Remembering the Future (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) by Luciano Berio

The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

by Luciano Berio

In Remembering the Future Luciano Berio shares with us some musical experiences that "invite us to revise or suspend our relation with the past and to rediscover it as part of a future trajectory." His scintillating meditation on music and the ways of experiencing it reflects the composer's profound understanding of the history and contemporary practice of his art.

There is much in this short book that provides insight on Berio's own compositions. Indeed, he comments that writing it "led me to formulate thoughts that might otherwise have remained concealed in the folds of my work." He explores themes such as transcription and translation, poetics and analysis, "open work," and music theater. The reader will also find here numerous insights on the work of other composers, past and present, and much more. A figure of formidable intellect, Berio ranges easily among topics such as Schenkerian analysis, the criticism of Carl Dahlhaus and Theodor Adorno, the works of his friends and sometime collaborators Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco. But Berio carries his learning lightly--his tone is conversational, often playful, punctuated by arresting "The best possible commentary on a symphony is another symphony."

Genres: Music

Hardcover

First published May 30, 2006

About the author

Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) 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. His early work was influenced by Igor Stravinsky and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works explore indeterminacy and the use of spoken texts as the basic material for composition.

Reviews

[Svalbard · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In 1965, right here in Cambridge, I had my fìrst encounter with Roman Jakobson at Harvard's Faculty Club. He came toward me with those bushy, glincing eyes of his and asked me point blank: "So, Berio, what is music?" After a moment of baffied silence, I replied that music is everything we listen to with the intention of listening to music, and that anything can become music. l've always been faithful to this spur-of-the-moment reply-if nor in practice, at least as an ideal. I can now qualify it by adding that anything can become music as long as it can be musically conceptualized, as long as it can be translated into different dimensions. Such conception, such translation is possible only within the notion of music as Text, a multidimensional Text that is in continuous evolution."

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the 1993-94 academic year, the composer Luciano Berio delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. These talks, with some updates over the years, were finally published in 2006 as REMEMBERING THE FUTURE. Essentially Berio offers some meandering musings on the postmodern aesthetic he pursued for most of his career: the relationship of new music to the past, the authenticity of transcription, the relationship between staged action and a music theatre score, and so forth.

I assume that many readers will be drawn to this work because they like Luciano Berio's music and want to appreciate it more deeply. Unfortunately, from that perspective REMEMBERING THE FUTURE is a disappointment. Except for a few comments on the "Sequenzas" and "Chemins" works and Berio's early "Circles", he doesn't really discuss his own music. The comments he does offer on his own pieces are less detailed than many programme notes I've seen.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the transcribed and edited text of Berio's Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1993. It's very interesting, but a little opaque. Berio has many interesting things to say about music. However, both his points and his language are very abstract and philosophical. I felt like I was only grasping about half of what her was saying, and that I'd have to read the book about six more times or go out and get a good grounding in 20th century European philosophy before I'd get all of it. His main preoccupations seemed to be with the relationship of music as an abstract and intellectual art and music as a performed, audible experience. Remembering the Future is well worth reading, even if I felt I wasn't really getting all of it.