Ludique et iconoclaste, A-ronne, pièce radiophonique initialement
composée pour cinq voix d’acteurs traverse l’univers vocal dans son
entier. Cet univers que Luciano Berio a sans cesse parcouru en
instigateur curieux et connaisseur procède en dissection, analyse,
décomposition et recomposition des voix de " A " jusqu’à " Ronne " ("
Ronne " étant la dernière lettre de l’ancien alphabet italien, après "
Z ", " Ette " et " Conne "). Les situations ainsi répertoriées autour
du poème d’Edoardo Sanguineti déclinent une extraordinaire palette de
jeux et d’expressions. Luciano Berio rappelle à ce sujet qu’A-Ronne
s’apparente à un " madrigale rappresentativo " c’est-à-dire un "
théâtre pour les oreilles " de la fin du XVIème siècle italien et une
peinture vocale naïve. L’éventail des situations proposées, si ample
soit-il, peut en effet être toujours ramené à une situation
élémentaire, à des sentiments et à des états d’âme reconnaissables,
familiers et souvent manifestes. Le sujet de ce documentaire s’articule
donc autour d’un poème d’Edoardo Sanguineti et incorpore
alternativement des extraits du manifeste communiste, des écritures de
Roland Barthes etc… Les acteurs récitent le poème environ vingt fois,
mais les mots sont seulement des échafaudages sur lesquels Berio
accroche des inflexions liées à des scenari dramatiques stéréotypés :
une scène d’hôpital, une scène d’amour, un programme de télévision et
ainsi de suite.
One of Italy's greatest avant-garde composers,
Luciano Berio was born in 1925 to a musical family that eagerly guided
him into the world of composition. He studied at Milan until 1951, and
then set upon a long career of living alternately in Italy and the
United States, studying under various modernist masters, and forging
his own unique style. In 1950 he married American singer Cathy
Berberian, and wrote many of his pieces for her voice. From 1955 to
1960, he directed the "Studio di Fonologia Musicale," a center for
electronic music which he and Bruno Maderna had founded at RAI (Italian
Radio). After another decade of living in America, he returned to Italy
and founded "Centro Tempo Reale," an institute for music research which
drew together musicians and computer science experts, in order to
advance and explore new forms of composition. In 1982 he became Musical
Director of the newly founded Regional Orchestra of Tuscany. In 1984 he
was Artistic Director of the Maggio Musicale in Florence. In 1988 he
became an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, London. He has
also been awarded the prestigious Siemens Prize.
Of the same
generation as Cage, Boulez and Stockhausen, Berio pioneered modernism
in music and the use of electronics to explore new musical frontiers.
He employed a myriad of idioms and techniques during his long and
prolific career, specializing in works for the voice, "chance" music,
serialism, electronic music, and most famously, a series of virtuoso
solo pieces called "Sequenzia." He was also fascinated with literature,
particularly twentieth century modernism and postmodernism. Berio
passed away in Rome in 2003, his compositions are performed regularly
throughout the world.
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