The anthology of the Six Encores (1965-1990) for piano solo, written by a major Italian modernist composer Luciano Berio (1925-2003), demonstrates a wide spectrum of compositional techniques and styles of 20th-century musical experimental thought. To play the six short, one to four minutes each, pieces the performer must possess the highest level of preparation and impeccable knowledge of the instrument: yet virtuosity is only one aspect of the cycle. Four of the encores are dedicated to the four elements of nature – Water, Earth, Air and Fire, named in German as Wasserklavier, Erdenklavier Luftklavier and Feuerklavier; the other two, Brin and Leaf, are the epigraphic miniatures which symbolize the passage of an ephemeral entity. All of the Six Encores illustrate the spiritual visualization of scenic elements and depict a precise trajectory of their imagery stimulating listeners with improvisatory spontaneity mixed with stylistic logical calculation.
In the Six Encores, written in a style of twelve-tone chromatic serialism, L. Berio demonstrated a broad interest in the diversity of contemporary compositional tools. Brin (1990), Leaf (1990) and Erdenklavier (1969), encores one, two and four, clearly belong to Schoenberg’s technique of serialism which has been adopted and modified by Berio. Leaf, encore two, is an experiment in the pedal sonority and tone clusters on the keyboard. The only tonal one, encore three Wasserklavier (1965) in f-minor, is a testament to the composer’s affection with pastiche, which he often utilized in his early compositions. The ostinato-based Luftklavier (1985) is reminiscent of the orientalism of the French impressionist movement, as well belonging to the twelve-tone compositional practice, and effectively combines the two styles. The modernist Feuerklavier (1989), encore six, based on chromatic serialism, cites Wagner’s ‘magic fire’ motif from the opera Die Walküre (1856). Each of the pieces provides a foretaste of synthesized styles and the composer’s deep knowledge of musical literature. This study of Berio’s Six Encores will explicate the variety and complexity of compositional thought which Berio implemented in this cycle of miniatures.
A guideline method to this study is to search for the composer’s poetic language and to formulate the techniques of the composition used in the Six Encores. Being an analyst and lecturer, Berio himself insisted on the full compound understanding of musical texts:
“We frequently find today that, even in the case of the most penetrating and, so to speak, scientific analyses, the analyst is not very concerned to place the work under examination in the context of the composer’s chronological development – in the context, in other words, of his or her poetics. It is precisely this tendency toward a temporality that makes musical analysis an open and creative experience which, however, may become pointless when the analyst is struggling with the conceptualization of something that does not exist.”[1]
Each of the Encores was written in a new period of composer’s life between 1965 and 1990 and each is dedicated to a particular figure. Berio made his compositional intentions clear for analysis by assigning programmatic titles. The cyclic character of the pieces relates them together in observing the scenic space with its fragility of the temporal animation and the present symbolism of the sounding elements. Brin (1990) and Leaf (1990) are written in memoriam of deceased friends. Subconscious involvement of the natural elements and their static imagery in Wasserklavier (1965), Erdenklavier (1969), Luftklavier (1985) and Feuerklavier (1989) explains the technical demands and textural entanglements of the text. In Berio’s words:
Music must be capable of educating people to discover and create relations between different elements … and in doing that it speaks of the history of man and of his musical resources in all their acoustic, and expressive, aspects.[2]
Stasie Fomalgaut
for Mills College, Oakland, CA
Spring 2017
References
[1] Luciano Berio. Remembering the Future (Cambridge – London: Harvard University Press, 2006), 128.
[2] Luciano Berio. Two Interviews with Rosanna Dalmonte and Balint Andras Varga (NY – London: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1985), 23.
Stasie Gonikberg Blog 