Remembering the future by Luciano Berio - chapter 2 “Translating music”

On page 40: “As for Ravel, his transcriptions, where the piano transcended into the orchestra, are all very well known. Stravinsky’s transcription covered a very wide and complex territory. Think of the different versions of La Noces, and thinks of Agon, which is a kind of systhetic transcription (almost a parody) of a large segment of music history. The young Stockhausen showed his musical coming-of-age by transcribing his Kontra-punkte from a huge, uncontrolled orchestra to ten solo instruments. With Mauricio Katelyn transcription becomes parody, commentary upon everything he encounters. Boulez’s transcription and re-transcriptions of his own works (such as Notations for orchestra, where he uncovers, transcribes, and amplifies several short piano pieces written forty-five years earlier) are an important aspect of his creative process and of his proliferating vision.



In responde to last paragraph, I wrote: transcribe colours (in circles) is a possibility??



On page 43, 44 and 45 Berio says: “Chemis IV for oboe and eleven strings, based on my Sequenza VII for oboe, develops a still different form of interaction and transcription. A single, isolated note of the oboe is repeated, always in the same register, through an almost regular sequence of accents and silences. The same note is developed in the instrumental group, undergoing a constant variation of timbre and dynamics for the entire duration of the composition. Always present and always different, that note acts as a generalised tonic or like the vanishing point in a landscape. It enables us to perceive and compare the smallest oscillations of color, intensity and intonation. At times our vanishing point is lost in a cumulative process; or it is not longer heard as such because it is abosrbed, like an overtone, as a structural part of a harmonic process. The ever-present pitch at times is forgotten and at other times is recognised and remembered. The articulation of the soloist are alternatively extended, prepared, or unexpectedly foreshadowed by the instrumental group, creating a dialogue of <<mobilizeis>> and <<immobilities,>> of <<before>> and <<after,>> of <<memories>> and <<forgetfulness.>> They look ahea, they look behind, and naturally they always look at each other. The dialogue stops once this process has proliferated so far tha the instrumental group now functions as an echo-chamber, filled with fragments deduced from everything that we have heard so far, while the soloist’s original physiognomy is completely transformed.

A dialogue between a pre-existing musical text and the otherness of an added text can therefore be developed through multiple forms interactions, from the most unanimous to the most conflictual and estranged. But it is exactly through these moments of estrangement that a deep connection with the initial data, with the given material of the solo instrument, will be both challenged and justified. By <<initial data>> I don’t necessarily mean something that comes earlier in time. It is possible to develop cocertante situations in which the solo instrument becomes a generator of functions that are entrusted to the instrumental group. Which in turn generates the solo part; this the group generates something that already existed, in such a way that the solo is no longer a generator but a result.

This implies the possibility of transforming and even busing the text’s integrity so as to perform an act of constructive demolition on it. 



In responde to all what was said on last 3 pages, but specially on the last highlitghted part, I wrote: Everytime something new happen, this generate new materials/new gestures. For example, Haydn string quartets - everytime he introduce new material in whichever instrument, that become the main gesture on a near future.

Everything you do can create a reaction to it, as for example drop a stone on a calm lake.



On page 45, Berio says: “I feel that the implications of this proceeding, although quickly described, can be quite gar-reaching. This is a position that we can also adopt with regard to history, not just musical history; in this perspective we are invited to renew our perception of history, maybe to te-invent it so that, fully responsible, we can accept the idea of a history that is exploring us and we can give ourselves, again and again, the possibility of remembering the future.”

On page 58, Berio says: In central Africa there is a small, pacific community which we could define as <<highly musical,>> if the member of the community had our notion of music. The tribe, known as the Banda Linda, was studied by the ethnomicologist Simha Arom. In groups of about forty, the members of the tribe play long wooden pipes, each of which produces a single note. Each notes is repeated on a single rhythmic module, with occasional slight variations that do not affect the <<block>> character of the whole. When all the players blow into their instruments, they produce an altogether new sound—new to western ears. It is both complex and coordinated, something between a cathedral of sound and an implacable musical machine. The playing of the Banda Lina wooden horn is governed by an infrangível principle. There is a pentatonic melody which is not actually played by any one person: its notes are distributed among the players by some tacit social agreement, nobody plays the melody as such, yet its nature and its spirit are ever-present at any point in this fabulous sound <<installation.>>