David Osmond-Smith

I read this as a kind of entry into another book by the author, one that is focused specifically on Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, because I'm interested in Sinfonia both as a successful foray by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic into experimental contemporary music during the 1960s (in contrast with the famous fail involving a John Cage work), and as a precursor to the sample-based music of today.

This is a brief survey of Berio's work, from electronic-iconoclast innovation, to his extensive output for voice and ("conventional") instrumentation, to his exploration of theater. It's an excellent overview, with close readings of major works, and biographical details to explain the context in which the works were composed and initially performed. (I'd be lying by omission if I didn't acknowledge that there note-reading musicology was largely over my head, but even that I found some threads I could learn from.) The biography can be deadpan to a fault -- the second and third time he is married, there's no mention of any turmoil (well, when he takes his second wife, it's made clear that his working relationship with his first hasn't suffered); it's like he's simply traded in one car for another.

Two things I came away with from the book, secondary to knowing more about Berio than I had when I started reading it: (1) There isn't much about "meaning" in the book. There is excellent detail of how the pieces work, about the mechanisms of Berio's music, how it functions, how Berio accomplishes what he's after. There is, however, little explanation, little interpretation, about what it is he's after, what he's expressing, both intentionally and as perceived by the book's author. (2) The book was written 20 years ago. It's hard to imagine it being written this way today. By "this way" I mean that one of the fundamental aspects of Berio's compositional approach is using pre-existing composition, from Mahler to folk song to the Beatles -- and the copyright aspect of that is never touched on here.… (mais)