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6
focus Luciano Berio
Dear friends, being neither a musician nor a musicologist,
at a conference in which the titles of the papers
alone make me aware of my abysmal lack of knowledge,
let me talk about Luciano Berio not as a musician or a
musicologist but rather as a friend, having the privilege of
being the last survivor of that evening at a bar called “di
Ballesecche”.
It was the beginning of 1959, and John Cage had
been taken off to appear on [the game show] Lascia o
Raddoppia (Double or Quit) to help pay for his stay in
Italy. Seeing that Roberto Leydi knew that he was an
expert on wild mushrooms, and
that Cage had done his performances
with coffee machines and
food mixers on the stage of the
Teatro alla Fiera, [the presenter]
Mike Buongiorno, flabbergasted,
asked him whether this was Futurism
– at the time we had laughed
about it, though the question was
unintentionally philological, since
no one could deny that Russolo’s
intonarumori (noise intoners) had
had a certain influence.
John Cage had recently completed
his aleatory composition
Fontana Mix, actually written for
Cathy Berberian, but with a title dedicated to Signora
Fontana, his landlady, of mature years but with a certain
charm, who, fascinated by her tenant (John Cage wouldn’t
have looked amiss playing Wyatt Earp in a John Ford film)
had let him know of her devoted admiration (the legend
varies as to her modus operandi). Being little inclined to
entertain relations with partners of the opposite sex, and
being a gentleman, Cage had declined the offer; but he
had dedicated the composition to Signora Fontana.
UmBerto eco
Those Studio Days
However, with Berio
and musicians of his
generation we find
a new situation: the
musician was aware
theoretically of what
he was doing.
When, on the evening of Thursday 26 February 1959,
Cage had won two and a half million lire (and not five, as
all the internet sites report, since he had decided not to
double), we met up to celebrate with glasses of champagne
in a bar on the corner of via Massena [in Milan],
the only one close to the RAI television studios still open,
a bar nicknamed “di Ballesecche” 1 by Berio and Maderna
because they had some dislike or other for the owner.
There we were, in the billiard room, as squalid as any
billiard room on Corso Sempione could be after midnight
(and without even Paul Newman to play the braggart),
there to celebrate, with John
Cage, Berio, Maderna, Cathy, Marino
Zuccheri, Roberto Leydi and
Peggy Guggenheim (sic) wearing a
pair of gold shoes (sic). They are all
gone, I am the last survivor of that
marvellous event. So please look
upon me with respect and forgive
me if I reminisce about personal
memories and follies.
I would very much like to have
talked about Berio, a companion
in so many adventures, together
with Bruno Maderna, but I fear
I would offend decency – even
if Talia would have had nothing to be upset about since
these were adventures that happened before Luciano met
her and, I believe, before she was even born. I would have
liked to reminisce about many episodes in those days that
now seem heroic, when in 1956 Schönberg was jeered at
La Scala and when in 1963, at the Piccola Scala, certain
gentlemen in dinner jackets, outraged by Passaggio by
Berio and Sanguineti, stood up indignantly shouting
“centre-left!”