The Classical Music Book

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

a whirl of musical quotations from

Bach to Pierre Boulez. Running

throughout its 12 minutes is the

largest quotation of all: the dancing,

spinning Scherzo from Mahler’s

Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.”

The quotation technique

Composers had used quotation and

even collage techniques before; as

early as 1906, and before artists

such as Picasso and Braque had

painted visual collages in the early

1910s, Charles Ives had layered

different melodies and musical

styles in “Central Park in the Dark.”

More recently, John Cage had

begun experimenting with playing

records and differently tuned radios

simultaneously. In a way, quotation

had been a part of classical music

since the masters of organum used

Gregorian chants to make their

polyphonic church music in the

12th century. However, Sinfonia

was the first time quotation had

been used to such an extent: it was

a whole movement for full orchestra,

created almost entirely from

borrowed materials.

On top of all of this are the vocal

lines. Eight singers perform from

a text in which passages from

Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable

are mixed with extracts from

James Joyce, Paul Valéry, musical

directions, and slogans from the

Paris protests. In order for the

singers to be heard, their voices

needed to be amplified, and Berio

turned to the Swingle Singers,

a popular group in their day,

because of their familiarity with

microphone technique.

Sinfonia is a five-part meditation

on the past and the future. The

first part was originally intended

to stand alone. “O King,” the work’s

second movement, was written in

1967 as a tribute to the Reverend

Martin Luther King Jr. After

King’s assassination in April 1968,

Berio decided to incorporate it

into Sinfonia, expanding that into

a work for four singers and full

orchestra and serving now as a

memorial to the Civil Rights leader.

Its text simply repeats King’s name,

separated into “phonemes” (the

smallest individual sounds of a

word) and stretched across wide

intervals of time, as though

evaporating into the air.

Other influences

Sinfonia’s fourth movement is also

a lament, in which Berio mourns

all of the lost heroes and ideas of

movements two and three. Unlike

these, the first movement is a study

in Brazilian origin myths, drawing

on text extracted from Claude Lévi-

Strauss’s revolutionary, and recently

published study in mythology, The

Raw and the Cooked (1964). The

fifth and final movement, which

Berio added only after the work’s

premiere, synthesizes and reflects

upon the previous four. ■

Luciano Berio

Berio was born in the town

of Oneglia, Italy, in 1924. His

father and grandfather, who

were both organists, taught

him to play the piano. After

World War II, he went to study

at the Milan Conservatory,

but an injury to his hand

forced him to give up piano

studies for composition.

He married the American

singer and composer Cathy

Berberian in 1950, writing

several works for her before

their divorce in 1964.

Berio’s interest in the

avant-garde movement began

in the 1950s, and he became

Italy’s leading composer in the

genre. In 1955, he established

an electronic studio in Milan—

one of the world’s first—with

Bruno Maderna. Berio was

also a respected teacher of

composition, particularly at

the Juilliard School in New

York. His pupils included

Steve Reich and Grateful Dead

guitarist Phil Lesh. Berio died

in Rome in 2003.

Other key works

1958 Thema (Omaggio

a Joyce)

1966 Sequenza III

1977 Coro

CONTEMPORARY

Using Mahler was a

tribute to Leonard

Bernstein, who has done

so much for his music.

Luciano Berio

US_316-317_Berio.indd 317 26/03/18 1:02 PM