About
CIRCLES
His major work Circles was composed in 1960 and marks an important stage in his development. In effect, before other composers of his generation, Berio then broke away completely from the discipline of the seriaI system and concentrated his 2 efforts essentially on three composing problems which continued to be primordial in his subsequent works , namely the words-to-music ratios, the arrangement of the intervals by the novel interweaving of harmonies, often built up on a basis of pivot notes, and the exploration of novel possibilities of the sounds of voice and the instruments.
That research in sound is perceptible from the very beginning of the work, when the voice attacks and holds certain important syllables, around which brief ornamentations are woven, to proliferate as first the harp and then the percussion join in.
Throughout the work, the relationships between the performers are modified and the virtuosity of Berio's composing is such that sometimes the percussion sings while the voice and the harp perform attacks of a percussive nature. Cumming's words lend themselves admirably to works of this kind, the word is here chosen for its sound value, rather than for its semantic value, which enables Berio to play on the transitions between different levels of comprehension of the words, as a function of the nature of the vocal writing, as weil as on the ambiguity between the sounds of the voice and those of the instruments, without betraying a poetry that is inherently musical.
The melodic line itself of the work is entirely original. Berio integrates the important chromatic intervals of the post-seriaI music, but adds to them smaller intervals and a proliferation of grace-notes, which gather around the polar notes and endow the melody with a unique characteristic identity. And inspite of all these innovations, several times we were reminded that Berio is an Italian - and who would complain about that? - and that the "bel canto" was Dever far away.
Mezza Voce
Pierre Bartholomée describes his work thus: "Four musicians. Various alliances: the violin and the clarinet. The piano and the percussion. One solo: the percussion (Four instruments with deep tone skins). One trio, one quartet. Seven pieces. some very closely related. Some muffled sounds, some dull noises. Slowness. Some moments of extreme rapidity. Timbres, registers, polyphonie relations, harmony, instrumental playing maintained within very tight Iimits.
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