Luciano Berio (1925-2003) created labyrinthine music, drawing on a dizzying range of literary, cultural, and musical sources. Berio pushed the boundaries of whatever form he worked in. In his centenary year, Faber Music composers reflect on his legacy.
Sir George Benjamin
Thinking of Luciano Berio on his centenary, I not only recall the immensely striking and utterly distinctive sound of his music – and the unique brilliance and ingenuity of his instrumental writing – but also his kindness to me and his great personal warmth. It was a privilege to know him.
If I had to choose one work, perhaps it would be Formazione, with its imposing grandeur and hugely impressive sonority – as well as one of the most surprising (yet convincing) conclusions in modern orchestral music.
Francisco Coll
Luciano Berio and György Ligeti created works of great originality and beauty, but their respect for tradition, coupled with their unusual imagination and enormous curiosity for music from outside the European continent, led them in the following decades to territories previously unknown in the history of Western music. They had a profound impact on my teenage mind and surely became part of my creative DNA.
When I was thirteen, my parents gave me the luxurious Deutsche Graamophone three-CD set of the Sequenzas. We lived in quite an isolated area – no supermarket, no nearby schools – so had to drive a great deal. It was during those car journeys that that I listened to the Sequenzas, despite my parents' protests – they insisted on playing more pleasant and relaxing music to reduce the risk of going off the road at the first bend. I was engrossed by this series, which displayed a level of virtuosity I had never heard before, and had a bewitching and peculiar language that captivated me immediately.
One day, our car was left at the garage for some repairs. When we collected it from the mechanic he said with regret that the CD he had played on the stereo – to test the electrical systems – had seemingly been damaged, so strange were the sounds coming from the speakers. I felt a deep sadness, as I knew it was one of my cherished recordings of the Sequenzas. But when I returned home, I played the CD, and it was in perfect working order.
Anders Hillborg
Whilst I was intrigued by Stockhausen and Xenakis, György Ligeti and Luciano Berio were by far the two most influential composers of my younger years.
I was mesmerised by Berio’s Points on the curve to find, Sinfonia‚ Circles, Cries of London, and especially the Folk Songs. What especially impressed my was the wide scope of his musical landscape - something I didn’t always find with the other usual suspects of that era.
Today, I tend to think that despite all the virtuosic compositional aspects in his more complex works, Folk Songs stands out for its sublime simplicity.
I had dinner with Berio once in the early 1990s in Stockholm. During the meal I told him that I thought Folk Songs was a fantastic piece. He smiled and played this down: “I wrote it in front of the television to see if I could concentrate”. Though I was starstruck, I plucked up my courage. “You know that’s not true!”, I said, He smiled again, enigmatically, and said nothing.
Matthew Hindson
The major impact of Berio’s music came in my younger years in the 1980s. As a school-aged teenager I heard Harry Curby play the viola Sequenza. It which was bemusing and thrilling: I had certainly never heard ten minutes of unaccompanied viola scrubbing before, or even considered it possible. As an undergraduate, the voice, trombone and oboe Sequenzas were pivotal moments for me in thinking dramatically and “extrovertedly” about the role of musicians and the audience.
But at the same time, the sheer beauty and technical prowess of Berio’s Folks Songs left an incredibly strong impact that I aspire to in my work to this day.
Torsten Rasch
Among the composers of his generation, Berio has always been closest to me. Perhaps this is because his music has never lost its connection with – or is consciously growing out of – the music of the past (much more than when he quotes directly from works). For me Berio’s works are the more alive when compared with those of his contemporaries – as fascinating as they are – because the thread which connects them to history is perceptible and not just academic.
I might never have used the accordion in my own work had I not heard Sequenza XIII ‘Chanson’. Berio opened up incredible technical and aural possibilities for the instrument – as he did in all the Sequenzas – without ever neglecting its nature.
All the Sequenzas are written and performed with a historical understanding of the given instrument in mind, which is - as Berio put it – part of the musical language which cannot be altered.
Martin Suckling
As a composer who came to music through the violin, my route to Berio was and is Sequenza VIII. I remember ordering the score. As I spread out the eleven loose leaf A3 pages, I realised memorisation would be the only way. As a student, I remember performing the day he died and going round campus adding the end date on the posters. I remember endless hours of slow practice of very fast music. I remember thinking notation via just writing the fingering pattern, string number and hand position was a neat trick that I must use some day (though never have done). I remember the sheer joy of throwing out all those triple-stopped fff As (and near As) whenever I want to channel the feeling of physical exhilaration in my own music.
I remember realising that even though Berio claims it is a 'tribute' to the Bach Chaconne, the Sequenza seemed to be discovering music from first principles, building language afresh from the initiating As. Possibility develops into polyphony until the point that – provided you had the energy – you could play the Chaconne as its culmination, rather than seeing it as its origin: Bach's D minor triad resolving Berio's held A-B, with the Chaconne as tribute to its Sequenza forebear. Rewriting history so that Bach tips his hat to you is not an achievement to which many composers can lay claim.
John Woolrich
Nine reasons any young composer could do a lot worse than take the career of Luciano Berio as a model:
1. His music engages the head and the heart.
2. He wrote for any level of performer, from international virtuosos to children (his Duetti for violins can be played by six-year-olds).
3. His music looks both forward and back.
4. He worked at the cutting edge but also wrote the most accessible, moving, funny, dramatic pieces of the postwar avant garde: if you want to charm the most grumpy conservative, try the Sinfonia.
5. He was involved with music practically - he conducted, set up ensembles, ran orchestras, headed a department at Boulez's research centre in Paris and devised festivals.
6. He was an undogmatic teacher.
7. He was interested in music from all over the world (from Sicilian tuna fishermen's songs to African heterophony).
8. His music extends instrumental techniques while being deeply within the tradition. The Sequenzas are the most important solo pieces written in the last 50 years and should be in every player's repertoire.
9. His elegy for Martin Luther King, O King, is a great formal piece of public mourning. And it is a perfect technical model of how to compose.