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'Music Is Not a Solitary Act': Conversation with Luciano BerioAuthor(s): Theo Muller and Luciano BerioReviewed work(s):Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 199 (Jan., 1997), pp. 16-20Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/945526 .Accessed: 29/05/2012 09:28

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Theo Muller

'Music is not a solitary act':conversation with Luciano Berio

(This interview took place at Berio's home atRadicondoli, uscany n August 1995,as a preliminaryto the modern music estival 'ConSequenze', ountedlater that year in Rotterdam by the Rotterdamse

Kunststichting, eaturing Berio's music and in parti-cular his series of Sequenzas nd heir related Chemins.The text has previously een published n Muziekcahier5, edited by Theo Muller.)

The house is tucked away behind a comer of theroad. Once you have passed the gate, theentrance lane, three sleepy dogs, the hall, aspacious iving room and the doors to the terrace,you are face to face with the most magnificentTuscan landscape imaginable. The view of thehills is

unspoilt,as is the silence around. It's the

ideal place for Luciano Berio to create thecolourful, imaginative sound-world that hasmade him, at the age of 70, one of the mostpopular and admired composers of today.

Here Berio lives with his wife Talia and theirtwo sons. Like a 20th-century Verdi, he governs acountry estate which provides the fruit, thevegetables and even the wine on their table. Lifeis good amidst the Tuscan hills, but there is littletime for leisure. On the piano in Berio's studio

there are huge sheets of music paper: parts of theopera Outis he is writing for La Scala. After thatcomes Sequenza XIII for accordion, to bepremiered during the ConSequenze festival inRotterdam. Berio is a busy man. But he is alsovery hospitable, and he takes great interest in theDutch musical scene, which he knows ratherwell. Only when I have told him how LouisAndriessen's health is, what Peter Schat is up to,what repertoire Riccardo Chailly is performingwith the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and

how Stockhausen's helicopter piece (premieredduring the previous Holland Festival) was, do weturn to the questions I have brought.

Speaking bout our own music, ou often make use oflinguistic erms ike yntax, emantics, iscourse,honemes.How strongly o music and language elate?

To start with: music is not a language. Ofcourse it depends on what you include in thenotion 'language', which can be so immense. As

the Philosopher said: language is the house ofbeing. But if you look at language n more detail,you find many things that don't have anequivalent in music. Language has a rational,

signifying element which differs from its rep-resentative function. In music, though, youcannot distinguish a deep level from a surfacelevel, you cannot separate he signifying from thesignifier. This creates a big problem when you tryto compare anguage and music. Of course, thereare linguistic moments in music. Classical musiccan sometimes be seen as a complex, miraculousmetaphor of language. Mozart's music is speech,a beautiful speech, embedded in classical form.The presentation of the characters and the

theatrical development in his operas are part of amusical development too. Vocal music s perhapsdifferent n that t usually has a text.

Even without a text, with Mozart here is oftenthe presence of a hidden narrative. Most of hisinstrumental music could be sung. This continuity,this unity of a musical world is a fascinating hing.It's the highest moment in Western music, wheremusic becomes in many aspects almost alanguage. Almost for language is really some-thing else.

When using he term semantics', oustill seem oreferto an explicit, inguistic ort of meaning.

Not a specific sort of meaning, neither explicitnor specific: I am afraid that these are attributesthat do not readily belong to musical experience,nor to language. These are impossible subjects.You can walk around them, trying to penetratethem through many different doors. The doorswill be sealed or the rooms will be empty.Anyway, the process of trying is certainly morerewarding than the result. Everything pertainingto commumcation s language n the most generalsense, so general that when we say 'the languageof music', we are actually using a metaphor.However, language and music share the obviousfact that for both the relation of sound andmeaning - whatever that means - is arbitrary,based on conventions, on a set of codes that wemay accept or refuse.When dealing with texts, as in 0 King, Circles orSequenza III, you obviously akepleasure n chopping

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'Music s not a solitary ct' 17

them up into almost unrecognizable ragments.At the same ime you claim o have the highestrespect or text.

Well, it's a way of making ove with a text. Iuse the music as an nstrument o analyse he text,to put t in a different ight and discover mplicitor new meanings rom it.

Once, he relation etween ext and musicwasrather onventionalized. he whole techniqe ofwriting a verse had an analogy n the way musicwas phrased, nd vice versa. There was feedbackbetween he two. The late 18th-century aw thetriumph f this coincidence f music and poetry.Later, music became more an instrument o

discover hidden parts of the text. At the sametime he nterest n using prose ather han poetrygradually ncreased. Music became more of a filmcamera, r a microscope xploring ll the detailsof a text. As a result all phonetic aspects f thetext were assinilated nto musical process.But even he mallest inglewords rsyllableseem orefer irectlyo a conventional eaning.

Indeed, hey will always unction sa signal.used this phenomenon n 0 King, where themusical tructure was meant o finally discover

the name of Martin Luther King. In the Sequenzafor voice, phonetic lements are selected rom ashort text. These elements are repeated manytimes, always n a different order. Through hiskaleidoscopic iew of the text, you will in the endalso have an expressive otion of it, without verhaving heard he text in its actual orm.There eems o be an analogy etween erialism ndChomsky's ransformational rammar. oth systemswere developed n the 1950s and became eryinfluential. o you see a relation, speciallyn the

structural haracterof the two systems?First of all, there s a philosophical onsider-ation to be made. You can apply a deductiveapproach, which means that you construct atheory and then find confirmation f it in theworks. Or you use an nductive pproach, hichmeans hat you first make a concrete analysis fworks, and then derive a theory from it.According o me, these two approaches houldalways overlap, because n any case - concept-ually and empirically we always have to cope

with a priori's.Those who were trying o apply Chomsky'stheory to music gnored either the one or theother. Usually hey worked n a deductive way.But assuming or a moment hat ransformationalgrammar an ndeed be applied o music, ou willfind confirmation f this only in a very limitedamount of works, in a simple, highly codedGavotte, for instance. In music you cannotseparate he surface evel from the deep level.

You cannot separate musical 'phonetics' frommusical 'grammar'. Furthermore, it's hard todefine what musical grammar is, anyhow. You

can do this only afterwards, post actum. This issomething basic we tend to forget: the twodimensions of perception. First there is a global,instantaneous perception which can give you avery strong impression of something. Then thereis a delayed perception, which is equallyimportant: you feel the need to go back, to lookagain, to listen again. When people try to applylinguistics to music, this time-dimension in theperception of a work is often forgotten. Buteverything we know, perceive, understand

emotionally and conceptually, has these twodimensions. As we have seen, the basic issue isthe coexistence of a twofold perception, of theinductive and the deductive approach. Separatingthese things can lead to absurd situations, ike atAmerican universities where you have separatetheory classes and analysis classes.So composing ncompasses hese two stages, nstan-taneous perception which allows for induction, nddelayed erception hich allows or deduction?

Some composers are ust interested n music as

form. I am much more interested in theformational aspect, n music as a process. In orderto go deep into the process, the formation of aform, you need these different time-dimensions.At times you experience the sudden illuminationof something, which makes you jump. Then yougradually find out what your discovery is reallyabout.Can you give examples f jumps you yourself havemade?

There are many; every time you make a big or

a smalljump. Around me, though, these days I seejumps being made that are of a different type, andgo very far indeed. It has to do with this need toseparate hings - the linguistic and the represen-tational aspect - which has been introduced tomusic. The music that results from it can be veryinteresting, but it's not musical. On the otherhand you have the music that is very musical butalso boring to death. The music of HelmutLachenmann, for instance, belongs to the firstcategory. His orchestral pieces are very big and

dramatic, they can be interesting conceptually,but they are just not musical. In Ferneyhough Inotice the same schizophrenic division betweenwhat he aims at conceptually and what he reallydoes. Of course the conflict between yourintentions and the practicality of things can beinteresting as such. It may lead to new texturesand sounds. But it goes beyond the conventionalnotion of being musical, of giving something.Creating music implies the desire to give. What

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18 'Music s not a solitary ct'

they do is something else: it's not a gift.So for you musicality as to do with the notion ofgiving.

It has to do with the fact that music is not asolitary act. It's not like painting, where there arenot intermediary steps between what you wantand the result. Music, as you know, is an incred-ibly complex process, including conceiving,writing, studying, organizing, listening. Thefabric of music has its roots everywhere. That'swhy it is so beautiful.Although you don't feel much kinship withFerneyhough's omplexity, our own music ften howsconsiderable omplexity s well. Like Joyce, you attach

great value to the multi-layered haracter f a workof art.For me, this notion includes not only the

process of composition but also of listening. Thecombination of layers, which are present indifferent degrees without obliterating each other,can create a very interesting magma. If theselayers have real functions - harmonically,timewise, in terms of density - their coexistencecreates an implicit 'drama' that can be verymeaningful.

You have a strongly nalytical mind. Does it ever occurthat, during he creative rocess, omething appensbeyond our control?

Often when a work is finished, you look backand you are surprised o discover things you didunconsciously. This is possible only thanks to thefact that we work like beautiful, highly sophisti-cated musical programmes. No 'cellular automata'computer programme will ever be able tocompete with us.Could ou tell me more xactly ow such a programme

works?It took me 70 years to develop it, I can'texplain that to you in five minutesSome eople owadays laim hat he borderlines etwencomposed usic, mprovised azz and modern jazz aredisappearing. o you have the same eeling?

No, that is mere wishful thinking. I have agreat respect for jazz musicians, but these arereally two different things. There are musicalthoughts that cannot be realized n an improvisedform. A composition can include an element of

improvisation as one of its layers. But jazzimprovisation is based on specific codes, whichdon't allow the possibility to construct multiplelayers, to put together different words, to havedifferent rhetorical gestures nteract. Mozart andChopin, of course, improvised, but they weretalking a musical anguage. Improvisation was, inreality, instant composition. I don't see a jazzmusician writing down what he improvised, tothe amazement of his fans. Bach, Mozart and

Chopin did it all the time, because the musicalprocess was rather homogeneous: the notation -with all its implications - was part of the process.

When we now consider hepieces o beperformed uringthe ConSequenze estival, there s one group whichillustrates ery nterestingly he evolution ome of yourown pieces have undergone. 'm talking about theChemins, which are really orchestrated, r re-worked

Sequenzas. sn't t unusual oconcentrate n a cycle fsolopieces on one hand, and on the other hand reworksome of them or a much bigger etting?

The Chemins are my own analyses of a

Sequenza. They can serve to change the time-dimension of the piece, because the ensemble or

orchestra is commenting before and after thesolo. Then I use the Chemins o develop elementsof the solo parts that could not possibly bedeveloped on one instrument. So very oftenthings happen independently from the solo part:as some sort of polyphonic approach to it. It's avery rewarding process, because I find myselfobliged to analyze things I did spontaneously.When writing ong tretches ffour-voice remolo hordsin the Sequenzafor viola, weren't ou actually skingthe impossible rom the instrument?

I don't think so. The harmonic line at thebeginning of the viola Sequenza as been designednot only in an abstract way but also in connexionwith the instrument. I wanted the player to playfour notes almost at the same time. So I had tostudy carefully all possibilities of position playingon the viola. But of course, in Chemins I it waspossible to detach the harmony from theinstrument, and have it carried much farther bythe ensemble.So far five Sequenzas have been transcribed or a

bigger, mostly orchestral etting. Are you going to'analyse' ll your Sequenzas n this way, or are some

Sequenzas more uitable han others?There are several reasons to write a Chemins.

remember having written Chemins I because,when writing the harp Sequenza, I had comeacross certain limitations of the instrument.Sequenza I already extends the possibilities of theinstrument. But I wanted to extend them evenfurther, so in Chemins I put three harps in theorchestra. (Incidentally, some limitations will

soon no longer exist. In a few weeks a lady fromParis will come here to show me a computerizedharp, with which the pitch and modulations canbe programmed.)

The question whether a Sequenza s suitable ortranscription depends on the autonomy of theinstrument. The piano, for instance, doesn't needa Chemins. The trombone Sequenza is tooidiomatic, too specifically connected with theinstrument and the voice of the player. The voice

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'Music s not a solitary ct' 19

is also too specific. Once I did an experimentwith Sequenza II, sung by three different vocalgroups. Each group was singing their own part,

but since the notation of the pitch is never exact,you heard these vocal clouds going from onegroup to another. Very funny.In Sequenza I you have, n your own words, searcheddesperately or polyphony on the most monodicinstrument n history', he lute. Did you ever considerthe possibility f orchestrating equenza I?

No. I don't know why, I just never thoughtof that.In the book Two nterviews'* ougive an dea fwhat acourse on transcription hould nclude, tarting with

Monteverdi, hen going to Bach and Liszt, etcetera.How do you place Rendering and your Brahmsorchestration n this tradition?

Rendering s both orchestration and a restora-tion, like the reparation of a painting damaged bytime. When you to to Assisi, you will findbeautiful Giotto paintings, some of which aredamaged. Now instead of having them repairedby some stupid painter who pretends to be Giottoand fills in what is missing, they decided to leavethe white, the concrete as it was, which is very

expressive too. I did the same thing withSchubert. I orchestrated, completed some parts,but where the sketches stop I created a kind ofmusical concrete, a plaster made of manydifferent things, with a totally different sound.Then you go back to the next Schubert sketch. Ihave an especial dislike for musicologists whodecide to complete an unfinished work. It hasbeen done with Schubert piano sonatas forinstance, where people tried to squeeze anartifical orm out of the sketches, basing them on

the sonata form. But things didn't work that wayfor Schubert.Was here specific eason or you to tackle he sketchesof Schubert's enth ymphony?

The people from the Schubert Ausgabe havebeen asking me for the last ten years whether Icouldn't do something with Schubert. I alwayssaid: please, leave Schubert alone. But then theysent me the sketches of the Tenth symphony. Iwas so impressed that for once I said yes.And what about the orchestration f Brahms's First

Clarinet Sonata?Well, there aie several reasons to make a

transcription. With my Chemins and Renderingthere were deep, musical reasons. But sometimesI simply want to make a friend happy. Viola andclarinet players are always complaining hat there

* Luciano erio:Two nterviews ith Rossana Dalmonte andBalint Andris Varga, ranslated nd edited by David OsmondSmith London: Marion Boyars, 1985).

is little repertoire with orchestra. So that was thereason to orchestrate the Brahms sonata.The term work n progress' an be applied o many of

your works, be it a single piece you have written,withdrawn gain and reworked ike Formazioni, or aseries of works which seem to form one continuingproject, ike the Sequenzas. Stockhausen nd Boulezalsohave everal works n progress o their redit. s thisphenomenon omehow ypicalfor composer hesedays,who eels the pressure f history n his shoulders ndwants to be able to keep amending is own ideas?

Perhaps... For me it's just a matter of lookingback and wanting to improve what you havedone. Very simple. In this respect my attitude is

different from Boulez, who is more concernedwith the poetic and rational continuity of hiswork. He is very rigorous with himself. He iscomposing not only musical works, but also hisown poetics.But doesn't his idea of having he music ffour, ivecenturies vailable n CD format sometimes rightenyou?

On the contrary, I think all the knowledge wehave today is precisely the strength of ourculture. As the Italians say: sapere e potere,

knowledge is power. I find it very fascinating andstimulating to be aware of all this music. But ofcourse it obliges you to think well, before youmake a decision, and not base your decision on asmall, inessential element. That is particularlytrue for young composers. You must know history.Even if you want to refuse, to reject things, youmust be aware of what you are rejecting.A new element which was ntroduced n your SequenzaI and has in the meantime made history tself, is so-called patial notation. You returned o it in most of

the following Sequenzas, but a few years ago youpublished non-spatial, raditionally otated ersion fSequenza I. Why?

At the time I wrote Sequenza I, in 1958,I considered the piece so difficult for theinstrument that I didn't want to impose on theplayer specific rhythmical patterns. I wanted theplayer to wear the music as a dress, not as astraitjacket. But as a result, even good performerswere taking liberties that didn't make any sense,taking the spatial notation almost as a pretext for

improvisation: Certainly some sort of flexibilityis part of the conception of the work. But theoverall speed, the high amount of register shifts,the fact that all parameters are constantly underpressure, will automatically bring a feeling ofinstability, an openness which is part of theexpressive quality of the work - a kind of 'work-in-progress' character, f you want.Can you tell me anything about Sequenza XIII

for accordion?

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Not yet. After I have finished the opera, I willstart to reprogramme myself to it.When your career tarted n the 1950s, musical ife had

justreceived

manynew

impulses.There were

strongbeliefs and strong reactions. Do you think theatmosphere f the current musical nd cultural ife isequally favourable to the development f youngcomposers?I think young composers nowadays have the samechallenge we had after the war. They have to facenew problems, but some of them are certainlyable to cope with that. Among the young people Imeet, some show great solidity and know verywell what they are after. The public's reactions

may have becomedifferent. There will be no

shouting during a Boulez piano sonata anymore,like one at Darmstadt. Although, some days agoin Salzburg hey performed Stockhausen's Gesangder iinglinge, a masterwork, and the public werebooing. But that is the old, ancient face ofSalzburg.

A field where a young composer owadays ancontribute s in the reshaping f the format,- heconcept of a recital. The recital has become aformula. often ind t

verydifficult o

goto such

a concert, ven if a great musician r a friend ofmine is playing. Something must happen notnecessarily musically: t has more o do with theorganization, the financial aspect. Music in ourworld has to be sold, to be merchandized. Inorder to be able to sell it, you must offer it in acertain format: starting at 8 o'clock, with aninterval, and so on.

I believe young composers are starting o thinkdifferently. They want to break the ritual, whichis a commercial ritual. It

goesback to Liszt, to

the mid-19th century. I think it's about time tochange, to enlarge the perspective of perform-ance, to bring out the implicit dramaturgy ofmusic and make a recital become a musical formin itself. This is a task a younger generation willundertake, I hope.

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