Luciano Berio OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian composer known for his creative work. He is famous for his 1968 piece called Sinfonia and a series of solo musical works named Sequenza, which use unusual playing techniques on instruments. Berio was also among the first to explore electronic music. His early compositions were influenced by Igor Stravinsky and used special musical methods. In his later years, he focused on music that included spoken words and allowed some parts of the performance to be decided by the musicians during the performance.

Life and career

Luciano Berio was born on October 24, 1925, in Oneglia, which is now part of Imperia, on the Ligurian coast of Italy. He learned to play the piano from his father and grandfather, who were both organists. During World War II, he was drafted into the army, but on his first day, he injured his hand while learning how a gun worked and spent three months in a military hospital.

After the war, he could no longer play the piano because of his injured hand, so he focused on writing music. He studied at the Milan Conservatory, learning counterpoint from Giulio Cesare Paribeni and composition from Giorgio Federico Ghedini starting in 1948. He was influenced by the music of composers such as Bartók, Hindemith, Stravinsky, and the Second Viennese School. In 1947, he had his first public performance, a piano suite. At this time, he earned money by conducting at small opera houses and teaching singing classes. It was during this work that he met Cathy Berberian, an American mezzo-soprano who was studying for a scholarship. They married in 1950, shortly after graduating, and divorced in 1964. Berio wrote several pieces that used her unique voice.

In 1951, Berio went to the United States to study with Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood, where he became interested in serialism. From 1954, he attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, where he met composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, and Mauricio Kagel. He became interested in electronic music. From 1953 to 1960, he worked for the broadcaster RAI in Milan, where he co-founded the Studio di fonologia musicale in 1955. This studio became one of the most important centers for electronic music in Europe. He invited composers like Henri Pousseur and John Cage to work there. He also published a music magazine called Incontri Musicali from 1956 to 1960, which was linked to a concert series of the same name.

In 1960, Berio returned to Tanglewood as Composer in Residence. In 1962, he accepted a teaching position at Mills College in Oakland, California, on an invitation from Darius Milhaud. From 1960 to 1962, he also taught at the Dartington International Summer School. He moved to the United States permanently in 1963. In 1965, he began teaching at the Juilliard School, where he founded the Juilliard Ensemble, a group that performed contemporary music. In 1966, he married Susan Oyama, a philosopher of science, and they divorced in 1972. His students included composers such as Louis Andriessen, Noah Creshevsky, Steven Gellman, Dina Koston, Steve Reich, Luca Francesconi, Giulio Castagnoli, Flavio Emilio Scogna, William Schimmel, and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead.

Throughout his career, Berio continued to compose and build his reputation. In 1966, he won the Prix Italia for Laborintus II, a piece for voices, instruments, and tape with text by Edoardo Sanguineti. This work was commissioned by French Television to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth. His reputation grew further when his Sinfonia premiered in 1968. In 1972, Berio returned to Italy. From 1974 to 1980, he directed the electro-acoustic division of IRCAM in Paris. He married the musicologist Talia Pecker in 1977.

In 1987, he founded Tempo Reale, a center for musical research and production in Florence. In 1988, he became an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. The next year, he received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. In 1994, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and became a Distinguished Composer in Residence at Harvard University, where he remained until 2000. In 1993–94, he gave the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard, later published as Remembering the Future. In 2000, he became Presidente and Sovrintendente at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Berio continued to conduct and compose until his death.

Berio and Cathy Berberian had a daughter. He and Susan Oyama had a son and a daughter. He and Talia Pecker had two sons.

Berio was an atheist and was known for his sense of humor. He once gave a two-hour seminar at a summer school in the United States analyzing Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, showing it was a work of radical genius. The next day, he gave another two-hour seminar, with a completely serious expression, explaining why it was hopelessly flawed and a creative dead-end.

Berio died in a hospital in Rome on May 27, 2003, at the age of 77.

Work

Berio's electronic music was mostly created during his time at Milan's Studio di Fonologia. One of his most important works from this period was Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) (1958), which used Cathy Berberian reading from James Joyce's Ulysses. This piece is considered the first electroacoustic composition in Western music history that used the human voice and technology to create sound. A later work, Visage (1961), shows Berio making a wordless emotional language by cutting and rearranging a recording of Cathy Berberian's voice. The piece focuses on the meaning of gestures and changes in voice, including sounds like laughter, tears, and speech from different languages such as English, Italian, Hebrew, and Neapolitan.

In 1968, Berio completed O King, a piece that exists in two versions: one for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, and another for eight voices and orchestra. The piece honors Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed shortly before its creation. The music begins with the vowels in his name and then the consonants, combining them to spell his full name at the end.

The orchestral version of O King was later included in Berio's most famous work, Sinfonia (1967–69), which uses eight amplified voices and an orchestra. The voices do not always sing; they also speak, whisper, and shout. The third movement of Sinfonia is a mix of quotes from literature and music. A-Ronne (1974) is also a mix of voices but focuses more on vocal sounds. It was first written as a radio program for five actors and later adapted for eight vocalists and an optional keyboard. This piece was created with poet Edoardo Sanguineti, who included quotes from the Bible, T.S. Eliot, and Karl Marx.

Another work influenced by Sanguineti is Coro (1977), a large piece for orchestra, solo voices, and a choir. The choir members are paired with instruments. The piece lasts about an hour and uses folk music from places like Chile, North America, and Africa. It explores themes such as love, separation, and grief. A repeated line is "come and see the blood on the streets," referencing a poem by Pablo Neruda about the Spanish Civil War.

In his later years, Berio used live electronics in pieces like Ofanìm (1988–1997) and Altra voce (1999). The electronic parts of these works were performed by musicians from Tempo Reale.

Berio was asked by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich to create a solo cello piece for the 70th birthday of conductor Paul Sacher. The piece uses the letters in Sacher's name (eS, A, C, H, E, Re) and is called Les mots sont allés (The Words Are Gone). This work was part of a group of 12 pieces called 12 Hommages à Paul Sacher. Some of these pieces were performed in Zurich in 1976, and the full set was first performed by a Czech cellist in Prague in 2011.

Berio also wrote a series of virtuoso works for solo instruments called Sequenza. The first, Sequenza I (1958), is for flute, and the last, Sequenza XIV (2002), is for cello. These pieces explore the full range of each instrument and often require special playing techniques.

The Sequenze include:
• Sequenza I for flute (1958);
• Sequenza II for harp (1963);
• Sequenza III for woman's voice (1966);
• Sequenza IV for piano (1966);
• Sequenza V for trombone (1966);
• Sequenza VI for viola (1967);
• Sequenza VII for oboe (1969) (later revised and renamed Sequenza VIIa in 2000);
• Sequenza VIIb for soprano saxophone (adapted by Claude Delangle in 1993);
• Sequenza VIII for violin (1976);
• Sequenza IXa for clarinet (1980);
• Sequenza IXb for alto saxophone (adapted by Berio in 1981);
• Sequenza IXc for bass clarinet (adapted by Rocco Parisi in 1998);
• Sequenza X for trumpet and piano (1984);
• Sequenza XI for guitar (1987–88);
• Sequenza XII for bassoon (1995);
• Sequenza XIII for accordion (1995);
• Sequenza XIV for cello (2002);
• Sequenza XIVb for double bass (adapted by Stefano Scodanibbio in 2004).

Other works by Berio include:
• Opera (1970, revised 1977);
• La vera storia (1982);
• Un re in ascolto (1984);
• Vor, während, nach Zaide (1995; a prelude, interlude, and ending for a Mozart opera fragment);
• Outis (1996);
• Cronaca del luogo (1999);
• Turandot (2001; an ending for Puccini's opera).

Berio adapted his own Sequenze into new works called Chemins. For example, Chemins II (1967) is based on Sequenza VI (1967) for viola and uses a solo viola and nine other instruments. Chemins II was later expanded into Chemins III (1968) with an orchestra. Other versions include Chemins IIb (without the solo viola) and Chemins IIc (with a solo bass clarinet added). Other works based on Sequenze include Corale (1981), which uses Sequenza VIII.

Berio also arranged music by other composers, such as Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, and Kurt Weill. For Cathy Berberian, he wrote Folk Songs (1964), a collection of folk music arrangements. He also completed an ending for Puccini's Turandot and finished sketches for Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 10 by using other Schubert works.

Berio believed that transcription was an important part of his music. He

Honours

• 1989: Received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
• 1991: Awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts
• 1994: Honored with the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
• 1996: Received the Praemium Imperiale, an international arts prize