Epifanie (Berio)

Last updated

Epifanie is a musical composition for female voice and large orchestra in twelve movements by the Italian composer Luciano Berio.

In Italian an epifania (plural: epifanie, with both forms accented on the second "i") indicates a sudden spiritual manifestation (See: Epiphany). Berio composed his Epifanie between 1960 and 1963, and published a revised version in 1965. It consists of seven short orchestral pieces, and five vocal pieces. Berio stipulates the possibility of performing these in ten different sequences. When the American premiere of Epifanie took place in Chicago on July 23, 1967, he said:

Epifanie is, in essence, a cycle of orchestral pieces into which a cycle of vocals pieces has been interpolated. The two 'cycles' can be combined in various ways; they can also be performed separately. The texts of the vocal pieces have been taken from Proust (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs), Antonio Machado (Nuevas Canciones), Joyce ( A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses ), Edoardo Sanguineti (Triperuno), Claude Simon (La route des Flandres), and Brecht (An die Nachgeborenen).
The significant connection between the vocals pieces can thus appear in different lights according to their position in the instrumental development. The chosen order will emphasize the apparent heterogeneity of the texts or their dialectic unity. The texts are arranged in such a way as to suggest a gradual passage from a lyric transfiguration of reality (Proust, Machado, Joyce) to a disenchanted acknowledgment of things (Simon; for this text the voice speaks and becomes gradually nullified by the orchestra). Lastly, the words of Bertolt Brecht, which have nothing to do with the epiphany of words and visions. They are the cry of regret and anguish with which Brecht warns us that often it is necessary to renounce the seduction of words when they sound like an invitation to forget our links to a world constructed by our own acts.

The score calls for an unusually large orchestra: 16 woodwinds; 6 horns, 4 trumpets and 4 trombones plus tuba, full strings, including three violin sections, and a percussion section calling for a number of performers who address themselves not only to glockenspiel, celesta, vibraphone and marimba but also to spring coils, tamtam, tom-tom, temple blocks, wood blocks, bongos, timpani, cowbells, tubular bells, claves, guiro, censerros, cymbals, snare drum, tambourine, etc.

The BBC Proms premiere was given in the Royal Albert Hall, London on 8 August 1986, by Elizabeth Laurence and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Downes. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cathy Berberian</span> American mezzo-soprano and composer (1925–1983)

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.

Colin Matthews, OBE is an English composer of contemporary classical music. Noted for his large-scale orchestral compositions, Matthews is also a prolific arranger of other composer's music, including works by Berlioz, Britten, Dowland, Mahler, Purcell and Schubert. Other arrangements include orchestrations of all Debussy's 24 Préludes, both books of Debussy's Images, and two movements—Oiseaux tristes and La vallée des cloches—from Ravel's Miroirs. Having received a doctorate from University of Sussex on the works of Mahler, from 1964–1975 Matthews worked with his brother David Matthews and musicologist Deryck Cooke on completing a performance version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony.

<i>Folk Songs</i> (Berio) Song cycle by Luciano Berio

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geoffrey Burgon</span> British composer

Geoffrey Alan Burgon was an English composer best known for his television and film scores. Among his most recognisable works are Monty Python's Life of Brian for film, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Brideshead Revisited for television, the latter two earning Ivor Novello Awards in 1979 and 1981 respectively. He also won BAFTAs for his themes for the remake of The Forsyte Saga and Longitude.

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.

Brian Elias is a British composer.

<i>Sinfonia</i> (Berio)

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.

John Wilson is a British conductor, arranger and musicologist, who conducts orchestras and operas, as well as big band jazz. He is the artistic director of Sinfonia of London.

Philip Prosper Sainton was a British–French composer, conductor, and violist.

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.

<i>Laborintus II</i> (album) 2012 live album by Mike Patton, Ictus Ensemble and Nederlands Kamerkoor

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Simon (composer)</span> South African-born British classical music composer

John Simon is a South African-born British classical music composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luciano Berio</span> Italian composer (1925–2003)

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.

Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8, is an orchestral song-cycle by Benjamin Britten, first performed in 1936. Its text, assembled and partly written by W. H. Auden, with a pacifist slant, puzzled audiences at the premiere, and the work has never achieved the popularity of the composer's later orchestral song-cycles, Les Illuminations, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and the Nocturne.

Elizabeth Laurence is a classical mezzo-soprano singer. She is best known for her performances of 20th century operatic repertoire, and has created several operatic roles.

<i>Coro</i> (Berio) Composition by Luciano Berio

Coro is a large scale composition for forty voices and forty instruments by Italian composer Luciano Berio.

<i>Cries of London</i> Vocal composition by Luciano Berio

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.

George Newson is an English composer and pianist who made 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.

Roger Marsh is a British composer and retired academic.

References

  1. "Prom 24, 19:30 Friday 8 Aug 1986". BBC . Archived from the original on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 28 February 2016.

Luciano Berio's Epifanie Details Epifanie and discusses its literary references.