Luciano Berio is considered one of the cornerstones of contemporary music, in the year of 2001 even competing with three years younger Karlheinz Stockhausen for the Polar Prize of Music, but this time loosing out to Stockhausen. Both Stockhausen and Berio have a glorious past in early electronics, their pieces from those days still harboring an immense importance up to this day, concerning the way we consider and perceive sounds as such as well as in a compositional situation.
Among Luciano Berio’s important early electronic works I might mention “Mimusique n. 1” (1953), “Mutazioni” (1955), “Perspectives” (1957), “Il mito del buon selvaggio” (1957), “Musica di scena n. 9” (1958, “Thema – Ommagio a Joyce” (1958), “Différences” (1958 – 60), “Momenti” (1960”), “Visage” (1961) and “Esposizione” (1962).
The greatness of composers like Stockhausen and Berio lies, however, in their diversity, their complexity and their lack of genre-imprisonments, which in the case of Stockhausen has lead to a state of unparalleled un-genre-ness. Berio has involved himself in many styles and practices too, as this CD shows, in comparison to his electronic works. Mode Records and producer Laura Kaminsky of Musicians’ Accord have here gathered a collection of vocal or partly vocal works by Berio.
At the center of attention stands American soprano Christine Schadeberg, who is considered one of the foremost vocal interpreters of modern music in the U.S.A., but an example of her overall diversity is the fact that she has sung in Meredith Monk’s opera “Atlas” as well as in Mozart’s “Requiem”! It might be tough for Christine Schadeberg to fill the void after the late Cathy Berberian (Berio’s one-time wife and consequently inspirator of many of the vocal works) in pieces like “Circles” and “Sequenza III”, but life goes on, and we cannot – should not – let the supremacy of the deceased hamper our contemporary efforts. Berberian was a one of a kind artist, and I can’t think of anyone who seriously measures up to her standards, but Christine Schadeberg makes a darn good try!

The CD starts with “Folk Songs” (1964). The work is divided into eleven parts, named “Black is the color”, “I wonder as I wander”, “Loosin yelav”, “Rossignolet du bois”, “A la femminisca”, “La donna ideale”, “Ballo”, “Motettu de tristura”, “Maluros qu’o uno fenno”, “Lo fiolairé” and “Azerbaijan love song”.
The fiddling viola of the first of the folk songs makes the homage to folklore immediately apparent, and sets the atmosphere for the whole set.
At the time of composition in 1964 this set startled the hip audience, who had gotten used to Berio as an avant-garde composer of extended vocal techniques and an advocator of all kinds of provoking musical ideas. This classical, romantic venture of digging into the tradition of the people raised a number of eyebrows within circles of cunning specialists and connoisseurs of the shocking and the politically correct… However, as the situation was analyzed, the seemingly reactionary act of composing the “Folk Songs” in fact soon was considered the ultimate radicalism, as the music of the people could be seen as a leftist plight… Those were the days…
Berio, however, explained his inclination for folk music this way, in a book of interviews from 1985:

“My links with folk music are often of an emotional character. When I work with that music I am always caught by the thrill of discovery… I return again and again to folk music because I try to establish contact between that and my own ideas about music. I have a utopian dream, though I know it cannot be realized: I would like to create a unity between folk music and our music – a real, perceptible, understandable conduit between ancient, popular music-making which is so close to everyday work and music.”

That cannot be so hard to understand, really. After experimenting with all kinds of extensions of musical expression, even resorting to the rawest of vocal growlings, it must be a relief to fall back into down-to-earth traditions of folklore (mist across plowed fields, crows crowing; rural timelessness), seeking them out with our new ears of today, and possibly finding solutions and starting points never before considered.
However, Berio doesn’t copy the expressions of the folklore, but lets them loose inside a contemporary musical environment which he controls, making two periods merge in a sequence of expansions and contractions along the evolution of the music, building a tension between two cultural lines, sometimes having sparks of electricity jump from one line to the other, enriching tradition with contemporary experimentation and vice versa.
As we study the songs and their antecedents we find that the set has a lot to do with Berio’s relation with Cathy Berberian. Their marriage was coming apart at the time, and sure enough many of the songs deal with the peculiarities of married life… Two songs are in fact not folk songs, but were written by Berio in the late 1940s, when he was courting Berberian; “La donna ideale” (sic!) and “Ballo”. One of the songs is Armenian, alluding on Berberian’s heritage. Christine Schadeberg’s voice circles and spirals throughout, making the most of the compositions in sparkling performances of seemingly effortless naturalness.

“Sequenza III” (1966) is written for voice and voice alone; female voice. It is a true child of the experimenting 1960s, resembling other vocalisms without text – or intelligible text… - with artists like Meredith Monk, Michiko Hirayama, Saincho Namchylak, Joan LaBarbara or Hebriana Alainentalo. All kinds of vocalisms emit from this score; simulated monologs, art song, laughter, coughs – and all kinds of emotions reflect off those sometimes frantic and insane utterances, which sometimes involve sound poetry methods. There is a text, or fragments of a text, inherent here, by Markus Kutter, which was fragmented to begin with, and which Berio fragmented even further. When I hear Christine Schadeberg master even this difficult – and very different – art form (usually practiced only by the aficionados of sound poetry), my respect for her skill increases even more. It’s a long way from Mozart’s “Requiem” – yes, a long way from Berio’s “Folk Songs” too.

“Chamber Music” (1953) carries a text by James Joyce. This is by far the earliest piece on the CD, and it conveys a feeling of the style in style at that time in the early 1950s, of the twelve-tone serialism of Darmstadt – but let’s not forget that Berio at the same time occupied himself with some of the earliest experiments of electronic music. Even though “Chamber Music” fits quite well into the music of the time, it still harbors a remarkably melodic atmosphere, without any actual melody – especially noticeable in the way he builds the second movement of the work.

“O King” (1968) was originally written in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but I discovered it as part of “Sinfonia” (1968) for eight voices and orchestra, which was composed for the 125th Anniversary of The New York Philharmonics, dedicated to Leonard Bernstein. Here the piece is orchestrated in its original form for chamber quintet and soprano. The voice emerges seamlessly out of the tonal web, as an instrument among instruments, and you make it out as you would a shadowy figure on a backdrop of a hazy forest curtain at dusk, only slowly and with difficulties. The music seems simple enough, the way it slowly progresses inside the symbolic name of the beloved departed. Note that the only text indeed is the title, “O King”. The voice becomes clearer as the piece moves on, so that it stands out loud and clear at the conclusion, but still remaining an instrument amongst instruments. Very very beautiful!

e. e. cummings has inspired many a composer. I easily come to think of the Swedish composer Folke Rabe, who has scored and recorded a set of cummings poems called “to love” (1984), found on Folke Rabe’s CD “Basta” on Phono Suecia PSCD 67 (1994).
Berio’s scored set of cummings poems is called “Circles” (1960). The instrumentation is radical and minimal; harp, two percussionists and soprano – even though, of course, the percussionists do have many instruments at hand. I have a predilection for these meager, downscaled instrumentations, which most of the time are much more economically expressive than larger orchestrations, carved in contours of brilliance. This is the case here. Berio took some of his experiences from his electronic adventures, for example the use of Cathy Berberian’s voice in “Thema – Ommagio a Joyce” (1958), and brought them into this purely acoustical setting. This is akin to the way Stockhausen also engaged his newly found experiences in the WDR studio for other, acoustical, causes – like nobody else till this day, I might add!
The title refers back to the construction of the work, which lets the words and the music react to each other – or act on each other – in a seemingly (or philosophically circular fashion. However, the most obvious circular quality of the piece are found in the condensed rondo order of the poems, in which the first two poems are re-enacted in an opposite order at the end, thus rendering the poems an order of 1 – 2 – 3 – 2 – 1. Even in other aspects the piece moves in a spirit of circularity, on different levels, such as when the percussionists and the harpist start singing.

The booklet that Mode Records provide is of great interest, carrying, in addition to the initiated introductory text, all the poems in German, French and English, plus a graphic layout of the placing of all the percussive instruments of the two percussionists of “Circles”. The instruments of the groups are:

Wow, I wish I could be at a live performance! Don’t you? Nonetheless, this recording of “Circles”, along with the other splendid takes on this release come close to being at live performances, and Mode Records and the artists involved have succeeded in giving this release brilliance of both sound and artistry!