Luciano Berio (b. 1925, died May 27, 2003 in Rome) is considered as one of the most important music innovators of this century.
He studied composition and orchestral conducting at the Milan Conservatoire.
In 1955 he founded, together with his friend Bruno Maderna, the studio of phonology of the RAI in Milan, where Luigi Nono soon joined them.
This was the era of the first electro-acoustic discoveries (Thema / Omaggio a Joyce, 1958, and Allez-Hop, based on a text by Calvino, 1959).
Between 1960 and 1972, he gave many classes in Darmstadt, Darlington, at Mill's College, at Harvard, at The Juilliard School, and at Columbia University.
At the same time, he was becoming interested in rock and folk music, devoting essays to these forms, and frequently mingling them with his own compositions.
The decade produced such works as Visage (The Face), Passagio, Folk Songs (1964, first version), Laborintus II, the Sequenza series: works which seem impregnated with all living forms.
Berio indefatigably explored all the original domains of Western culture, in particular the voice, which he quite literally liberated.
Cathy Berberian appeared in his life in the early 1970s - she gave the first performances of various works, including the second version on Folk Songs in 1973 - and became both his muse and the "instrument" most adapted to his studies.
This period was also marked by scores such as those for Opera (1970), Linea and Points on the curve to find (1974), Cries of London, the continuation of The Sequenza, and Il ritorno degli Snovidenia.
Despite becoming attached to the United States, where he continued to teach, Berio did not neglect his Italian background.
His music remained rooted in life, he invented new forms where voice and instruments are pushed to the furthest limits of their virtuosity.
At the heart of these compositions lie vocal and instrumental inflections close to jazz, the tension of the Japanese art of Noh, and the contemplative spirit of Indian music.
He created "situations" in all areas: Coro (1976) is probably one of the high points of his work, an anthology of man, his adventures and his inner landscape.
Until 1980, he was in charge of the electro-acoustic department of IRCAM in Paris, and became head of the branch of IRCAM in Milan.
The 1980s saw a number of joint projects with Italo Calvino (La Vera Storia in 1982, Un Re in Ascolto in 1984).
In 1987, he founded a research institute, Tempo Reale, in Milan.
Luciano Berio is considered as one of the most important music innovators of this century.