# What do you think of Berio's Sinfonia?



## Guest (Aug 21, 2018)

IIRC it came second place in the recently completed game of music by Italian composers. Although I could be wrong, in which case, what do you think of it anyway?






For me, along with Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie, this is one of the big two symphonies of the twentieth century. And it certainly _is_ a symphony of the twentieth century, considering the subject matter and its treatment of it.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It was one of the first "modern" works that I ever bought on LP - the original Columbia recording. I bought mostly because of the use of the Mahler in it: if you can't write as well as the masters of yesterday, then ride their coattails and rip them off. But I enjoyed the whole symphony, and listened many times. Bought a cd version which I wouldn't have done had I not found something memorable and interesting.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

I too bought the Columbia LP when it first came out and have ever since loved the piece. Sure, the quotation movement with the fun verbal quips is the main attraction, but the second movement "O, King" is quite good


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Love it, even though there are dozens of 20th century symphonies that I prefer to it.


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

I've listened to it twice, and will familiarize myself with it more in the future since it's a score I found tremendously interesting. Certainly an epic and significant addition to the genre!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

As to the piece itself, I like it. I also like this particular video. I'm glad I'm not doing this thing live. Of course, my only complaint is, I find myself looking forward to the Mahler quotes, and I tend to overlook the rest of it. 

Also, I just realized that it's the one piece of Berio that I've listened to more than once. I need to dust off my recording of the Sequenzas.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Manxfeeder said:


> I find myself looking forward to the Mahler quotes


This is a misnomer. The entire Mahler movement is always there from start to finish. However, other quotations from Bach thru Stockhousen and all the vocal/verbal quips frequently cover up the Mahler.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

It's a wonderfully imaginative work (this also from the original Columbia recording). But I have never since been able to listen to the third movement of the Mahler second without the Swingle Singers whispering in my ear.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

_"Keep Going!!!"_


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I like it, but there are works of his I prefer, such as Differences, Points on the Curve to Find, the Sequenzas, Folk Songs, Due Pezzi...and the early tape works:


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I've heard it a few times and like it quite a lot. I want to delve deeper into it at some point because it's so fascinating (and beautiful!).


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Vasks said:


> This is a misnomer. The entire Mahler movement is always there from start to finish. However, other quotations from Bach thru Stockhousen and all the vocal/verbal quips frequently cover up the Mahler.


Okay. Then I look forward to the Mahler movement with quips.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Marvelous. Multiple realities, dimensions and genres of music simultaneously existing on the same plane, such as Berio’s quotes of Mahler and others that he loved within his overall modern orchestration. IMO, a classic work of the 20th-century music and a unique blend of orchestra and voices. But I did not particularly care for the Boulez performance with all kinds of ragged and imprecise entrances. There are better performances out there, though it may not have been Boulez’s fault because of the many subtle difficulties within this intricate score. It would probably take a gazillion rehearsals to get everything right, including the swelling and articulation of the voices. It’s an exceptional modern work in that the past is not pitted against the present.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Vasks said:


> ...The entire Mahler movement is always there from start to finish. However, other quotations from Bach thru Stockhousen and all the vocal/verbal quips frequently cover up the Mahler.


I was never much enamoured of this particular work. I heard it decades ago in its initial album release. And I've heard it several times since. I currently have at least two different recordings. What I most recall of the music is that to me it sounds "dated", a relic of mid-20th century avant-garde classical music, and I'm thinking _that_ was my impression upon my_ first hearing_ of it, when it was fairly new! Each subsequent listen has simply confirmed the fact for me. It's not a piece I care much for, which, I suspect, puts me in the minority here. And I claim full credentials in the Contemporary Music Appreciation Society!

But I think Vasks explains it well for me. All that stuff that covers up the Mahler prevents my fullest appreciation of the work. Which is why I tend to turn to Mahler instead of Berio's _Sinfonia_.

I realize that I should give this piece another listen. Soon. (It has been a while since I took the piece on in a serious listening session. And the last time I played it, I played only the "Mahler movement". My bad.) Perhaps after reading all the apparent praise you good folks give this work I will hear it with renewed consciousness.

Or am I forever doomed to prefer Mahler naked?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Art Rock said:


> Love it, even though there are dozens of 20th century symphonies that I prefer to it.


Is that how you talk to your wife? "I love you, even though there are dozens of women I prefer to you." Let us know when (and if) you get out of the hospital! :lol:


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

It is a classic and an icon of C20th music. And so is the other example in the OP (Turangulila) - a work I have come to actually dislike - but I do like the Berio. I do sometimes wonder if it isn't just a little too clever and it is one of those works that I admire and respect more than feeling personally engaged with. Sometimes it becomes personal for me after some time and sometimes not. 

I do think the C20th gave us quite a number of great symphonies that I love - Sibelius, anyway, and some Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Pettersson - before "the form" went into decline.


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## PeterFromLA (Jul 22, 2011)

I have loved this piece since I first purchased the legendary Columbia LP, recorded shortly after the premiere, the composer conducting.

The work is dazzling, from start to finish. I love the references to Claude Levi-Strauss's work, the solemn intoning of MLK, the virtual storming of the concert hall by the Parisians of May 1968, excerpts from Stockhausen and Boulez floating past as we are carried forth atop the gigantic Mahlerian platform, like a Trojan Horse populated by bits and shards of Western classical music, and then the false epilogue recollecting the O King movement, followed by the pendant to the piece (not on the Columbia recording), a reworking of the entirety of the preceding, a vision of the piece itself as if seen under glass, its various movements wrestling and writhing. 

What a delight! This piece was everything I needed as I cracked open my books to study culture, social theory, history, anthropology, and politics. It is a Mahlerian symphony par excellence: It contains the world.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Bump for a great piece. 

I have finally gotten around to listening to Berio's Sinfonia in full, after purchasing a recording with Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony. It's really good, and it's coupled with two other interesting works (Ravel's La Valse & Boulez's Notations I-IV), but now, I've gotten curious to hear other recordings of it. There is the composer's own debut recording, of course, on Columbia/Sony, which is missing the finale, which didn't exist at the time of recording. But then there are several others: Chailly/Decca, Boulez/Erato, Eötvös/DG, Lintu/Ondine, Pons/HM, etc. etc. It's great how lucky this work has been on recording, compared to certain other works of a similar vintage and style. The one that sounds the best to me of these is the Eötvös—I'm becoming a fan of his conducting. 

Anyone listening to Berio's Sinfonia lately? I'm quite fascinated with it.


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## UniversalTuringMachine (Jul 4, 2020)

An absolute masterpiece.

And you don't need to understand Levi Strauss to enjoy it. The third movement is the greatest "Collage" in music ever, the musical forms transcend the limit of literary texts from their context and meanings.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I switched listening to this piece on my speakers to headphones and I'm enjoying it a lot more this way. I can hear everything that's going on a lot more clearly. I'm going back and forth to the Chailly, Boulez, and Morlot recordings. I've heard that the Lintu is a good performance as well.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I love it! It's one of the pieces that got me into contemporary music a few months ago (yes, as recently as that, but it's been an amazing ride of discovery since then). It's maybe a bit too ambitious, but it's such a blast to hear. Part political protest, part existentialist meta-narrative, part crazy collage of music history...all this adds up to a postmodern masterpiece. For me, it is music's equivalent of Eliot's _The Waste Land_, which is possibly my favorite poem. It's haunting, opaque, eloquent, at times purposefully disorienting, and seems to contain all of Western art within it - in not even 30 minutes!


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

"What do you think of Berio's _Sinfonia_?"

I have two recordings: one on LP with Luciano Berio conducting the New York Philharmonic with the Swingle Singers; and another on CD with Pierre Boulez with the National Orchestra of France and the _New_ Swingle Singers, with the added fifth movement. All-in-all the original Berio recording is more dynamic. I think of the infamous third movement as a kind of "musical collage" along the lines of what Charles Ives did in the second movement of his _Symphony #4_. Berio is a very innovative Modern composer. I read in an interview with Claudio Arrau that he liked to play works by Berio and Boulez for himself in his New York City apartment, but didn't play it in concert or on records because, he said, "My audience would never stand for it."


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Coach G said:


> "What do you think of Berio's _Sinfonia_?"
> 
> I have two recordings: one on LP with Luciano Berio conducting the New York Philharmonic with the Swingle Singers; and another on CD with Pierre Boulez with the National Orchestra of France and the _New_ Swingle Singers, with the added fifth movement. All-in-all the original Berio recording is more dynamic. I think of the infamous third movement as a kind of "musical collage" along the lines of what Charles Ives did in the second movement of his _Symphony #4_. Berio is a very innovative Modern composer. I read in an interview with Claudio Arrau that he liked to play works by Berio and Boulez for himself in his New York City apartment, but didn't play it in concert or on records because, he said, "My audience would never stand for it."


Man, I would love to hear a recording of the Boulez Notations or Piano Sonatas w/ Arrau. I've never heard any of Berio's piano music-aside from his great Concerto for Two Pianos and Points on the Curve to Find... which is essentially a piano concerto of sorts. I ought to hear some of the solo works.


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## UniversalTuringMachine (Jul 4, 2020)

flamencosketches said:


> Man, I would love to hear a recording of the Boulez Notations or Piano Sonatas w/ Arrau. I've never heard any of Berio's piano music-aside from his great Concerto for Two Pianos and Points on the Curve to Find... which is essentially a piano concerto of sorts. I ought to hear some of the solo works.


Me too, although the mellow, rounded tone of Arrau's touch might not be ideal for Boulez's angular, clinical music.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Tried it out a few times. Doesn't float my boat. Especially the 3rd movement has been described as polystylistic, but I don't feel engaged unlike Schnittke's sort. I feel it's too chaotic, open-ended or disjointed, and the only overall sense I feel is one of self-importance or pretension.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

UniversalTuringMachine said:


> Me too, although the mellow, rounded tone of Arrau's touch might not be ideal for Boulez's angular, clinical music.


I would not describe Boulez's music as clinical. Angular, yes, but it is ultimately quite organic.


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## UniversalTuringMachine (Jul 4, 2020)

flamencosketches said:


> I would not describe Boulez's music as clinical. Angular, yes, but it is ultimately quite organic.


His piano sonatas definitely are. If you can enlighten me anything organic about it, I will thank you dearly for the insight.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

UniversalTuringMachine said:


> His piano sonatas definitely are. If you can enlighten me anything organic about it, I will thank you dearly for the insight.


Hmm, not to me-though maybe certain performances of the second sonata could be called clinical. I don't know about enlightening anyone, but if you want to hear it differently, all I'll say is keep listening. You'll find there are many sides to the music. The only other thing I'll say is that the third piano sonata has the same kind of semi-aleatoric structure that I find in Lutoslawski or early Cage, music that is organic if nothing else.

In the end, I wouldn't call Boulez's piano music any more clinical than that of Ravel or Debussy.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

All I'll say about it is that after hearing that 3rd movement I better not hear anyone complain about John Williams borrowing stuff ever again


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ Of course, the Berio is saying something about a very famous piece of music so that it becomes like the subject of the movement. I don't know much of Williams' music and didn't know he had been accused of copying the music of others but from what I do know about him I doubt very much that he would have been making comments about a well known piece. More likely he was just borrowing, perhaps surreptitiously.



Phil loves classical said:


> Tried it out a few times. Doesn't float my boat. Especially the 3rd movement has been described as polystylistic, but I don't feel engaged unlike Schnittke's sort. I feel it's too chaotic, open-ended or disjointed, and the only overall sense I feel is one of self-importance or pretension.


Yes, Berio is certainly not Schnittke! And I guess if you go looking for Schnittke in his music you will end up disappointed. But why not do him the favour of listening with open ears to hear what he wants to say? Let the music talk to you rather than searching for what is not there and is not supposed to be there.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> It is a classic and an icon of C20th music. And so is the other example in the OP (Turangulila) - a work I have come to actually dislike - but I do like the Berio. I do sometimes wonder if it isn't just a little too clever and it is one of those works that I admire and respect more than feeling personally engaged with. Sometimes it becomes personal for me after some time and sometimes not.
> 
> I do think the C20th gave us quite a number of great symphonies that I love - Sibelius, anyway, and some Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Pettersson - before "the form" went into decline.


Ooh - it is sometimes a shock to read yourself from a couple of years before! Was it only a couple of years ago that I disliked Messiaen? I do remember but I have moved a very long way from that position in a very short time.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

UniversalTuringMachine said:


> His piano sonatas definitely are. If you can enlighten me anything organic about it, I will thank you dearly for the insight.


There is a lot of passion (an opposite of clinical?) in them, I think, although (Boulez being Boulez) the sound is open and "cool" (no ugly sounds!) for all its angularity.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Enthusiast said:


> Ooh - it is sometimes a shock to read yourself from a couple of years before! Was it only a couple of years ago that I disliked Messiaen? I do remember but I have moved a very long way from that position in a very short time.


I hate coming across old posts of mine... I seem to have thought I knew everything and that my opinions were set in stone.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

* Yes, quite. But I can also revel in how much I have learned and how much it all fell into place ... Strangely, it was my liking the music of his student George Benjamin that opened my ears to Messiaen. And then I started noticing that the earth actually moved for me when I listened to his music!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

flamencosketches said:


> I've never heard any of Berio's piano music-aside from his great Concerto for Two Pianos and Points on the Curve to Find... which is essentially a piano concerto of sorts. I ought to hear some of the solo works.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Enthusiast said:


>


Sounds excellent, thank you. I really want to get on CD a set of the complete Sequenzas. A fascinating and unique body of work.

Re: Messiaen, yes; his music is quite earth-shattering, though I must admit certain works of his have yet to click with me. I've never heard of George Benjamin, any works of his I ought to check out? Messiaen must have had more illustrious students than almost any other 20th C. composer (Schoenberg possibly excepted?), as a longstanding faculty at the Conservatoire, where he was likely among the more forward-thinking of that institution's instructors. I mean, come on...:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_students_by_teacher:_K_to_M#Olivier_Messiaen

Quite the list.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

George Benjamin is focusing more and more on opera these days (Written on Skin and Lessons in Love and Violence have both been recorded). I guess that Palimpsests is a good introduction to his music. This is a great record, for example:


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Enthusiast said:


> George Benjamin is focusing more and more on opera these days (Written on Skin and Lessons in Love and Violence have both been recorded). I guess that Palimpsests is a good introduction to his music. This is a great record, for example:
> 
> View attachment 140778


Ah, and Ligeti and Murail are two more composers I've been meaning to explore in more depth. I'll have to see if I can find this disc. Thanks.


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