{"id":1593,"date":"2011-07-31T13:00:30","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulj.myzen.co.uk\/blog\/teaching\/voices\/?page_id=1593"},"modified":"2015-12-01T17:37:35","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T17:37:35","slug":"berio-text-and-music","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.paulj.myzen.co.uk\/blog\/teaching\/voices\/lectures\/berio-text-and-music\/","title":{"rendered":"6: Integrated Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laborintus II<\/em> by Luciano Berio<\/h2>\n

This session will comprise a sustained examination of a single work, Luciano Berio’s Laborintus II (1965), with a view to exploring intertextual associations between words, music and modes of vocalisation. In this respect, the investigation will serve as preparation for the final essay, where the same principles of analysis can be applied to a work of your choosing.<\/p>\n

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Laborintus II<\/em> was written between 1963 and 1965 following a commission from the French radio and Television Corporation on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the birth of the Italian poet, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The text of Laborintus II<\/em> develops certain themes of Dante\u2019s Vita Nuova, Convivio<\/em> and Divine Comedy<\/em>, and combines them – principally by formal and semantic analogies – with Biblical texts and the writings of T.S. Eliot (East Coker<\/em>), Ezra Pound (Canto 45, With Usura)<\/em> and the Italian poet Eduardo Sanguineti whose earlier work, Laborintus,<\/em> forms the foundation of Berio\u2019s musical realisation. The main formal reference is the catalogue<\/em> – in the medieval sense of the word, like the Etymologies<\/em> of Isidore of Seville, for example, which also appear in Laborintus II<\/em> – which relates the Dantesque themes of memory and usury; in other words, the reduction of all things to a unity of values. Isolated words and sentences are to be heard as a part of the sound structure conceived as a whole. The principle of the catalogue<\/em> is not limited to the text alone but, on the contrary, serves as the foundation of the musical structure itself which includes references to Monteverdi, Stravinsky and others. The instrumental sections develop, on the whole, as an extension of the vocal action of the singers, and the brief sequence of electronic music is intended as a prolongation of the instrumental element.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Berio describes Laborintus II<\/em> as \u2018a stage work which can be treated as a rappresentazione<\/em>, as a story, an allegory, a document, a dance, etc. It can be performed in a theatre, on television, in the open air or in any other place permitting an audience to assemble.\u2019 This may be a somewhat optimistic claim given the restrictions imposed by instruments, music and microphones, but it does give an indication of the way in which the work is to be experienced – not simply as a concert work, but as a dramatic, visual and aural realisation of the texts.<\/p>\n

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‘…we shall perhaps one day be able to realise a ‘total’ performance in which all the components (not only the strictly musical effects) can develop towards a complete and perfect integration, so that it will be possible to achieve a new kind of relationship between word and sound, poetry and music. The real aim of such an exercise would not be the contrasting or mixing up of two separate expressive systems but rather the creation of complete continuity, so that the shift from one to the other would be imperceptible, without drawing attention to the difference between a logical-semantic mode of apprehension (as adopted for a spoken message) and a musical mode, transcending and opposed to it in both sound and content. As a result there would be an escape from the generally recognised problem for aesthetic theory of the primacy of musical structure over poetic\u00a0 structure.’ (Berio (1959) – Poesia e musica, un’esperienza<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Further source material<\/h2>\n