Luciano Berio's Sinfonia and SWINGLE SINGERS 1 of 3

Romanian National Radio Orchestra
Conductor : ASHER FISCH
Program notes written by Michael Steinberg:
The original version of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, composed in 1968, was first performed on October 10 of that year by the New York Philharmonic and The Swingle Singers, under the direction of the composer. The 1969 version, expanded from four to five sections, was performed in New York for the first time on October 8, 1970 by the same forces under Leonard Bernstein. The published score carries the inscription: "Written for (and commissioned by) the New York Philharmonic and dedicated to Leonard Bernstein." The work is scored for three flutes and piccolo, four clarinets, two oboes and English horn, alto saxophone and tenor saxophone, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trombones, tuba, percussion (timpani, glockenspiel, marimba, vibraphone, tam-tams, snare drums, bass drums, cymbals, sizzle cymbals, tambourines, wood-blocks, bongos, guiros, frusta, grelots, castanets and triangles), harp, piano, electric organ, electric harpsichord, strings (with one solo violin and violins divided into three sections) and eight singers.
Luciano Berio's music displays a constant obsession with language and the many possibilities by which language can be presented in a musical context. Fragmentation into phonetic sounds, emblematic quotations, traditional vocalism and anti-academic (or pop) vocalism, musical, physical and semantic gesture: these are some of the many devices the composer has used in his scores.In Sinfonia, the texts are taken from a number of sources, including Claude Lévi-Strauss' Le cru et le cuit (The Raw and the Cooked), Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable, Joyce, revolutionary slogans, recorded conversation and the name Martin Luther King. But as the composer notes: "The treatment of the vocal part in the first, second, fourth and fifth sections of Sinfonia is similar in that the text is not immediately perceivable as such. The words and their components undergo a musical analysis which is integral to the total structure of voice and instruments together. The fact that the varying degree of perceptibility of the text at different moments is part of the musical structure is the reason why the words and phrases used are not given in the program. The experience of 'not quite hearing,' then, is to be conceived as essential to the nature of the work itself."

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Music

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• Luciano
• Berio's
• Sinfonia
• and
• SWINGLE
• SINGERS
• (Berio)