THOUGHT, VIRTUOSITY AND SPONTANEITY
IN LUCIANO BERIO’S ‘SIX ENCORES’ FOR PIANO
Thesis
Presented in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for
the degree of
Master of Fine Arts
in Music Performance and Literature
Mills College, 2017
by
Asiia Fomalgaut
Approved by:
Reading committee:
_________________
Dr. Nalini Ghuman Director of Thesis
_________________
Dr. Maggi Payne Reader of Thesis _______________________ Dr. Nalini Ghuman
Head of Music Department
_______________________
Dr. Chinyere Oparah
Provost and Dean of the Faculty
ABSTRACT
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.
This study dissects Berio’s conceptualization of the piano and provides an
analysis of the composer’s expressive linguistic equipment in the Six Encores. The first
chapter describes Berio’s ideological approach to the process of music creation in its
virtuosity and spontaneity of thought. The other six chapters present specific insights into each of the Six Encores for piano: Brin (1990), Leaf (1990), Wasserklavier (1965),
Erdenklavier (1969), Luftklavier (1985) and Feuerklavier (1989), by scrutinizing the
structural, rhythmic and timbral elements of Berio’s poetic voice.
The PDF of thesis with references and figures is available under the link:
Thesis Stasie for submission – with pages and formatted
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. iii
LIST OF FIGURES ……………………………………………………………………………………………. v INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1
CHAPTER 1. INTUITION AND THOUGHT IN LUCIANO BERIO’S COMPOSITIONAL PRACTICE ………………………………………………………………………… 3
1.1 Spontaneity of Thought ……………………………………………………………………………… 3
1.2 Virtuosity of Thought ………………………………………………………………………………… 4
CHAPTER 2. BRIN ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
CHAPTER 3. LEAF …………………………………………………………………………………………. 10
CHAPTER 4. WASSERKLAVIER …………………………………………………………………… 14
4.1 Water in European music literature………………………………………………………….. 14
4.2 Wasserklavier……………………………………………………………………………………………. 15
CHAPTER 5. ERDENKLAVIER ……………………………………………………………………… 19
CHAPTER 6. LUFTKLAVIER …………………………………………………………………………. 23
CHAPTER 7. FEUERKLAVIER ………………………………………………………………………. 27
CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 31 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 32
INTRODUCTION
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.”
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.”
CHAPTER 1. INTUITION AND THOUGHT IN LUCIANO BERIO’S COMPOSITIONAL PRACTICE
1.1 Spontaneity of Thought
Luciano Berio’s set of Six Encores, exemplifying the style of program art music,
belongs, in all its complexity, to the highest intellectual achievements of humankind. The
intrigue of its difficulty and interconnectivity, which require immense concentration of
both listeners and performers, calls for translating the Encores’ archetypal musical
language to the languages of words and visual polychromasia. Theodor Adorno, whose
views had been a lodestar for Berio’s concepts of musical composition and execution,
emphasizes the fact that “musical analysis, concerned with structure, with structural
problems, and finally, with structural listening,”3 is the necessary attribute to
understanding, and, therefore, appreciating the experience of musical concepts. Berio
himself confirms the role of analysis of musical form in the interview given to the
musicologist Rosana Dalmonte in 1980:
“For me, musical material means thought, musical concepts, and I hardly think it’s possible that it should resist itself any more than a word might resist its meaning. It’s the physical aspect, that can sometimes offer a certain resistance to conceptual material, and it is precisely this resistance that provokes the search for new relations between the conceptual and physical, and even the “discovery” of new physical resources: steel in architecture and the frame of modern piano, plastic in sculpture, oscillators in electronic music.”
The spontaneous, random and non-reasoned resonant sonorities of Berio’s Six
Encores might recall the style of free improvisation at the very first impression.
However, the analysis shows quite the opposite qualities of this music: qualities of
intuitively calculated randomness inserted in a box of precise shapes and forms.
While Berio was open to the majority of modern compositional styles, he also
belonged to a school of composers that denied the art of free improvisation in music
performance. The idea that one person shouldn’t compose and perform at the same time
appeared after World War I, when a new kind of intellectual snobbery took root: the
concept that only a small circle of specially educated people should be capable of
understanding the process of composition.5 There’s a fine line which Luciano Berio has
drawn between the intuitive creational process and the improvisatory technique in music execution, the two opposites in his understanding. Berio assumed that it is not actually “free” improvisation, but the careful compositional figuring of thought, which contributes to the most spontaneous outcome:
“Musical instruments act and think with us and, at times, in our “absentminded” moments, they even think for us. For the composer-performer of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, improvisation was a form of instantaneous, real-time composing (which has parallels, albeit through different codes, with jazz improvisation). Nowadays this form of extempore composition is no longer possible because the numerous stratifications of musical thought, together with compositional strategies always “in progress” between idea and realization, do not allow the composer to escape the conscious presence and definition of a musical text which in any case (even outside the frame of improvisation) cannot be totally handled in real time with carefree spontaneity.”
1.2 Virtuosity of Thought
The technical difficulties of the Six Encores require careful attention from their
performer. It is not so much the virtuosity of fingers that makes these musical miniatures sparkle, but rather giving justice to the twelve-tone chromaticism, motifs and patterns which permeate the text, just like in other compositions of Berio, of which the Sequenzas are the most well-known examples:
“Virtuosity often arises out of a conflict, a tension between the musical idea and the instrument, between the concept and musical substance… Anyone worth calling a virtuoso these days has to be a musician capable of moving within a broad historical perspective and of resolving the tension between creativity of yesterday and today. My own Sequenzas are always written with this sort of interpreter in mind, whose virtuosity is, above all, a virtuosity of knowledge.”
A “tireless transhistorical citationist”, Berio constructs the textual canvas of the
Six Encores using multiple references to the composers of previous generations: Schubert and Brahms, Debussy and Ravel, Schoenberg and Wagner peer though tiny details and entire concepts of Berio’s piano miniatures. According to the composer, knowledge of the roots of the Encores supposedly clarifies the field of study for performers of this composition:
“The virtuoso performer becomes more aware of the past as something to be exploited, and becomes more forgetful of the fact that the only form of virtuosity worthy of the name is virtuosity of intelligence, capable of penetrating and rendering different musical worlds.”
Berio implemented the twelve-tone chromatic serialism in five out of six encores,
(except for pastiche Wasserklavier) in a distinctly idiosyncratic fusion with various post
tonal techniques. Christoph Neidhöfer thinks that “at the center of Berio’s serial practices
lies the design of such concrete musical objects which in turn are subjected to various
processes of transformation, serial or otherwise.”10 Berio’s serialism is quite different
from the non-repetition ideal of Schoenberg’s “Theory of Harmony”: in every piece the
whole spectrum of the twelve chromatic pitches is presented within the first system,
possibly leaving only the last pitch to be introduced in the very beginning of the second
system. Expressiveness of musical language is Berio’s conscious priority; he allows
coincidental harmonies and counterpoint to appear within the resonances of the serial
framework:
“The total serialists invested every note with an elevated number of combinatory functions and determinations that should have quantified and developed, according to identical procedural criteria, schematic musical elements. The result was occasionally expressive (any form of renunciation is somehow expressive on its own), but the project of a formation of musical meaning was reduced to mere functioning: a self-styled microstructure could not be identified, nor could it interact, with a nonexistent macrostructure. Serial procedures were strictly tied to the criteria of non-repetition, yet made a rather cumbersome use of all possible canonic and protocontrapuntal forms. They were tied to the idea that a form had to die out spontaneously when its combinatorial potentialities had exhausted themselves, yet they were denied, for example, another interesting rhetorical artifice: that of having a work stop without having it end.”
CHAPTER 2. BRIN
Brin, written in 1990, fully demonstrates the mature perfection of Berio’s
miniature style. The very word “brin” means “wisp” in French: like a blade of grass, a
small piece of substance. Small fragments of material enhance gradually through Brin.
In a short, less than two minutes piece the composer has sent a gentle “adieux” to
his friend Michel Ouder, French pianist who tragically passed away in the age of 20. Like
the last of Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces op. 19, a work-memoriam for Gustav
Mahler, Brin unravels one similar chromatic chord collected together in the last system
of the piece. B-natural, possibly a word-pun, represents each year of Ouder’s life, and
rings exactly twenty times: just like Schoenberg’s piece, “whose repetitions were said to
invoke the Viennese bells on the day of Mahler’s funeral.”
Brin opens with the sonority of an augmented triad D-F-sharp-A-sharp. The
twelve pitches of the chromatic scale are disclosed right away during the first line of the
piece and the first left-hand grace note for G-sharp.
There are no bar lines or signs of tonality – which is completely absent in Brin – though
the constant recollection of the chromatic chord does give an impression different from
classical serial music compositions. As Seth Brodsky describes:
“Berio seems to think of his tones as the mediating means for a kind of informal, intimate contact with the piano itself. In this regard “toccata” — “touched” — is the perfect term: Brin, like much of Berio’s other piano music, is bound up in the sensuous aspect of playing the piano.”
Seven times in Brin Berio introduces groups of eight grace notes, variations of the
chromatic chord. Six of them are identical with one grouping based on D and the
following one based on lower G. The last four grace note groups differ from the initial
three groups; they repeat twice exactly the D-base and the G-base formations. The
audible effect reminds of tonic-dominant interchange with material collected in two or
four measures. The illusion of tonality and rhythm is enforced with each grace note
groupings based on D being immediately succeeded with three repeated sustained bell
like pitches each time, while the grace note grouping based on G may be succeeded with
a sort of melodic fragmentation. Out of seven such groupings, only the second one has
the bass on G-sharp: possibly, this reflects the composer’s intention to stroke the last
serial pitch. As the piece continues, the material that follows the grace note groupings becomes shorter in a way of stretto – leading towards the final chromatic chord which
rings in long sustained tones.
Berio did not assign any silent rests in Brin. The sonority of polyphonic voices
leading with inversions, quasi canons, imitations, call and response resonates richly with
the combination of soft and sustained pedals. The single dynamic marking “pppp
sempre” and tempo suggestion “doux et immobile” (“soft and still”) allow the strings to
produce free overtones which cover the dissonant fragments of material. In all its
gentleness, the tension of Brin’s character is reassured with an augmented seventh
interval which opens the piece: C# – D (down), and closes it simultaneously in both
hands: a chromatic chord in the left hand is positioned between D# and D-natural, while
the right hand chord is arranged between C to B-natural. In its loose transparency, “the
piece works less like progression than a mobile, turning slowly in suspension to reveal all its sides.”
CHAPTER 3. LEAF
Leaf was written together with Brin in 1990, also in memoriam to a deceased friend, artistic director of London Sinfonietta Michael Vyner. A study in statis, less than minute and a half long, the brisk Leaf contrasts with the pensive character of Brin. Arnold Whittall mentions that “the title seems to oppose the stability and fixity of the printed page to the fragility of the element in nature, the falling leaf as symbol of both the organic and the ephemeral.”16 The one chromatic seven-note cluster chord with its bass on F# of the first octave and the top on F of the second octave, is locked in the very
beginning of the piece with sostenuto pedal and resonates till the very end. The polyrhythmic ornament of cluster chords that follow contains the superimposed triadic
harmony imitating a melody. A mere climax of the piece happens close to the end of the
piece in mm. 32-35, where both hands play together and mimic an avulsion of the leaf
from the tree. Brodsky particularizes that the work’s intense self-limiting with regard to its material seems to render that material perfunctory, or at least to shift it into the background like a compositional bedrock; meanwhile, the actual material of the piece, its creative “substance,” becomes that meticulous, virtuosic panoply of performance directions which Berio punctiliously pens.
The twelve-tone chromatic scale appears entirely within first three measures of
the piece. For Berio, the chromatic series here is not a puzzle to reveal gradually. Yet the composer pursues the virtuosity of all imaginary combinations of tone clusters, the flux of directions and trajectories, rhythmic configurations, and varied articulation. Like a
random motion of a trembling leaf in the wind, pianissimo staccato chords combine into a fragmented melodic line. Brodsky outlines that “notes and chords coalesce into
perpetually reconfigured modules and nodes of activity, as if revealing a total shape only
in slowly revolutions of perspective.”
The sostenuto pedal, the middle pedal on the grand piano, is required for the
execution of Leaf. It locks down the sonority of the first chord, opening its strings
continuously. When exact pitches of the chromatic chord are repeated later, they refresh
its loudness. All the material which follows the chromatic chord is played with short
attacks and no sustained pedal, so other pitches don’t overlay its sounding. The
correlation between the staccato and the resonant notes results in what Jinyoung Kim
describes as “the discontinuity of the vertical lines in the staccato and the linearity of the
continuous resonance of the horizontal line.” A legato slur occurs only in the four last measures of Leaf connecting the transparent double-voiced melodic gesture of the fallen leaf reaching the ground: most of the pitches in the legato material belong to the
fundamental chromatic chord, making it resound for one last time.
Unlike Brin, Leaf provides rests everywhere. There is 2/4 strict meter division.
The rhythm itself alternates between duplets and triplets of all possible combinations,
sprinkled with rests of diverse durations which often fall on downbeats. Performers are
advised to learn the rhythmical complexity by tapping it on a table or clapping and, only
when learned, to apply the rhythm to the keyboard. Additionally, “the performer is
advised to subdivide the precise duration of each note and rest” during practice
time.22Even though given exactly the same metronome marking as Brin, “quarter
note=64,” Leaf is characterized by fast nervous motion. Only during the closing four
measures does the motion slow down in rhythmical values of pitches, which
consequently incline towards the strong beats: the leaf is fallen from the tree and spins
from side to side towards the ground.
The fundamental cluster chord has the frame between F# to F with dominants of
each; it appears as if an f-sharp minor triad had been mixed with the G7sus4 (G,C,D,F)
chord. The last two notes of Leaf hang in the air appearing, seemingly, by chance.
However, the F-D bass gesture appears a few times in the text of Leaf unmentioned:
exactly in measures 16 (F#-D chord), 21 (D is sustained to catch up with the lower F#),
mm. 22-23 (sustained D awaits the F# of the first octave), where the F# is a reflection of
the bass of the initial cluster chord. The F of the hanging cadence is originally the top
pitch in the locked fundamental cluster and is inverted to the bass; while the F# is now
the top note in the sustained tritone on the downbeat of the last measure. Whittall
mentions here that:
“An element of an irony cannot be excluded. Yet at the same time there is a hint of fulfillment. Through his disorientating ostinatos, his remarkably resonant integration of the direct and the oblique, Berio shows that modernism and humanism are not incompatible.”
CHAPTER 4. WASSERKLAVIER
4.1 Water in European music literature
Of all elements, water had been most often referred to in European music literature.
The thematic and semantic affluence of water as the element of emotion and memory had inspired European composers for generations. Among the most prominent water
compositions in piano literature are:
– Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Au lac de Wallenstadt; Au bord d’une source, Les jeux
d’eau à la villa d’Este;
– Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Jardins sous la pluie, Des pas sur la neige, Reflets
dans l’eau;
– Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Jeux d’eau;
– Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968): Sea pieces – Il Raggio verde, Alghe, I
Naviganti;
– Luciano Berio (1925-2003): Wasserklavier.
These composers appraise the characteristics of fluidity, undulation and
reflectivity of water in musical terminology. Fluidity of water, as the state of a substance
whose molecules move freely past one another is best depicted with perpetual motion of
textures, application of specific intervals (seconds and fourths), rhythmic figurations of
usually compound meters, and frequent meter changes. Wasserklavier, in this
programmatic tradition, opens with the interval of a second. According to Rossella Marisi, “the tension deriving from this instability demands an onward motion to more
stable combinations such as thirds and fifths.”
4.2 Wasserklavier
The retrospective aspects of reflectivity flow like “newfound streams from a
larger body of water” in vertical melancholic chords of the Water-Piano. Brodsky
acknowledges that Wasserklavier bears the smallest marks of a loving forgery, or at least of something that is notquite-real, slightly less an experience than the memory of an experience. And possibly it is, to some degree, a remarkably complex memory, the memory not of a concrete object, but its idealized rendition. The concept of reflectivity here is depicted by means of both horizontal and vertical symmetric wave motions. The piece is dedicated to Antonio Ballista, an Italian pianist who went to school with Berio in Milan in 1945 after World War II ended.
First written between the encores in 1965, Wasserklavier is the only tonal piece of
the cycle. In a clear elegaic F-minor with compound duple barcarolle rhythms of 6/8,
Berio features a reminiscence of a sonority of skeletal harmonic gestures which had
become traditional in the nineteenth century and especially in late Brahms’s and
Schubert’s piano compositions: particularly Schubert’s Impromptu Op. 142, #1 and
Brahms’ Intermezzo Op. 117, # 2. The final F-minor chord from Schubert’s Impromptu is
uttered during the full continuance of Wasserklavier.
In Frank Dawes’s opinion, “the orthodox F-minor Wasserklavier has a lazy
Mediterranean lilt with a fascinating rhythmic ambiguity in its alternation of compound
and simple diversions of the beat.”27 An incorporated pattern of four dotted eighth notes
interrupts the flow of the prime compound meter with almost swing-like rubato. 6/8
meter alternates with a few 9/8 measures (mm. 6-10, 15-16) and pours into 3/4 in
measure 17, where dotted quarter becomes equal to regular quarter note: the water brook flows instinctively around unevenness and irregularity of the riverbed surface. The compound meter slows down in the 3/4 section and disappears entirely in measure 21, the motion stabilizes and turns into a beam of a far-away substance.
Berio mesmerizes the listener with the gentleness of the fluid qualities of the
piano sonority which permeates Wasserklavier. In the composer’s words:
Imagine bringing to the surface, transcribing, and amplifying functions which are hidden and embedded in a pre-existing and self-sufficient instrumental solo. It is as if one were dealing with natural, preexisting structure, and sought to extract inherent forms and hidden patterns.
Marked “teneramente e lontano” (“tenderly and in the distance”), the piece contains no
other dynamic instructions besides “ppp sempre e lontano” and “sempre una corda.” The emphasis on “lontano”, “far away” keeps the sound of the rapid yet soothing arpeggios
low in overtones, effecting an evocation of gleams of distant memories.
In Wasserklavier each of three distinct voices keeps its independence and individuality of step-wise movement: when the melodic line of the soprano rises, the bass line descends, and vice versa. Phrasing of the first measures are shaped into a call and response canonic imitation in inversion between melodies of right hand and middle voice in the left hand.
Inside the 3/4 episode, random intrusions of additional voices attain the status of the
fourth fully independent voice; by the end of the piece it’s possible to count between five
and seven voices. The distinction between the functions of harmonic filling of non
individual pitches and voice leading melodic lining separates the character of the
beginning of Wasserklavier from its ending: the solitary brook succeeds in merging with
other rivulets.
The motif, cited from the opening of Brahms Intermezzo op. 117 #2 – D-flat – C-
B-flat which descends in step-wise motion – repeats itself over and over in
Wasserklavier: in mm. 4-5, 8, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 22-23 the citation consists of all the 3
pitches. Measures 1, 3, 5, 5-6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 24 bear D-flat – C descending gesture;
measures 6, 9, 9-10, 16 contain the second half of the motif, C – B-flat.
The ringing ostinato bass pitch F permeates the duration of Wasserklavier except
for the episode in mm. 7-19, where the soprano takes the function of ringing high F bells
in mm. 10-14, while the bass line descends and ascends in an F-minor natural scale.
Wasserklavier is an intuitive fusion of its motivic elements, in all possible ways
embroidered on a canvas of the ostinato tonic.
CHAPTER 5. ERDENKLAVIER
The rotation of seasons, nature cycles in agriculture, daily sunlight progressions
find their musical allegoric expression in Berio’s Erdenklavier. The second element of
the quartet, the German ‘Earth-Piano’ is represented by a Pastorale piece in G Locrian
mode.30 Malcolm Miller emphasizes that “in Erdenklavier sustained notes and pedals
create a pointillist pattern with emphatic tone.”31 Musical material rotates here like
planted seeds in soil with melodic tutoring and circling of sustained and accentuated
pitches, which constantly alter the previous sonority in its bright pseudo harmonic
affirmation.
Dedicated to Thomas Willis (1928–2004), a music and arts critic, and arts editor
for the Chicago Tribune, Erdenklavier was written in 1969 after experiments with similar techniques, one of which is O King for voice and chamber ensemble. The approach to serial compositional style recalibrates under Berio’s pen here once again. As Brodsky suggests: “seek not so much a condition of non-repetition [of twelve-tone pitches] as much as of perpetual revolution and reorganization.”32 A pointillistic pattern of single attacked pitches is layered over and over which creates a harmonic bed of perfect fourths; likewise, the material progresses horizontally though the circle of fourths. The initial five pitches prevail in Erdenklavier – rhythmically and dynamically only C, G, F, B-flat and D get emphasis throughout the piece, while the other pitches support the overall sonority and diverse dynamism. There is an illusion created by the resonant wash of sound of a major key harmonic tonality, which is amplified with the lush pedal echoes accompanying the dynamic progression of a single line assertive and transparent twirls of the melody. In the words of Brodsky:
“Like the wonders of Renaissance Arcadia – indeed, like the pre-modern sense of the natural world – Berio’s small, parable-like score offers an incarnation of complexity nestled into the otherwise stunningly simple. Transparency becomes only the open door through which the ear is invited to search and find layer upon layer of labyrinthine interconnections.”
Metronome tempo indication “quarter note equal 50”, exactly the same as the
previous Wasserklavier, suggests rhythmical stability of deliberate motion. Rhythmically
there are no bar lines, though the material inclines towards the initial long pitches which
receive a sense of strong beats. The feeling of rhythm falling on long pitches is
emphasized by the composer’s instruction to play quarter notes fortissimo, while smaller
note values are all pianissimo – a pattern of dynamics introduced in the first line of
Erdenklavier and which continues throughout. In the last line composer writes dynamic
markings again: “mf” instead of “ff” accentuates upbeats and initiates a sort of
diminuendo.
The keyboard range, which is fixed and enclosed within the first and the small
octaves, mimics the range of human voice. The ritualistic manner of the single line
melody also imitates human’s speech or a solo woodwind instrument, as suggested by
Dawes: “Erdenklavier consists almost entirely of unharmonized melody decorated in an
idiom suggestive of the flute.”34 Only in the last system of the piece, while the right hand
continues rotating the initial pitches, the left hand for the first time introduces quarter
notes which are to be played simultaneously with the other material.
Experimental notation is applied in Erdenklavier to prolong and sustain circled
pitches, until the next identical pitch sounds again. Clearly, Berio did not want to mark
traditional slurs and ties which would provide a similar effect; rather he emphasizes the
individual sonority of a solitary human voice manifesting a prayer to mother Earth, the
one that echoes in the mountains in the richness of opened strings overtones. The effect
of harmonic echo is achieved by switching and overlaying all the three pedals: soft,
sostenuto and sustained, sometimes, at once.
Besides the modality of the piece – G Locrian, 12-tone chromaticism,
declamatory setting of material, Berio also included the inversion of two initial pitches
twice in spots where the resonance clears up—this way hinting to a hidden fugal
implication (in the middle of the third system and in the beginning of the second page of
Erdenklavier). The phenomenon of single line declamation, which succeeds, with rich
harmonic resonating chimes of Erdenklavier is best described by Brodsky:
A kind of brilliant trick on musical cognition: even though we hear nothing more than a durational snippet — sound pushing its way through a tiny wedge of previously unexperienced time – what we listen to (that is, what we interpret through hearing) is much less like a two-minute interval, and much more like revolving orb of sound, spinning outside time and which we only observe for two minutes. And in the process of its turns, something like a sonic flashlight seems to move willfully across its smooth surface, brilliantly illuminating patches here and there. A game of revelation and concealment, Erdenklavier should in its illusion of a 3-D object perhaps be counted as musical “op-art,” a new member of that flourishing ’60s phenomenon.
CHAPTER 6. LUFTKLAVIER
Modernism and virtuosity characterize the ever-changing delicate irregularity of
Air-Piano, or Luftklavier. An abstract ostinato elemental texture uninterruptedly
accompanies impressionistic and somewhat anarchic fragments of melody which hang in the air, forming extemporaneous shapes. The composer explained that, “the overall
duration of the fragment remains the same, but within it proportions change here and
there, as do registers.” Picturesque gestures float in parallel to the consistency of tone
tapestry of the ostinato figure.
As Jinyoung Kim puts it, “just like wind consists of the bulk of movement of air,
musical material can suddenly speed up, slow down, or alter directions.” Technical
virtuosity, demanded by the character of program music piece, sets Luftklavier aside from Wasserklavier and Erdenklavier. 16 years passed before Berio added Luftklavier, another piano miniature in 1985—after experimentations in his Concerto per due pianoforti (1972-73). Written in three staves with no measures or signs of tonality, Luftklavier bears carefully considered instructions which leave no space for the performer’s imagination: for example, metronome prescriptions adjust with each accelerando, altering the already fast pace (quarter note = 62) to even faster (quarter note = 84), then prestissimo (quarter note = 104), and back to quarter note = 84 and quarter note = 104.
As with the previous elemental encores, the series of all the twelve pitches
appears within the first system of Luftklavier. The thirteen grace notes which open the
piece repeat over and over, shift between right and left hands, and sound until the end of
Luftklavier, constructing an ostinato texture. Brodsky outlines that Berio’s brief Luftklavier is perhaps the most whimsical of the quartet: it is a fastidious construction, tightly organized around a nexus of pitches that run the gamut between solid chords and broken melodies, woven together by an uninterrupted, coursing ostinato.
The dynamic range varies between “ppp” to “p”, and” mf” in brief climactic
moments, suggesting lighter articulation and superficial touch. However, melodic
fragments must be expressive as the dynamic instructions apply distinctly to the ostinato
figurations. The instruction from the beginning of the piece to play “sempre ppp, il più
veloce e uguale possibile,” “always ppp, and played as fast and equally as possible”
allows no rubato in movement except for the one calculated by the composer.
Three staves visually introduce the piece’s layered texture: ostinato whirls on the
middle staff, while scattered elements of single voice melody are allocated to treble and bass clefs within outer staves. In the middle section, systems 6-19 do not require notation
in three staves, and are written traditionally.
The occasional impermanence of the melodic line with its deep leaps in registers,
however, contains emulative sequences of rhythms and gestures, which may be best seen in the first and second system. In contempt of the illusive aleatoric character of
Luftklavier, Berio once again has spoken to elicit the significance of intellectual
calculation in how far the ‘randomness’ should and should not get random:
“The “aleatorists” and their near-relatives, the “stochastics”, certainly had more freedom of movement [than serialists] in terms of density, dynamics, profiles, and variable tempos. In their indifference to detail and to history, they were exploring, looking at a stopwatch, a sort of macroform, but without the support and comfort of microform. In a case like this, the work may gain in connotation but loses detonation, taking on the overall characteristics of an attractive and relentless natural event.”
CHAPTER 7. FEUERKLAVIER
Written in 1989, the last of the elemental quartets, Feuerklavier is dedicated to a
friend, the pianist Peter Serkin who used to perform Berio’s compositions. Instability and
virtuosity define the Fire-Piano toccata’s character, however, in a manner distinctly
contrasting with the impressionistic peculiarity of Luftklavier—the one which most
effectively symbolizes the fleeting existence and enigmatic powers of fire. Gestures of
flames, reflected in rhythmical trills and tremolos, captivate in a spotlight “from the
sparks of the creation of a fire to smoldering ashes.” Possibly a citation, unequivocally a
reference to Wagner’s Die Walkure’s final scene in its “risky balance and occasional
eruptions,” Feuerklavier mimics angularity and constancy of the fire element.
It begins with a constant rhythmical trill in the right hand, which gets doubled
with an ostinato of the left hand’s augmented triads by the end of the initial system. There the rising arpeggios start breaking through the consistency of the trill, which, according to Kim, “metaphorically, is a simmering white-hot fire, through which rising arpeggio motifs flash like darting flames.”42 The rhythmical stability of Feuerklavier’s texture still does not require any bar lines or time signature: there are no points of gravitation towards strong beats. As in Luftklavier, tempo indications vary between quarter note = 66 and quarter note = 96, with brief accelerandi and rallentandi. Only in the end of the miniature, when the flame dies down, do rhythmical values enlarge from thirty-second notes to eights and sixteens, intercepted with silent rests which resemble the outbursts of a gaseous substance from hot coals. In the view of Brodsky:
“The light of another medium — word, image, or in these case, earthly matter — is sent through the piano as if through a prism, and in the process is thoroughly distorted, refracted, separated from itself, and reconfigured. And rather than becoming seduced by the “image itself” or the “music itself,” we become captivated by the process of transformation itself, its gifts and abuses, efficiencies and inefficiencies in transcribing the original material for a piano, of all things.”
The twelve-tone chromatic scale appears again in full within the first system and
the initial pitch of the second system. Malcolm Miller traces “the tripartite form of Feuerklavier [which] features an ostinato texture in the outer sections, articulated in two distinct motifs—a trill which is gradually widened, and a two-part Alberti-like figuration.”44 Dynamic diversity in the outer sections is somewhat more in waves, achieving the climactic inflations and slumps of a simmered bonfire. As in Erdenklavier, the range of keyboard allocations in Feuerklavier is within slightly over two octaves of the middle register.
The contrasting middle section “Tempo fluttuante quarter note = 66/96” contains
the widest leaps in range, raging arpeggios and seemingly purposeless jumps. Here again
Berio uses three staves to accommodate unstable material in a visually comfortable form. Articulation loosely diverges between slurred legato and short staccato. Extreme dynamics of the middle section rise from “pp” to “ff”, only to drop back to “mf” in the
next two quarter notes. A somewhat deliberate rubato is possible to achieve in the middle section, and this is left to the interpretation and technical abilities of the performer.
Yet another element of improvisation is left to the performer: to consider usage of
the sostenuto pedal deliberately, as instructed by the composer all throughout the duration of Feuerklavier. Resonances of the piano become unforseeable, changing every time a performer wishes to induce a new eruption of the archetypical substance: Feuerklavier, possibly, accomodates as much improvisatory freedom as Berio could ever allow the performer:
“Improvisation has been a haven for dilettantes, who may be fluent in inventing socio-musical alibis but are not in most cases quite incapable of evaluating and analyzing themselves in relation to any historico-musical perspective… performers cannot, as improvisers, place themselves within a sufficiently wide and objective dimension of musical experience.”
CONCLUSION
The Six Encores introduce listeners to archetypal studies in the elements of nature
and program epitaphs in a mood of passive observation of distant substances, whether
those evoke retrospective or visible apparitions. Rhythmic complexities, a hidden
polyphony of resonances, dynamic contrasts, range and registers vary according to the
expressive linguistic demands of the music. The prolonged gentle bells of Brin leave no
place for silence in their constant resonance of detached grief. Leaf allows melody and
harmony to arise from a pattern of clashed pitches, which spin and shake when exposed
to slightest wind flow—until the leaf reaches the ground. The harmonic F-minor sonority
of Wasserklavier is reminiscent of the late compositions of Brahms, yet the abstraction of
the piece’s character is quite modern. The range of the declamatory Erdenklavier does
not exceed the two octaves of the middle register, those which correspond to a natural
human voice, which is implemented in the encore. The aleatoric aimless sequences of
Luftklavier hide mathematically calculated patterns within their impressionistic
insouciance. In Feuerklavier the whole world of passion and ciphering of a flame shape
the illusive stability of a rhythmical perpetuum mobile.
Serialism, which weaves throughout Berio’s Encores, has been applied to the
musical canvas in a way that does not affect its contrapuntal, modal and post-tonal
harmonic blend. Unpredictable shifts in direction of movement overlay the stratum of
pedal and opened strings resonances. Berio reached the maturity of his compositional
style when he merged the best of everything that had previously created before him in a
series of program miniatures, which proves the Six Encores to be a one of a kind
anthology to the virtuosity of original musical thought.
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