Sinfonia (Berio)

"Sinfonia" is a composition by the Italian composer Luciano Berio that was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary. Composed in 1968-69 for orchestra and eight amplified voices, it is a musically innovative post-serial classical work, with multiple vocalists commenting about musical (and other) topics as the piece twists and turns through a seemingly neurotic journey of quotations and dissonant passages. The eight voices are not used in a traditional classical way; they frequently do not sing at all, but speak, whisper and shout words by Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose "Le cru et le cuit" provides much of the text, excerpts from Samuel Beckett's novel "The Unnamable", instructions from the scores of Gustav Mahler and other writings.

Leonard Bernstein states in the text version of his Charles Eliot Norton lectures from 1973 that "Sinfonia" was representative of the new direction classical music was taking after the pessimistic decade of the sixties Harv |Bernstein|1976| p=423.

Premieres

Originally commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary, "Sinfonia" was premiered on October 10, 1968 by the orchestra and The Swingle Singers, with Berio conducting. At the time the work was still in four movements. In the months after the premiere Berio added a fifth movement, which was first played when "Sinfonia" was performed during the 1969 Donaueschingen Festival by the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ernest Bour. The New York Philharmonic first played the five movement version of "Sinfonia" on October 8, 1970, conducted by Leonard Bernstein—to whom the work is dedicated.

Movements

The work is in five movements:
# I
# II - O King
# III - In ruhig fliessender Bewegung
# IV
# VThe first movement primarily uses a French text source and the third movement primarily uses English text sources. The text for the second movement is limited to the phonemes of the title, "O Martin Luther King." The remaining movements are primarily instrumental with occasional vocal elements. The overall form of the piece is an arch form with elements of the first movement reflected in the fifth and connections between the second and fourth. The third movement, a study of inter-relations, stands on its own.

First movement

In the first movement of "Sinfonia", Berio uses texts from "Le cru et le cuit" ("The Raw and the Cooked") by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. The form of the piece is also inspired by Lévi-Strauss, who in his work on mythology had found that many myths were structured like musical compositions, with some myths having a "fugal" form and others resembling a sonata. One mythical transformation however, had a structure for which he was not able to find a musical equivalent Harv |Lévi-Strauss|Eribon|1991| p=177, and this is the form Berio used in his "Sinfonia"—though Lévi-Strauss did not notice this. Interviewed by Didier Eribon, he said:

: [Y] ou know that Berio used "The Raw and the Cooked" in his "Sinfonia". A part of the text is recited, accompanied by the music. I admit that I did not grasp the reason for this choice. During an interview a musicologist asked me about it, and I answered that the book had just come out and the composer had probably used it because it was at hand. Now, a few months ago Berio, whom I don't know, sent me a very disgruntled letter. He had read the interview, several years after the fact, and assured me that the movement of this symphony offered the musical counterpart of the mythical transformation I was revealing. He included a book by a musicologist Harv |Osmond-Smith|1985 who had demonstrated the fact. I apologized for the misunderstanding, which was, I said, the result of my lack of musical training, but I'm still baffled. Harv |Lévi-Strauss|Eribon|1991| p=178

econd movement: O King

In 1968, Berio completed "O King", a work dedicated to the memory of Martin Luther King (Berio 1986). This movement exists in two versions: one for voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, the other for eight voices and orchestra. The orchestral version of "O King" was, shortly after its completion, integrated into "Sinfonia". It uses a fair amount of whole tone scale motifs (which also appears in the quote from "Le Sacre du Printemps" in the third movement.)

Third movement

In the third movement of "Sinfonia" Berio lays the groundwork by quoting multiple excerpts from the third movement scherzo from Mahler's "Symphony No. 2" and has the orchestra play a slightly cut-up, re-shuffled and occasionally re-orchestrated version of it. Many have described Berio's third movement as a "musical collage", borrowing musical quotation techniques that were first used on a grand scale more than sixty years earlier by American composer Charles Ives in his Symphony No. 2 from 1902.

The orchestra plays snatches of Claude Debussy's "La Mer", Maurice Ravel's "La Valse", Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring", as well as quotations from Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Johannes Brahms, Henri Pousseur, Paul Hindemith, and many others (including Berio himself) creating a dense collage, occasionally to humorous effect. When one of the reciters says "I have a present for you", the orchestra follows immediately with the introductory chord from "Don," the first movement from "Pli selon pli" by Pierre Boulez.

The quoted fragments are often chosen because they bear a rhythmic or melodic likeness to Mahler's scherzo. For example, Berio uses a violin line from the second movement of Alban Berg's violin concerto with chromatically descending sixteenth notes two measures before a similarly descending line appears in Mahler's scherzo. This is then accompanied by another violin descent, taken from Johannes Brahms' violin concerto Harv |Schwartz|Godfrey|1993| p=378.

The eight individual voices simultaneously recite texts from various sources, most notably the first page of Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable. Other text fragments include references to James Joyce, graffiti Berio noticed during the May 1968 protests in Paris and notes from Berio's diary Harv |Schwartz|Godfrey|1993| p=376.

Berio himself describes the movement as a "Voyage to Cythera", in which a ship filled with gifts is headed towards the island dedicated to the goddess of love. This idea is musically implied by the "flowing" multi-quoted excerpts from Mahlers second symphony, the boat drifting past a variety of historical music quotations.

Musical quotations

A partial list of quotations used in the third movement of "Sinfonia" in order of their appearance:
*Schoenberg's "Five Pieces for Orchestra", fourth movement (violent scale played by the brass)
*Mahler's "Resurrection Symphony", third movement (the only quotation that is ongoing)
* Berlioz's "idée fixe" from the "Symphonie Fantastique" (played by the clarinets)
*Ravel's "La Valse" (orchestra plays octave motif with piccolo playing a chromatic scale)
*Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" (the "Dance of the Earth" sequence at the end of the first tableux)
*Stravinsky's "Agon" (upper oboe lick from the "Double pas de quatre")
*Richard Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" (one of the waltzes composed for the opera)
*a chorale by Johann Sebastian Bach
*Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" (the drowning scene late in the third act)
*Beethoven's "Pastorale Symphony", second movement (melody stated with the clarinets)
*(Schoenberg segment quoted again)
*Debussy's "La Mer", second movement "Jeux de vagues"
*Boulez's "Pli Selon Pli", very first chord of the entire piece from the first movement ("Don")
*Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Gruppen" for three orchestras (during the introductions of the vocalists near the end)

Analysis

The result is a narrative with the usual tension and release of classical music, but using a completely different language. The actual chords and melodies at any one time do not seem as important as the fact that we are, for example, hearing a part of Mahler or a particular bit of Alban Berg with added words by Beckett. Because of this, the movement is often described as one of the first examples of Postmodern music Fact|date=May 2008. It has also been described as a deconstruction of Mahler's second symphony, just as Berio's "Visage" was a deconstruction of Cathy Berberian's voice.

One of the more neurotic moments of the piece takes place during the "Wozzeck" drowning quotation late in the third movement. At this point separate individual singers are contesting each other, requesting the music to either "stop!" or "keep going!". Another notable quote near the very end of the same movement is when the spotlight tenor voice states "...there was hope for Resurrection or almost". This is a clear reference to the Mahler's second symphony of which the third movement is quoted throughout the entire third movement of "Sinfonia".

There are also brief elements of indeterminancy that pop up in the third movement—mentions of another piece on the program just past midpoint and the singers and conductor at the end. These would change from performance to performance as they are variables. For example, the in-print Erato label 1986 recording thanks "Mr. Boulez" not because one of his pieces is quoted but because he is the conductor on that particular recording.

Because "Sinfonia" directly quotes from other musical sources as far back as the late baroque era (Bach) and as recent as a few years before the 1968 premiere of the piece, it is arguable that "Sinfonia" uses the widest array of techniques ever employed in a single musical work. Even the latest musical technique to evolve by that time, sound mass from the early sixties (originated by such composers as Krzysztof Penderecki and Gyorgy Ligeti), is used several times throughout the third movement.

Fourth movement

The fourth movement was initially intended as a kind of coda, and reuses texts from the first three movements. It opens with a quotation from Lévi-Strauss that is at the same time a veiled reference to Mahler's second symphony: the fourth movement of "Sinfonia" opens with the words "rose de sang" (French for "rose of blood"), and the fourth movement of Mahlers symphony begins with the words "O Röschen roth!" (German for "O red rosebud!") Harv |Berio|Dalmonte|Varga|1985| p=109.

References

*Citation | last=Berio | first=Luciano | author-link =Luciano Berio | last2=Dalmonte | first2=Rosanna |last3=Varga | first3=Bálint András | title=Two Interviews | publisher=Boyars | place=London | year=1985 | isbn=0714528293
* cite album-notes |title=Sinfonia / Eindrücke |bandname=Orchestre National de France & New Swingle Singers feat. cond. by Pierre Boulez |year=1986 |notestitle=Sinfonia |first=Luciano |last=Berio |pages=pp. 4-5 |format=CD liner |publisher=Erato/Radio France |publisherid=ECD 88151 |location=Paris |mbid=65bf6da8-107d-479c-86b1-29c567a5e111
*Citation | last=Bernstein | first=Leonard | author-link =Leonard Bernstein | title=The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard | publisher=Harvard University Press | place=Cambridge, MA | date=1976 | publication-date=2002 | isbn=0714528293
*Citation | last=Lévi-Strauss | first=Claude | author-link =Claude Lévi-Strauss | last2=Eribon | first2=Didier | title=Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss | publisher=University Of Chicago Press | place=Chicago | year=1991 | isbn=0226474755
*Citation | last=Osmond-Smith | first=David | title=Playing on Words: A Guide to Luciano Berio's Sinfonia | publisher=Ashgate | place=London | year=1985 | isbn=0947854002
*Citation | last=Schwartz | first=Elliott | last2=Godfrey | first2=Daniel | title=Music Since 1945: Issues, Materials, and Literature | publisher=Schirmer Books | place=New York City | year=1993 | isbn=0028730402

External links

* [http://www.themodernword.com/beckett/beckett_berio_sinfonia.html About Sinfonia]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZEvfp0gWFc Video of Simon Rattle conducting the 3rd movement]