Luciano Berio: Two Interviews

by Luciano Berio, Luciano Berio, Rossana Dalmonte

Two seminal interviews with the celebrated Italian composer, exploring his views on music, his method of composition and wider philosophies.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1985

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

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

These two interviews, by Rossana Dalmonte and Bálint András Varga, with one of the great twentieth-century modernist composers were disappointing in terms of actually bringing this reader greater appreciation of Berio’s fine music.

Especially the Dalmonte one that makes up three-quarters of the book: it starts off with a long theoretical discussion of what music is, and the validity of Theodore Adorno’s views, where we get no insight into Berio’s own music. Things get moderately more interesting when the discussion turns to Berio’s childhood, but it’s not until about page 100, halfway through this book, that Berio starts to talk about his own music! And so much of what is said was already well known to me from other Berio scholarship.

The interview with Bálint András Varga is moderately more interesting, as it is focused entirely on Berio’s works. However, much of this, too, was already familiar. Moreover, both interviews are a missed opportunity in that they come after Berio’s several years of involvement with IRCAM, but don’t touch on his work there (some generalities about electronic music versus acoustic instruments aside) or why he left.