| Cries of London | |
|---|---|
| by Luciano Berio | |
 Luciano Berio, at the time of the composition. | |
| Composed | 1973–4 (rev. 1976) |
| Published | Universal Edition |
| Duration | 15 minutes |
| Movements | 7 |
| Scoring | Eight voices |
| Premiere | |
| Date | 1976 |
| Location | La Rochelle |
Cries of London is a composition for eight voices by Italian composer Luciano Berio. Originally composed for six voices in 1974, it was expanded in 1976.
The preliminary version of Cries of London was composed between 1973 and 1974. It was composed for The King's Singers, an all-male British vocal ensemble whose programmes offered some elements from cabaret in them. The whole piece consisted of four movements scored for six voices (two countertenors, one tenor, two baritones, and one bass) and was premiered in Edinburgh in 1975. [1] [2]
One year later, Berio reworked and expanded the cycle to a total of seven movements and eight voices. Each of the movements in the final version of the piece were dedicated to different people. A preliminary version was premiered in La Rochelle in 1976; however, Swingle II officially premiered and recorded the piece in 1977. [3] Both the early version and the revision were published by Universal Edition, in 1973 and 1976 respectively. [4] The main melody used in the first and fifth movements of the cycle were also used with a different text in Coro , which was also written and premiered around 1974–76. [5]
This song cycle consists of seven movements of unequal length and is scored for eight voices: two sopranos, two altos, two tenors and two basses. Except for the last movement, none of the sections are entitled.
| Song No. | Title | Incipit | Dedicatee | Tempo marking | Bars [4] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | — | "These are the cries of London town" | Gisela and Frans von Rossum |  . = 64, simply, like a folk tune, with a touch of ecstasy | 29 |
| II | — | "Where are ye fair maids that have need of our trades" | Annie Neuburger |  = 144 | 41 |
| III | — | "Garlic, good garlic, the best of all the cries" | Andrew Rosner | = 84 | 44 |
| IV | — | "These are the cries of London town" | Christine Beroff | = 100 | 33 |
| V | — | "These are the cries of London town" | Carol Hall | . = 64 | 29 |
| VI | — | "Money, money" / "Penny, penny" | Hélène Pousseur | = 66, deciso e vivace | 47 |
| VII | Cry of Cries | "Come money to me" | James Mallinson | = 72 | 57 |
The text used in the pieces was taken by Berio as he walked around different markets in London. While some songs from the cycle are expected to resemble folk tunes, they are entirely Berio's creation, and are not necessarily meant to imitate folk music, but they are rather echoes of vendors' voices as they rebounded from the walls of the houses from old London. [1] Movements I and V are an exact repetition, while movement IV also uses exactly the same words. [2]
Berio used some extended vocal techniques in this cycle, which include heavy breathing, humming and singing with the front teeth closed. According to Berio, Cries of London "can [...] be listened to as an exercise in musical characterization and dramatization". [2] The singers are also expected to sing "instrumentally", without vibrato, although it calls for highly virtuosistic abilities from the performers. [1]
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.
The Swingles are an a capella vocal group. The Swingle Singers originally formed in 1962 in Paris under the leadership of Ward Swingle. In 1973, Swingle disbanded the French group, and formed an English group known initially as Swingle II and later as the New Swingle Singers, before settling on the Swingles name.
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.
SATB is an initialism that describes the scoring of compositions for choirs, and also choirs of instruments. The initials are for the voice types: S for soprano, A for alto, T for tenor and B for bass.
Sequenza is the name borne by fourteen compositions for solo instruments or voice by Luciano Berio. The pieces, some of which call for extended techniques, are:
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.
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.
Vinko Globokar is a French-Slovenian avant-garde composer and trombonist.
Alexander's Feast is an ode with music by George Frideric Handel set to a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton. Hamilton adapted his libretto from John Dryden's ode Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music (1697) which had been written to celebrate Saint Cecilia's Day. Jeremiah Clarke set the original ode to music.
Sinfonia (Symphony) is a composition by the Italian composer Luciano Berio which was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary. Composed in 1968–69 for orchestra and eight amplified voices, it incorporates musical quotations to represent an abstract and distorted history of culture. The eight voices are not incorporated classically but rather speak, whisper and shout excerpts from texts including Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Raw and the Cooked, Samuel Beckett's novel The Unnamable, instructions from the scores of Gustav Mahler and other writings.
The Paris-based Swingle Singers recorded regularly for Philips in the 1960s and early 1970s and the successor London-based group continued to record, for Columbia / CBS, Virgin Classics and other record labels from 1974 to the present.
Sinfonia is a 1968 Columbia Records recording of Luciano Berio conducting the New York Philharmonic and The Swingle Singers in the premiere of his four-movement "Sinfonia." The composer would later add a fifth movement.
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.
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.
Op. 120, No. 1, also entitled Opus 120, No. 1 or in its German form, Opus 120, Nr. 1, is a 1986 arrangement for clarinet and orchestra of Johannes Brahms's Clarinet Sonata Op. 120, No. 1 by Italian composer Luciano Berio. As with the original Sonata, the soloist in this arrangement can either be a clarinet or a viola.
The Modification and Instrumentation of a Famous Hornpipe as a Merry and Altogether Sincere Homage to Uncle Alfred, sometimes shortened to Hornpipe, is an arrangement for six players of Henry Purcell's Hornpipe, from The Fairy-Queen, by Italian composer Luciano Berio. This arrangement was composed in 1969.
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.
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