Folk Songs (Berio)
Encyclopedia
Folk Songs is a song cycle
by the Italian
composer
Luciano Berio
composed in 1964
. It consists of arrangements of folk music from various countries and other songs, forming "a tribute to the extraordinary artistry" of the American singer Cathy Berberian
, a specialist in Berio's music. It is scored for voice
, flute
, clarinet
, harp
, viola
, cello
, and percussion
. The composer arranged it for a large orchestra in 1973.
for voice and piano as part of his Tre canzoni popolari (Three folk songs). It is often claimed that these three songs were written for Cathy Berberian while she was studying in Italy, but this cannot be the case because she did not arrive there until 1949.
The Folk Songs cycle was commissioned by Mills College
in California and first performed there by a chamber orchestra directed by Berio in 1964 with Berberian as the soprano soloist. By the time of its first performance, the Berberian-Berio marriage was nearing its end, but their artistic partnership continued; they subsequently collaborated on works such as Sequenza III, Visage and Recital I (for Cathy)
. Berio had an emotional attachment to folk song: he once declared that "When I work with that music I am always caught by the thrill of discovery." Other later compositions by Berio that incorporated folk songs were Cries of London, Coro and Voci: Folk Songs II.
" and "I wonder as I wander
" were both written by the Kentucky folk singer and composer John Jacob Niles
. There is a traditional tune for "Black is the Color ..." but, because his father thought it was "downright terrible", Niles recalled, "I wrote myself a new tune, ending it in a nice modal manner." Berio's suite opens with the viola instructed to play "like a wistful country dance fiddler", free of bar lines
and rhythmically independent of the voice. "I Wonder as I Wander" was developed by Niles out of the mere three lines he was able to extract from a revivalist preacher’s daughter, "a tousled, unwashed blond, and very lovely". Harmonics from the viola, cello and harp contribute toward the "hurdy-gurdy sound" Berio wanted to accompany this second song. The extended bird-song postlude for flute and clarinet in Berio’s version seems to have been suggested by the passing reference to the "bird on the wing".
Armenia
, the country of Berberian's ancestors, provided the third song, "Loosin yelav", which describes the rising of the moon. In the French
song "Rossignolet du bois", accompanied only by the clarinet at first but later by the harp and crotales
, a nightingale advises an inquiring lover to sing his serenade
s two hours after midnight, and identifies the "apples" in his garden as the moon and the sun. A sustained chord colored by the striking of automobile spring coils bridges this song to the next one, the old Sicilian
song "A la femminisca", sung by fishermen's wives as they wait at the docks.
Like the first two songs, the sixth, "La Donna Ideale", and the seventh, "Ballo", come not from anonymous folk bards but from Berio himself (see background section above). The old Genoese dialect
folk poem "The Ideal Woman" says that if you find a woman at once well-born, well-mannered, well-formed and with a good dowry, for God's sake don't let her get away. "The Ball", another old Italian poem, says that the wisest of men lose their heads over love, but love resists the sun and ice and all else.
"Motettu de tristura" comes from Sardinia
and apostrophizes the nightingale: "How you resemble me as I weep for my lover... When they bury me, sing me this song."
The next two songs are also found in Joseph Canteloube
's Chants d'Auvergne
and are in the Occitan language. "Malurous qu'o uno fenno" poses the eternal marital paradox: he with no spouse seeks one, and he with one wishes he had none. A cello
echoing the improvisation
at the opening of the suite introduces "Lo Fïolairé", in which a girl at her spinning wheel sings of exchanging kisses with a shepherd.
Berberian discovered the last song "Qalalıyam", known in the suite as "Azerbaijan Love Song", on a 78 RPM record
from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, sung in the Azerbaijani language
except for one verse in Russian
, which a Russian-speaking friend told her compared love to a stove. Berberian sang, purely by rote, the sounds she transcribed as best she could from that scratchy old record. She knew not one word of Azerbaijani.
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...
by the Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
composed in 1964
1964 in music
-Events:*January 1 – Top of the Pops is broadcast for the first time, on BBC television.*January 3 – Footage of the Beatles performing a concert in Bournemouth, England is shown on The Jack Paar Show....
. It consists of arrangements of folk music from various countries and other songs, forming "a tribute to the extraordinary artistry" of the American singer Cathy Berberian
Cathy Berberian
Catherine Anahid Berberian was an American soprano and composer. She interpreted contemporary avant-garde music composed, among others, by Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Sylvano Bussotti, Darius Milhaud, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati , Igor Stravinsky.She also interpreted...
, a specialist in Berio's music. It is scored for voice
Human voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. Its frequency ranges from about 60 to 7000 Hz. The human voice is specifically that part of human sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary...
, flute
Western concert flute
The Western concert flute is a transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist, flutist, or flute player....
, clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
, harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
, viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
, cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, and percussion
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
. The composer arranged it for a large orchestra in 1973.
Background
Two of the songs in the cycle, "La donne ideale" and "Ballo", were composed in 1947 by Berio during his second year at the Milan ConservatoryMusic Conservatoire "Giuseppe Verdi", Milan
The Milan Conservatory is a college of music which was established by a royal decree of 1807 in Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. It opened the following year with premisses in the cloisters of the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Passione. There were initially 18 boarders,...
for voice and piano as part of his Tre canzoni popolari (Three folk songs). It is often claimed that these three songs were written for Cathy Berberian while she was studying in Italy, but this cannot be the case because she did not arrive there until 1949.
The Folk Songs cycle was commissioned by Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
in California and first performed there by a chamber orchestra directed by Berio in 1964 with Berberian as the soprano soloist. By the time of its first performance, the Berberian-Berio marriage was nearing its end, but their artistic partnership continued; they subsequently collaborated on works such as Sequenza III, Visage and Recital I (for Cathy)
Recital I (for Cathy)
Recital I is a stage work by the Italian composer Luciano Berio. It was written for Cathy Berberian, with whom Berio was married from 1950 to 1964, and is scored for vocalist, two pianos, harpsichord and chamber orchestra...
. Berio had an emotional attachment to folk song: he once declared that "When I work with that music I am always caught by the thrill of discovery." Other later compositions by Berio that incorporated folk songs were Cries of London, Coro and Voci: Folk Songs II.
Songs
The first two of the Folk Songs are not actual folk songs. "Black Is the Colour (Of My True Love's Hair)Black Is the Colour (Of My True Love's Hair)
"Black Is the Colour " is a traditional folk song first known in the Appalachian Mountains region of the United States in 1915, but most probably originating from Scotland, as attributed to the reference to the Clyde in the song's lyrics...
" and "I wonder as I wander
I Wonder As I Wander
"I Wonder as I Wander" is a Christmas carol written by John Jacob Niles. The carol has its origins in a song fragment collected on July 16, 1933 by folklorist and singer John Jacob Niles....
" were both written by the Kentucky folk singer and composer John Jacob Niles
John Jacob Niles
John Jacob Niles was an American composer, singer, and collector of traditional ballads. Called the "Dean of American Balladeers", Niles was an important influence on the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, with Joan Baez, Burl Ives, and Peter, Paul and Mary, among others,...
. There is a traditional tune for "Black is the Color ..." but, because his father thought it was "downright terrible", Niles recalled, "I wrote myself a new tune, ending it in a nice modal manner." Berio's suite opens with the viola instructed to play "like a wistful country dance fiddler", free of bar lines
Bar (music)
In musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats of a given duration. Typically, a piece consists of several bars of the same length, and in modern musical notation the number of beats in each bar is specified at the beginning of the score by the top number of a...
and rhythmically independent of the voice. "I Wonder as I Wander" was developed by Niles out of the mere three lines he was able to extract from a revivalist preacher’s daughter, "a tousled, unwashed blond, and very lovely". Harmonics from the viola, cello and harp contribute toward the "hurdy-gurdy sound" Berio wanted to accompany this second song. The extended bird-song postlude for flute and clarinet in Berio’s version seems to have been suggested by the passing reference to the "bird on the wing".
Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, the country of Berberian's ancestors, provided the third song, "Loosin yelav", which describes the rising of the moon. In the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
song "Rossignolet du bois", accompanied only by the clarinet at first but later by the harp and crotales
Crotales
thumb|right|Crotales are often used with other mallet percussionCrotales , sometimes called antique cymbals, are percussion instruments consisting of small, tuned bronze or brass disks. Each is about 4 inches in diameter with a flat top surface and a nipple on the base. They are commonly...
, a nightingale advises an inquiring lover to sing his serenade
Serenade
In music, a serenade is a musical composition, and/or performance, in someone's honor. Serenades are typically calm, light music.The word Serenade is derived from the Italian word sereno, which means calm....
s two hours after midnight, and identifies the "apples" in his garden as the moon and the sun. A sustained chord colored by the striking of automobile spring coils bridges this song to the next one, the old Sicilian
Sicilian language
Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...
song "A la femminisca", sung by fishermen's wives as they wait at the docks.
Like the first two songs, the sixth, "La Donna Ideale", and the seventh, "Ballo", come not from anonymous folk bards but from Berio himself (see background section above). The old Genoese dialect
Genoese dialect
Genoese is a dialect of the Ligurian language, the one spoken in Genoa .Ligurian is listed by Ethnologue as a language in its own right, of the Romance branch, and not to be confused with the ancient Ligurian language...
folk poem "The Ideal Woman" says that if you find a woman at once well-born, well-mannered, well-formed and with a good dowry, for God's sake don't let her get away. "The Ball", another old Italian poem, says that the wisest of men lose their heads over love, but love resists the sun and ice and all else.
"Motettu de tristura" comes from Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
and apostrophizes the nightingale: "How you resemble me as I weep for my lover... When they bury me, sing me this song."
The next two songs are also found in Joseph Canteloube
Joseph Canteloube
Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret was a French composer, musicologist, and author best known for his collections of orchestrated folksongs from the Auvergne region.-Biography:...
's Chants d'Auvergne
Chants d'Auvergne
Chants d'Auvergne is a collection of folk songs from the Auvergne region of France arranged for soprano voice and orchestra or piano by Joseph Canteloube between 1923–1930. The songs are in the local language, Occitan...
and are in the Occitan language. "Malurous qu'o uno fenno" poses the eternal marital paradox: he with no spouse seeks one, and he with one wishes he had none. A cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
echoing the improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
at the opening of the suite introduces "Lo Fïolairé", in which a girl at her spinning wheel sings of exchanging kisses with a shepherd.
Berberian discovered the last song "Qalalıyam", known in the suite as "Azerbaijan Love Song", on a 78 RPM record
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, sung in the Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
except for one verse in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, which a Russian-speaking friend told her compared love to a stove. Berberian sang, purely by rote, the sounds she transcribed as best she could from that scratchy old record. She knew not one word of Azerbaijani.