Between the musical legacy and the rediscovery of listening in postmodernity

paths for a new music in Luciano Berio

Abstract

This paper aims at examining, first of all, Seth Kim-Cohen’s argument according to which the mid 20^th century represented a hallmark in arts, with the beginning of a deep cultural “epistemological and ontological turn". In music, the turning point was the year of 1948, when, for Kim-Cohen, three decisive events came together.  First, the beginning of engineer Pierre Schaeffer's sonorous experiments, in the ORTF studios (Office of Radiodiffusion Télévision Française) and, secondly, the first silent composition by John Cage. Together, they meant the release of the principles of concrete music and of aleatoric music as an alternative to western erudite music paradigm. The third event refers to Muddy Water's pioneering electric recordings. In this case the technology used both in recording and in sound reproduction amplifies and modifies, on the one hand, the acoustic sound and, on the other hand, interferes in the presence / absence relation given by the interaction between the musicians themselves in musical performance, between musicians and listeners and between sound production and acoustic space, besides making possible the wide circulation and utilization of musical pieces.

For understanding the effect of 20th century’s new technology in sound production and reproduction over postmodernity musical listening and composition, we focuse such effects in what they relate to composer Luciano Berio’s poetics as both a musical and aesthetical thought. The choice of this composer among so many others is justified first and foremost by the particular way in which he articulates many of the questions that presented themselves to his generation, especially those between legacy, rupture and innovation, between sound-in-itself and the implicit meanings of his choices, between his personal journey and the awareness of his time, between personal expression and the feeling of historical responsibility and, finally, between representation of nationality and alterity.