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Luciano Berio

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Luciano Berio was an Italian composer, born in 1925 in Oneglia on the Ligurian coast. His father and grandfather were organists and taught him to play the piano. After the war a hand injury prevented him from continuing as a pianist and he turned to composing, first at the Milan conservatory. There he married the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, for whom he wrote a great deal of music. Later he studied with Luigi Dallapiccola, met Boulez and Stockhausen among others in Darmstadt, and became a teacher in the United States, including at the Juilliard School.

Music and breakthrough

In 1955 he founded the Studio di fonologia musicale in Milan together with Bruno Maderna, one of the most important studios for electronic music in Europe. There he made Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) in 1958, in which the voice of Berberian reading from James Joyce's Ulysses is manipulated by technical means. Laborintus II won the Prix Italia in 1966. His best-known orchestral work is Sinfonia from 1968. He also wrote the Sequenza series, solo pieces in which instruments and voice are used with extended playing techniques.

Influence

Berio also belongs in the history of pop. According to a biography of Lennon and McCartney, McCartney attended a concert of Laborintus 2 in 1966 and afterwards spoke with the composer. The tape collage in that piece is said to have been an inspiration for the Beatles' sound-collage work on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Berio died in Rome in 2003.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Laborintus 2 and notice how voices, instruments and tape material are layered over one another. Try to hear where a sound collage emerges of the kind you also know from the pop music of the late 1960s.

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists