24 Facts About Luciano Berio

1.

Luciano Berio OMRI was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled Sequenza), and for his pioneering work in electronic music.

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2.

Luciano Berio was born in Oneglia, on the Ligurian coast of Italy.

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3.

Luciano Berio was taught how to play the piano by his father and grandfather, who were both organists.

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4.

Luciano Berio was unable to continue studying the piano because of his injured hand, so instead concentrated on composition.

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5.

Luciano Berio made a living at this time by accompanying singing classes, and it was in doing this that he met the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, whom he married shortly after graduating.

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6.

Luciano Berio wrote a number of pieces that exploited her distinctive voice.

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7.

In 1952, Luciano Berio went to the United States to study with Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood, from whom he gained an interest in serialism.

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8.

Luciano Berio became interested in electronic music, co-founding the Studio di fonologia musicale, an electronic music studio in Milan, with Bruno Maderna in 1955.

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9.

In 1960, Luciano Berio returned to Tanglewood, this time as Composer in Residence, and in 1962, on an invitation from Darius Milhaud, took a teaching post at Mills College in Oakland, California.

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10.

From 1960 to 1962 Luciano Berio taught at the Dartington International Summer School.

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11.

Luciano Berio's students included Louis Andriessen, Steven Gellman, Dina Koston, Steve Reich, Luca Francesconi, Giulio Castagnoli, Flavio Emilio Scogna, William Schimmel and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead.

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12.

All this time Luciano Berio had been steadily composing and building a reputation, winning the Prix Italia in 1966 for Laborintus II, a work for voices, instruments and tape with text by Edoardo Sanguineti that was commissioned by the French Television to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri birth.

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13.

Luciano Berio's reputation was cemented when his Sinfonia was premiered in 1968.

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14.

Luciano Berio was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.

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15.

Luciano Berio was active as a conductor and continued to compose to the end of his life.

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16.

Luciano Berio gave a two-hour seminar at a summer school in the United States analysing Beethoven's 7th Symphony, demonstrating that it was a work of radical genius.

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17.

In 1968, Luciano Berio completed O King a work which exists in two versions: one for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, the other for eight voices and orchestra.

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18.

Luciano Berio composed a series of virtuoso works for solo instruments under the name Sequenza.

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19.

Luciano Berio is known for adapting and transforming the music of others, but he adapted his own compositions: the series of Sequenze gave rise to a series of works called Chemins each based on one of the Sequenze.

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20.

Luciano Berio wrote an ending for Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot and in Rendering (1989) took the few sketches Franz Schubert made for his Symphony No 10 and completed them by adding music derived from other Schubert works.

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21.

In "Two Interviews", Luciano Berio mused about what a college course in transcription would look like, looking not only at Franz Liszt, Ferruccio Busoni, Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, himself, and others, but to what extent composition is always self-transcription.

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22.

Luciano Berio's works are often analytic acts: deliberately analysing myths, stories, the components of words themselves, his own compositions, or preexisting musical works.

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23.

Luciano Berio often offers his compositions as forms of academic or cultural discourse themselves rather than as "mere" fodder for them.

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24.

Luciano Berio wrote many remarkable pieces for piano which vary from solo pieces to essentially concerto pieces.

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