Luciano Berio Study

CHAPTER 1 Introduction Luciano Berio (1925―2003) is an important composer within the canon of Western art music, but that canon is not fixed, and ongoing performances and recordings of his works depend essentially on public interest. One of the ways to measure the level of public interest and critical prestige associated with a composer is via articles and reviews of her/his works.1 Critical reception is inextricably linked with the commoditisation of music as András Szántó the Director of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University explains: Critics are essential to the life of classical music not only because they help fill concert halls. They steer readers to new experiences and help people interpret and understand music both familiar and obscure. They provide a roadmap to a bewildering array of musical offerings that are now available both in live performance and in recordings that vie for consumers’ attention in an unprecedented volume and diversity and through an ever broadening mix of delivery channels.2 To establish the critical reception of Berio’s works outside Europe, this analysis centres on major newspaper and magazine reviews that focus on the press reception of his works in North America, the United Kingdom and Australia. I discuss the critical reception of Berio’s vocal music, solo, chamber and orchestral works, electronic music and his azione musicale (musical theatre).3 I draw upon reception theory to ascertain the influential factors that contribute to the communicative function within Berio’s works that resonate with critics of the mid-late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.4 1 Joseph N. Strauss, “The Myth of Serial ‘Tyranny’ in the 1950s and 1960s,” The Musical Quarterly 83, 3 (Autumn 1999), 319. 2 András Szántó, “The Classical Music Critic: A Survey of Music Critics at General-Interest and Specialized News Publications in America,” (The Music Critics Association of North America, Baltimore, Maryland and National Arts Journalism Program, Columbia University, New York City, 2005), 8. 3 See timeline of works in Appendix. 4 Reception theorists include Hans Robert Jauss, Susan Bennett, social theorist Jürgen Habermas, cultural theorist Stuart Hall and psychologist Patrick Juslin. 1 The critical reception of Berio’s works also needs to include a study of the performers and co-composers of those works. I therefore explore the role of performers in contributing to the success of Berio’s works. As an example, I examine the important contribution of Cathy Berberian in enhancing the critical reception of the works that Berio composed during the course of their professional partnership (1950―1972).5 Focusing on the composer’s fourteen Sequenzas, I consider the lure of these virtuosic pieces to current players and their reception of these works. This thesis will add to what is, so far, a small body of scholarly research on the critical reception of Berio’s works. To date, Tiffany M. Kuo’s dissertation entitled ‘Composing American Individualism: Luciano Berio in the United States 1960–1971’ recounts the critical reception of the composer’s years in North America during the 1960s and integrates politics with the momentum of his international career. Kuo addresses the Cold War politics of the 1960s and how this influenced the composition, production and reception of Berio’s works including Traces, Passaggio and Sinfonia.6 My thesis addresses Berio’s modernist aesthetic and how contemporary twentieth-century literature, theatre, dance and new technologies influenced the composition, production and reception of the composer’s musical output. Another integral part of Berio’s musical aesthetic is his engagment with composers of the previous centuries: [On the one hand] a delicate balance must be maintained, at whatever cost, between recognition of conventions, stylistic references, expectations, and, on the other hand, the concrete experience of giving new life to an object of knowledge.7 Through his use of traditional folk/ popular idioms and transcriptions of works by Claudio Monteverdi (1567―1643), J. S. Bach, Giuseppi Verdi (1813―1901), Giacomo Puccini (1858―1924), Franz Schubert (1797―1828), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756―1791), Henry Purcell 5 Berberian and Berio were married from 1950―64. 6 Tiffany M. Kuo, “Composing American Individualism: Luciano Berio in the United States 1960―1971,” PhD Dissertation, New York University, 2011. 7 Luciano Berio, Remembering the Future, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006, 4―5. 2 (1659―1695), Manuel de Falla (1876―1946), Luigi Boccherini (1743―1805) and Gustav Mahler (1860―1911), I investigate the manner in which Berio casts these previous works anew. Another area of study in this thesis concerns the endorsement of Berio’s works by classical music promoters of the mid-late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The concept of reception theory stems from the late 1960s. Hans Robert Jauss developed this theory for literary studies, with the primary objective to explore the ‘communicative function of literature and art’.8 In literature, a reciprocal relationship exists between writer and audience: writers of the Enlightenment mostly sought to write for a middle-class audience whose values and taste were deemed exemplary; in turn, the audience had its values and tastes reinforced by the literary works of the day.9 As a result of this relationship, there arose an interconnection among works, audiences and new works. Works, then, can be placed in a series, involving a progression, which in large measure is determined by audience reception.10 Reception theory was most influential in the area of literary studies during the 1970s and early 1980s in Germany and North America. Today, reception theory spans a number of areas including the performing arts, theatre, film and television. The primary motivation to expand reception theory to these areas was the recognition that the continuation of these art forms in the twenty-first century is due to their overall positive public reactions. Hence, reception theory is a version of reader/viewer/listener response theory that highlights a person’s general reception and/or interpretation of a particular art form. Critical reception refers to the general reception and interpretations of Berio’s music by newspaper and magazine critics. 8 Hans Robert Jauss, “An Interview with Rein T. Segers,” translated by Timothy Bahti, New Literary History 11, 1 Anniversary Issue: II (Autumn 1979), 87. 9 David P. Schroeder, “Audience Reception and Haydn’s London Symphonies,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 16, 1 (June 1985), 57―58. 10 Ibid., 58. 3 The aim of this thesis is to ascertain the significant factors that contribute to the understanding/ misunderstanding of Berio’s music among newspaper and magazine critics of the mid-late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. I also include critics’ observations of concert attendees’ reactions at particular performances of Berio’s works. These critiques do not give a complete picture of how each audience member interprets Berio’s musical content but, rather, provide a general impression of the reception of a selected work at a particular moment in time. It is the analysis of this general reception and critical reception that makes my study relevant in the context of the New Musicology.11 Reception theory in its application is not a predictive tool but more accurately an explanatory tool: it provides insights within the commercial classical music market as to why some works will have continuing performances, while other works are unlikely to survive past their premiere performance. This study investigates the inherent difficulties in listening to modernist music and the challenges of performing works such as those of Luciano Berio. In addition to the integrity of a work, high profile performers play a crucial role in attracting media attention. Under the direction of newspaper/ magazine editors, critics focus their reviews primarily on these types of performers.12 Berio was well aware of this fact, and he pursued high-profile soloists, orchestras and smaller ensembles, to ensure optimum media coverage. In Chapter 2, I contextualise Berio’s works within my application of the Modernist musical movement of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A major feature of modernist music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was that artists rejected the prior aesthetic and philosophical tenets 11 The New Musicology began in the 1980s as a reaction against positivist musicology and now refers to a body of musicological work that focusses on music in the context of cultural, postcolonial and gender studies and hermeneutics. See, for instance, Susan McClary, Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. 12 Lawrence McGill, Willa J. Conrad, Donald Rosenberg and András Szántó, “The Classical Music Critic: A Survey of Music Critics at General-Interest and Specialized News Publications in America,” 11. 4 that had shaped musical Classicism and Romanticism.13 Modernists therefore define themselves by distinctively contrasting their practices with those of the previous generation.14 For instance, musicologist Martin Scherzinger characterises modernism as ‘seeking out radically new modes of expression and representation’ along all trajectories.15 These include the new modes of expression within the parameters of pitch, harmonic, dynamic and rhythmic organisation as well as expanded timbral

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