Luciano Berio

About

From Wikipedia:

Luciano Berio OMRI (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled Sequenza), and for his pioneering work in electronic music. His early work was influenced by Igor Stravinsky and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works explore indeterminacy and the use of spoken texts as the basic material for composition.

Biography

Berio was born in Oneglia (now part of Imperia), on the Ligurian coast of Italy. He was taught piano by his father and grandfather, who were both organists. During World War II, he was conscripted into the army, but on his first day, he injured his hand while learning how a gun worked and spent time in a military hospital.

Following the war, Berio studied at the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Giorgio Federico Ghedini. He was unable to continue studying the piano because of his injured hand, so instead concentrated on composition. In 1947, he had first public performance of one of his works, a suite for piano. Berio made a living at this time by accompanying singing classes, and it was in doing this that he met the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, whom he married shortly after graduating (they divorced in 1964). They had one daughter, Cristina Berio (born in 1953). Berio wrote a number of pieces that exploited her distinctive voice.

In 1952, Berio went to the United States to study with Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood, from whom he gained an interest in serialism. He later attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik at Darmstadt, where he met Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti and Mauricio Kagel. He became interested in electronic music, co-founding the Studio di fonologia musicale, an electronic music studio in Milan, with Bruno Maderna in 1955. He invited a number of significant composers to work there, among them Henri Pousseur and John Cage. He also produced an electronic music periodical, Incontri Musicali.

In 1960, Berio returned to Tanglewood, this time as Composer in Residence, and in 1962, on an invitation from Darius Milhaud, took a teaching post at Mills College in Oakland, California. From 1960 to 1962, Berio also taught at the Dartington International Summer School. In 1965, he began to teach at the Juilliard School, and there he founded the Juilliard Ensemble, a group dedicated to performances of contemporary music. In 1966, he again married, this time to the noted philosopher of science Susan Oyama (they divorced in 1972). His students included Louis Andriessen, Steven Gellman, Dina Koston, Steve Reich, Luca Francesconi, Giulio Castagnoli, Flavio Emilio Scogna, William Schimmel and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead.

All this time, Berio had been steadily composing and building a reputation, winning the Prix Italia in 1966 for Laborintus II, a work for voices, instruments and tape with text by Edoardo Sanguineti that was commissioned by the French Television to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri birth. His reputation was cemented when his Sinfonia was premiered in 1968. In 1972, Berio returned to Italy. From 1974 to 1980, he was the director of the electro-acoustic division of IRCAM in Paris. […]

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On February 23 or February 24, 1966 (depending on the source), Paul McCartney attended one of Luciano Berio’s lectures at the Italian Cultural Institute in London.

According to musicologist Walter Everett, Paul McCartney sought out concerts featuring the music of modernist composers during the summer of 1966, including Berio, John Cage, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. At the time, McCartney was searching for inspiration for his own songwriting and was dabbling with tape loops and electronic music in his home studio.

There is at least one documented encounter between Berio and McCartney dating from that year, although they otherwise admired each other’s work from afar. After listening to Berio present a lecture at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York [sic – In London], McCartney and the composer briefly met in the hallway outside the auditorium, but they were almost immediately driven apart by a crush of reporters.

That meeting, although brief, seems to have inspired Berio. The following year, he arranged a series of songs by the Beatlesfor soprano Cathy Berberian and published an article praising the Beatles in Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana, Italy’s most prestigious academic music journal at the time. Other than that brief encounter, however, it seems that Berio and McCartney otherwise lived and worked in separate spheres.

They did, however, share many common musical influences. Stockhausen’s early electronic works, and Gesang der Jünglinge in particular, influenced Lennon, McCartney, and Berio alike. The piece, created in 1955–56, integrated electronic sounds with recordings of the human voice. According to an account of Lennon’s life by his friend Pete Shotton, Lennon too had become infatuated with Stockhausen’s music by May of 1968, just prior to creating “Revolution 9.” It’s worth noting at this point that the Beatles even included a picture of Stockhausen on the cover of their 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band.

From What do The Beatles have in common with avant-garde composer Luciano Berio? | by Seattle Symphony | Medium

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I used to go to concerts like Stockhausen. That was me, all that shit in the Beatles. I’d play it to them: ‘Listen to this, man!’ I went to this guy Luciano Berio, who’s now an electronic classical kind of guy. ‘Pepper’ came out of that. I’m not trying to say it was all me, but I do think John’s avant-gardeness, later, was really to give himself a go of what he’d seen me having. He didn’t dare do it in suburbia, because the vibe was wrong. He had to come to my house and sneak vicarious thrills.

That’s my thing, really. I’d once said to John — I was talking about Stockhausen, Berio, Cage and these far-out composers — ‘I should do an album called Paul McCartney Goes Too Far.’ He said, ‘That’s a great idea, man, you should do it’. Of course, I never did.

Paul McCartney – From “Conversations with McCartney” by Paul du Noyer, 2016

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Last updated on November 21, 2023