subscribeSicilian Folk Music and Luciano Berio
By Nancy Cantwell
The immediate appeal of Luciano Berio’s (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) music is it’s ability to be conspicuously theatrical and unflinchingly intimate at the same time. There is no better place to explore this dichotomy than in the ECM New Series recording based on Sicilian folk music, Voci. Berio’s dramatic compositions for viola and orchestra, Voci, and viola and percussion, Naturale, are sandwiched between a series of aural documents from the Ethnomusicology Archives of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome. These Sicilian songs form the starting points and the nuclei of a score lasting half an hour, six “core pieces” that the music heads toward and moves away from.* Berio ruminates on these vivid underpinnings, “I am not an ethomusicologist, just a pragmatic egoist: so I tend to be interested only in those folk techniques and means of expression that I can in one way or another assimilate without a stylistic break, and that allow me to take a few steps forward in the search for a unity underlying musical worlds that are apparently alien to one another”.
It is this kind of juxtaposition that makes the Berio dynamic so seductive. It is his inquiry into the relationship between a single line of melody, an intimate “logo” of a song, distinctive, particular and the sweeping staged and orchestrated concert pieces that completely captures our attention. Berio refers to the conundrum as the “impossible utopia”. These pieces are a call and response from past to present, from individual to congregation for composer and audiences alike and it is this complicit agreement that lends the music its power.
In Walter Brunetto’s liner notes, On Sicilian folk music, he remarks, “The lacerated vocal expression gives these songs incredible intensity”. It is the fundamental act of the singing that indeed cuts deeply. Space allocation unfortunately does not allow us a taste comparison between Berio’s compositions for Voci and their folk inspirations, but we can attend to two of the archived Sicilian songs.
Grido del venditore di pesce, Cry of the Fish Seller
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
One of the archaic styles is the “abbanniatine”, the cries of the street vendors. Generally descending in pitch, these were meant to win the attention of passers-by. Melodic and ornamental elements made up the “logo” (distinctive cry) of each “imbonitore” (barker). On Grido del venditore di pesce, the basic tetracord is made ambiguous by the alternation of major and minor seconds between the fundamental not and the second degree.**
Novena di Natale, Christmas Novena
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Another common form of popular devotion is the “novena”. This reciting of prayers or songs for nine consecutive days is a preparation for certain religious feast. These performances are sometimes associated with “la questua” (the collection), an act involving taking the song from house to house in exchange for donations. On Novena de Natale,, in which the voice joins halfway through, unusual chromatic structures and conflicts can be heard between the notes played on the two melodic reeds of the “zampogna” (reed-pipe). This is a common instrument in Sicily in the “a paro” type. It has this name because of the two melodic reed of equal length, in addition to the two or three reeds producing a single fixed sound, the drone. The leather bag is made from goatskin turned inside out.**
*Luciano Berio’s Native Language, by Jurg Stenzl
**On Sicilian folk music, by Walter Brunetto
