Circles is a composition for female voice, harp and two percussionists by the Italian composer Luciano Berio. Written in 1960 Circles is a setting of three poems by E. E. Cummings, [1] including the poems "Stinging", "Riverly Is a Flower", and "N(o)w".
Circles was written for Berio's wife, the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian. The work followed by two years the landmark composition Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) in which Berio deconstructed Berberian's voice through the use of innovative electronic manipulation. [2] Throughout Circles Berio explores similar sound textures while limiting himself exclusively to acoustic means. The work was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, with a dedication in the score to Mrs Olga Koussevitsky.
Berio follows an ABCBA arch form in Circles (the text from the first two poems being repeated with a different setting). [1] In this way to form of the composition itself expresses a circle. Berio gives precise instructions in the score for the location of the performers and percussion instruments on stage. Throughout the course of the work the singer moves backwards as if receding into the ensemble. She is also required to perform on specific percussion instruments such as finger cymbals, claves, and various kinds of chimes.
Sylvano Bussotti was an Italian composer of contemporary classical music, also a painter, set and costume designer, opera director and manager, writer and academic teacher. His compositions employ graphic notation, which has often created special problems of interpretation. He was known as a composer for the stage. His first opera was La Passion selon Sade, premiered in Palermo in 1965. Later operas and ballets were premiered at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze, Teatro Lirico di Milano, Teatro Regio di Torino and Piccola Scala di Milano, among others. He was artistic director of La Fenice in Venice, the Puccini Festival and the music section of the Venice Biennale. He taught internationally, for a decade at the Fiesole School of Music. He is regarded as a leading composer of Italy's avantgarde, and a Renaissance man with many talents who combined the arts expressively.
Catherine Anahid Berberian was an American mezzo-soprano and composer based in Italy. She worked closely with many contemporary avant-garde music composers, including Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Sylvano Bussotti, Darius Milhaud, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, and Igor Stravinsky. She also interpreted works by Claudio Monteverdi, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Kurt Weill, Philipp zu Eulenburg and others. As a recital curator, she presented several vocal genres in a classical context, including arrangements of songs by The Beatles by Louis Andriessen as well as folk songs from several countries and cultures. As a composer, she wrote Stripsody (1966), in which she exploits her vocal technique using comic book sounds (onomatopoeia), and Morsicat(h)y (1969), a composition for the keyboard based on Morse code.
Folk Songs is a song cycle by the Italian composer Luciano Berio composed in 1964. It consists of arrangements of folk music from various countries and other songs, forming "a tribute to the extraordinary artistry" of the American singer Cathy Berberian, a specialist in Berio's music. It is scored for voice, flute, clarinet, harp, viola, cello, and percussion. The composer arranged it for a large orchestra in 1973.
Chamber Music is a composition in three sections for female voice, clarinet, cello and harp by the Italian composer Luciano Berio. It is a setting of three poems from the collection of poetry Chamber Music by James Joyce, whose work was to be a frequent source for Berio. The songs were composed in 1953, and show the influence of Luigi Dallapiccola with whom Berio had studied in 1952 at the Tanglewood Music Center.
Bernard Rands is a British-American contemporary classical composer. He studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy. He held residencies at Princeton University, the University of Illinois, and the University of York before emigrating to the United States in 1975; he became a U.S. citizen in 1983. In 1984, Rands's Canti del Sole, premiered by Paul Sperry, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He has since taught at the University of California, San Diego, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Boston University. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at Harvard University, where he is Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music Emeritus.
Klaas de Vries is a Dutch composer. De Vries taught composition at the Rotterdam Conservatory until his retirement in 2009.
Sequenza II is a composition for unaccompanied harp by the Italian composer Luciano Berio. Written for and premiered by the French harpist Francis Pierre in 1963, it has since been performed and recorded by Emily Laurance, Frédérique Cambreling, Susan Jolles, and Claudia Antonelli, among others.
The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs is a song for voice and closed piano by John Cage. It was composed in late 1942 and quickly became a minor classic in Cage's oeuvre. The text was a reworked version of a passage from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
Recital I (for Cathy) is a stage work by the Italian composer Luciano Berio. It was written for Cathy Berberian, with whom Berio was married from 1950 to 1964, and is scored for mezzo-soprano and 17 instruments. It was first performed on 27 April 1972 in Lisbon in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Grand Auditórium by Cathy Berberian with Orquesta Gulbenkian, conducted by the composer.
Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) is an electroacoustic composition by Luciano Berio, for voice and tape. Composed between 1958 and 1959, it is based on the interpretative reading of the poem "Sirens" from chapter 11 of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce by Cathy Berberian and on the elaboration of her recorded voice by technological means.
Laborintus II is an album by the Belgian orchestra Ictus Ensemble, the vocal group Nederlands Kamerkoor, and the American vocalist Mike Patton, which was recorded live at the 2010 Holland Festival. It was released on July 10, 2012, by Ipecac Recordings, and debuted at number 23 on the American Billboard Classical Albums Chart. It was not well received by critics.
Luciano Berio was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work, 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.
Sequenza VI is a composition for solo viola by Luciano Berio, part of his series of fourteen Sequenze.
A–Ronne is a composition by the Italian composer Luciano Berio, composed in June 1974 as a tape composition for 5 actors and arranged in 1975 for unaccompanied vocal ensemble.
Quattro versioni originali della "Ritirata notturna di Madrid" is an arrangement by Luciano Berio of a movement from Luigi Boccherini's Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid. The full title of the composition is Quattro versioni originali della "Ritirata notturna di Madrid" di Luigi Boccherini, sovrapposte e transcritte per orchestra. This arrangement was composed in 1975.
Sequenza VII is a composition for solo oboe by Luciano Berio, the seventh of his fourteen Sequenze. The sequenza calls for extended technique. In 1975, Berio used Sequenza VII as part of Chemins IV, which included an orchestra of eleven string instruments. In 1993, Claude Delangle adapted the work for soprano saxophone, naming the revised work Sequenza VIIb.
Coro is a large scale composition for forty voices and forty instruments by Italian composer Luciano Berio.
?Corporel (1985) is a musical performance piece by composer Vinko Globokar. It calls for the performer to use their body as instrument, often by striking the body.
"Lo Fiolairé" is a traditional Occitan song, from the region of Aurillac and Haute-Auvergne, composed by an anonymous author in the Occitan language.
George Newson is an English composer and pianist who made some important contributions to British electronic and avant garde music during the 1960s and 1970s and has subsequently composed large and small-scale works in many musical forms and styles, from songs and chamber music to choral works and opera. As a photographer, Newson has taken portraits of many of his composer contemporaries.