AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

164 sunday morning AMS Philadelphia 2009
“UNWRAPPING” THE VOICE: CATHY BERBERIAN’S
AND JOHN CAGE’S AriA (1958)
Francesca Placanica
University of Southampton
Cathy Berberian is widely known as the “Muse of Darmstadt,” an epithet she earned following
her marriage to Luciano Berio, for whom she was the earliest vocal model. The couple
lived in Milan from 1950 to the early Sixties, when the Studio di fonologia musicale had become
the obligatory stop for composers traveling from all over the world to Darmstadt. In
this artistic milieu, Berberian played a fundamental role, becoming the irreplaceable linguistic
bridge that favored intellectual exchange among international artists. Her vocal and histrionic
skills eventually inspired composers to fashion new compositions on her unique voice and
intelligence.
In this paper I examine the role of Berberian in avant-garde music, exploring unpublished
primary sources preserved in the Cathy Berberian Los Angeles Archive (CBLA) maintained
by Berberian’s daughter, Cristina Berio. The CBLA contains autograph scores, journals,
handwritten annotations, notebooks, drawings in Berberian’s hands, and a lengthy unedited
interview given by the singer in 1981 and recorded on twenty-one tapes. My study of these
hitherto neglected materials sheds new light on the structural role of Berberian’s performance
choices in numerous avant-garde compositions and on the interaction with the composers
who had her as their performer of election.
In particular, I focus on the fertile friendship and collaboration between Berberian and
John Cage, which resulted in the Aria with Fontana Mix (premiered 1958), composed at the
Berios’ in Milan and explicitly dedicated to the American singer. Supported by unpublished
evidence, such as Berberian’s recorded voice, annotations, and performance markings on the
autograph score of Aria preserved in the CBLA, my paper traces the story of the composition
of Aria from the perspective of the singer who inspired it, and first faced the challenge of
performing it. Indeed, Berberian assisted Cage suggesting and providing numerous original
linguistic, vocal and dramatic devices, which eventually became structural part of the piece,
deeply affecting its compositional and performing plan.
What emerges from my study is that Berberian’s contribution to the avant-garde vocal
output, as with Cage’s and Berio’s works, was twofold. First, Berberian drove the composer’s
hand while he was writing, suggesting linguistic, dramatic and vocal devices, and assisting him
in molding the written work on her histrionic and vocal skills. Well aware of her own vocal
and dramatic strengths, she was pivotal to the success of the work, as she had the ability to
interpret, embody and deliver at the top of her potential the composer’s intentions. But to a
greater extent, her personal commitment to the performance of a piece, her own research on
and reinvention of the composition once it was “completed,” allowed her to extend the creative
act well beyond the work of the composer himself, taking it all the way to the stage and
the performing momentum.