatory,
records and differently tuned radios a lament, in which Berio mourns but an injury to his hand
simultaneously. In a way, quotation all of the lost heroes and ideas of forced him to give up piano
had been a part of classical music movements two and three. Unlike studies for composition.
since the masters of organum used these, the first movement is a study He married the American
Gregorian chants to make their in Brazilian origin myths, drawing singer and composer Cathy
Berberian in 1950, writing
polyphonic church music in the on text extracted from Claude Lévi- several works for her before
12th century. However, Sinfonia Strauss’s revolutionary, and recently their divorce in 1964.
was the first time quotation had published study in mythology, The Berio’s interest in the
been used to such an extent: it was Raw and the Cooked (1964). The avant-garde movement began
a whole movement for full orchestra, fifth and final movement, which in the 1950s, and he became
created almost entirely from Berio added only after the work’s Italy’s leading composer in the
borrowed materials. premiere, synthesizes and reflects genre. In 1955, he established
On top of all of this are the vocal upon the previous four. ■ an electronic studio in Milan—
lines. Eight singers perform from one of the world’s first—with
a text in which passages from Bruno Maderna. Berio was
Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable also a respected teacher of
are mixed with extracts from composition, particularly at
James Joyce, Paul Valéry, musical the Juilliard School in New
directions, and slogans from the York. His pupils included
Steve Reich and Grateful Dead
Paris protests. In order for the Using Mahler was a guitarist Phil Lesh. Berio died
singers to be heard, their voices tribute to Leonard in Rome in 2003.
needed to be amplified, and Berio Bernstein, who has done
turned to the Swingle Singers, so much for his music.
a popular group in their day, Luciano Berio Other key works
because of their familiarity with 1958 Thema (Omaggio
microphone technique. a Joyce)
Sinfonia is a five-part meditation 1966 Sequenza III
on the past and the future. The 1977 Coro
first part was originally intended

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