Biography (read more)
Luciano Berio was born on 24 October 1925 at Oneglia on the Ligurian coast, and was taught the piano by his father and grandfather, both organists. Conscripted during the Second World War, he injured his hand on his first day while being shown how a gun worked and spent three months in a military hospital; unable to go on as a pianist, he turned to composition. He studied counterpoint with Giulio Cesare Paribeni and, from 1948, composition with Giorgio Federico Ghedini at the Milan Conservatory, making a living conducting in small opera houses and accompanying singing classes — which is how he met the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, whom he married in 1950 and for whose voice he wrote a series of works. He studied with Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood in 1952, attended Darmstadt from 1954, and died on 27 May 2003.
He worked for RAI in Milan from 1953 to 1960 and co-founded the Studio di fonologia musicale with Bruno Maderna in 1955, which became one of Europe’s leading electronic studios and drew Henri Pousseur and John Cage to work there. He taught at Mills College from 1962 on Milhaud’s invitation and at Juilliard from 1965, where he founded the Juilliard Ensemble; his pupils included Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, Luca Francesconi and Phil Lesh. Laborintus II, on a text by Edoardo Sanguineti, won the Prix Italia in 1966, and Sinfonia, premiered in 1968, made his reputation more widely. He directed the electro-acoustic division of IRCAM from 1974 to 1980 and founded Tempo Reale in Florence in 1987. The Sequenza series, solo pieces built on extended techniques, ran across most of his career.
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