Berio's Words on Music Technology

Andrea Cremaschi* Parrrole: Berio’s Words and Francesco Giomi† *Via Michelangelo 2 on Music Technology 27058 Voghera (PV), Italy [email protected] †Centro Tempo Reale Villa Strozzi-Via Pisana 77 50143 Florence, Italy [email protected] Numbers in music, from Aristotle to the Giomi et al. (2003). Further historical and biograph- late Middle Ages, were inhabited by ical information can be found online at the Univer- heaven and earth, by the entire universe. sal Edition Web site (www.uemusic.at) and in some Nowadays, numbers are uninhabited, or comprehensive studies about the composer, includ- rather, inhabited at will; sometimes ing Stoianova (1985), Osmond-Smith (1991), and they are metaphors, or alibis, or some- Restagno (1995). thing else. It is perhaps still too early to take stock of Be- —Luciano Berio rio’s musical and theoretical contributions to the (Rizzard and De Benedictis 2000, p. 164) field of electroacoustic music. Given the variety of solutions, techniques, and aesthetics Berio used, a For fifty years, Luciano Berio (1925–2003) (see Fig- comprehensive examination of his work is likely to ure 1) worked with music technology, beginning be somewhat disorienting. Nonetheless, it is possi- with the now distant concert on October 28, 1952, ble to trace certain hypotheses and lines of research where he heard his first piece of tape music, and that characterized Berio’s language from the very extending to the recent works Ofanı`m, Outis, beginning. Cronaca del Luogo, and Altra voce. It was not al- One of these is surely the centrality of the act of ways a steady relationship; moments of extraordi- creation and its absolute preeminence in his tech- nary creativity were mixed with moments of nological inquiries—the centrality of the music it- apparent disinterest in technology resulting from self in comparison to its productive mechanisms. problems posed by the electronic manipulation of In this, obviously, he never intended to devalue the sound. Nevertheless, it was an enduring relation- technological component (without which of course ship—surviving even to recent years—thanks to his electroacoustic music would not exist), but Berio’s personal interest in live electronics, which rather to reaffirm the role of the composer as crea- led to the creation of new masterworks. tor, particularly when faced with the vast possibili- This very relationship and the theoretical appara- ties of electronic means. tus that developed is the focus of this article. This Another characteristic is his criticism of those is not meant to be a musicological study, but who consider the electroacoustic resources avail- rather a tribute, a brief retrospective. It is mostly able as a simple ‘‘sampler’’ programmed with new composed of quotations taken from essays or inter- sounds. The revolution in new technologies has views in order to cover the entire arc of Berio’s pro- brought us far beyond this, as is clearly evident in duction, and it is organized as a sort of the generation of new musical processes, in the si- multi-voiced dialogue. Therefore, there is no sys- multaneous control of micro- and macro- tematic purpose, nor is there a desire to present an structures, and thus in the elimination, as we will analysis of Berio’s music. We refer the reader will- see, of a dualistic conception of the material. For ing to investigate the matter deeper to a number of Berio, not to understand how we arrived at this rev- contributions on specific subjects, including Berio olution is one of the most serious dangers that can befall a composer. (1956), Delalande (1974), Berio (1975), Vidolin As will become evident, central to Berio’s think- (1992), Menezes (1993), Scaldaferri (1994), and ing was his desire to create a continuity between Computer Music Journal, 28:1, pp. 26–36, Spring 2004 electroacoustic music and instrumental music. He ᭧ 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. imagined no clear separation between genres nor 26 Computer Music Journal Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/014892604322970625 by guest on 23 September 2021 Figure 1. Luciano Berio. ᭧ Universal Edition/ Eric Marinitsch. constant and rapid evolution, nor can we define it according to its general principles, by now shared by almost every form of musical thought. Electronic music, in a certain sense, no longer exists because it is everywhere and is a part of everyday musical thought. We can describe the specific techniques but we can no longer hold electronic music up as the antithe- sis of other modes and conceptions of musical creation. Electronic music has in fact contrib- uted to developing a unitary vision of musical process, to concretely overcoming the har- monic–timbral dichotomy and to discovering a true, musical homogeneity and continuity between means of production, but rather creative among extremely diverse acoustic characters, acts that are fundamentally defined by the imagina- whether they be produced by voices, instru- tions of composers and by their capacities to inte- ments, electronic generators, or other means. grate various materials and memories they bring to As a result, a musician of today who does music. not explore the world of electronic music is Many other dilemmas that Berio addressed will necessarily incomplete. In the same way, a be easily traceable in the citations that follow. We musician who ignores voices and instruments therefore leave it to the composer himself to intro- to concentrate only on sounds produced and duce the topic of this article. This first essay, from transformed electronically is not a total musi- 1976, serves as a sort of ‘‘balance sheet’’ for the cian. Not surprisingly, the most important first twenty-five years of the history of electro- ‘‘electronic’’ works of the last twenty-five acoustic music. At the time he wrote this essay, years are those that have sought a mediation Berio was midway through his career, both crea- between the acoustic dimension and another tively and theoretically. realm—those that expanded the continuity between ‘‘electronic’’ sounds and ‘‘natural’’ sounds, enabling interaction between the dif- Parrrole ferent levels through reciprocal transformation. So, electronic music is not news today because For some time now, electronic music has not it is an integral part of that factory of meaning, been news. We discuss it less than ever and it of relationships, and of expression that we con- is rare to meet musicians who still speak of it tinue to call music. with that optimistic, futuristic vocabulary of The first works of electronic music in the the 1950s, who embrace it as the banner of the 1950s were as if wrapped in silence, not only avant-garde, as the symbol of liberation from because the concert halls that occasionally the slavery of instrumental academia. Not only hosted them were often empty, but also be- is it difficult to find someone still willing to cause they did not make reference to the musi- defend and describe the infinite possibilities of cal work of humans. They lacked the electronic music and the lusty cheek-to-cheek well-known behaviors associated with musical relationship of the musician to sonic material, legacy. Often, these electronic works were like it has become quite difficult to use and to de- bottles tossed in the sea; only some contained fine the term itself, electronic music. We can a message that was then picked up and trans- no longer define it solely by its methods, in formed. (Berio 1976a, pp. vii–viii) Cremaschi and Giomi 27 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/014892604322970625 by guest on 23 September 2021 In My Beginning sound, from which different musical functions can be derived through an analysis; and an ad- We now return to the story of Berio’s personal, al- ditive pole, essentially based, in those years, on most fortuitous introduction to electronic music in the addition and combination of sine waves. I 1952. In the succeeding years, his efforts expanded would say that these two conceptions, these on this first experience, culminating in the creation two different operative setups, influenced for a of the Studio di Fonologia (1955) at the Radio Audi- few years the work of various studios in the zioni Italiane (RAI) in Milan, the history of which world, as if it were an ideological alternative. is already well known. (Rizzardi and De Benedictis 2000, p. 162) My first contact with the possibility of new Our work at the Studio di Fonologia, at least means of productions happened, quite when I was there, was not a synthesis between strangely, in 1952 at the Museum of Modern two existing entities. I prefer to describe it as a Art in New York, during a concert dedicated dialogue between different dimensions, rather for the most part to [Edgard] Vare`se and di- than as the synthesis of two specific entities. rected by Leopold Stokowski. I say ‘‘strangely,’’ (Rizzardi and De Benedictis 2000, p. 164) because I was completely in the dark about what [Werner] Meyer-Eppler and [Herbert] Ei- It seemed to me that I was flying in those mert were preparing in Germany, and I knew years. I was aware of embracing and beginning of what Pierre Schaeffer was doing in Paris to master new dimensions, both musical and only by word of mouth. In that concert in New acoustic, that appeared to me through my early York, for the first time, a piece of tape music studies and my early electroacoustic experi- was presented, based on the elementary manip- ences. In that period, between 1953 and 1954, I ulation of piano sounds recorded on tape. It truly regained the time I had lost from living was called Sonic Contours, and [Otto] Luening in the city—particularly during the war—and and [Vladimir] Ussachevsky were the compos- in Milan, in the immediate postwar period, I ers.

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