Universal Edition - Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio
24.10.1925—27.05.2003

Future Performances

Lied
23.05.2013, Wien (A)
Folk Songs
26.05.2013, Bath (GB)
Korót
26.05.2013, Beauvais (F)
Folk Songs
27.05.2013, Graz (A)
Circles
30.05.2013, Basel (CH)

News

  • Luciano Berio
    Omaggio a Berio
    Omaggio a Berio
    The Casa da Música in Porto commemorates the tenth anniversary of Luciano Berio’s death with an â [...]
  • Luciano Berio
    Berio-Saal for the Vienna Konzerthaus
    Berio-Saal for the Vienna Konzerthaus
    The Wiener Konzerthaus commemorates Luciano Berio, after whom its new concert hall has been named, o [...]
  • Luciano Berio
    Luciano Berio: Two German premières at the Berliner Festspiele
    Luciano Berio: Two German premières at the Berliner Festspiele
    The German premières of 4 dédicaces (Concertgebouw Orkest, c. Mariss Jansons) and Stanze (London P [...]

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Luciano Berio

The Composer

Catalogue of works

Download a PDF file of the catalogue

Luciano Berio’s biography begins like the story of many Italian (and German, and French…) composers of the past: his ancestors were all musicians ever since the 18th century. He was born in a small town, Oneglia, where his grandfather and his father played the organ in a local church and also composed. (Universal Edition has published some of their works in the volume Berio Family Album where Luciano’s pieces are printed along with Adolfo and Ernesto Berio’s).

While Ernesto Berio was an ardent admirer of the Duce, his son was an equally ardent antifascist – ardent and furious: he could not forgive Mussolini for [...]

About the Music

The past as future: Luciano Berio

In the aftermath of the Second World War, many composers of Luciano Berio’s generation felt obliged to wipe the slate clean. To a composer with roots as deep in the achievements of the past four centuries as Berio, this was never an option.

His work constantly re-invented continuities where others saw only the possibilities of rupture. Not that he was ever tempted by the assorted nostalgias that haunted some part of the music of the last century. On the contrary, he maintained an insatiable curiosity about the explorations of his contemporaries – musical or otherwise. But his dialogues with literature, with linguistics, with structural anthropology, [...]

10 of 149 Works

a - ronne | for 8 singers 1975
Accordo | for 4 wind bands 1981
Agnus | for 2 sopranos, 3 clarinets (and electric organ) 1971
Air | from "Opera" | for soprano and orchestra 1969
Air | from "Opera" | for soprano and 4 instruments 1970
Alternatim | for clarinet, viola and orchestra 1997
Altra voce | for alto flute, mezzo-soprano and live electronics 1999
Autre fois | Berceuse canonique pour Igor Stravinsky | for flute, clarinet in B [...] 1971
"Song of Sexual Slavery" | from "Threepenny Opera" | arranged for alto (low) an [...] 1972
"Song of Sexual Slavery" | from "Threepenny Opera" | arranged for alto (high) a [...] 1972