DESCRIPTION:
Nones, for orchestra (1954)

London Symphony Orchestra
Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio has been strongly influenced by the works of Anton Webern, about whose music Arnold Schoenberg perceptively commented, "Every glance is a poem, every sigh a novel." But unlike his contemporaries who have followed Webern only to lapse into a dry, academic structuralism, Berio has used Webernist techniques to evolve a style combining consummate craftsmanship with profoundly human concerns. Writers, including Auden, Joyce, Proust, Brecht and E. E. Cummings, have served as sources of inspiration for him.

Nones (the title alludes to 3 p.m., one of the canonical hours), completed in 1954, is a case in point. Although the work was originally conceived as an oratorio based on W. H. Auden's poem of the same name, Berio revised his plan in favor of a purely orchestral version, giving poignantly wordless expression to the searing lines. In his poem Auden sets the Good Friday Passion in a contemporary context of indifference, of business-as-usual.

... it is barely three,
Mid-afternoon, yet the blood
Of our sacrifice is already
Dry on the grass;....
The shops will re-open at four,
The empty blue bus in the empty pink square
Fill up and drive off: we have time
To misrepresent,....

Berio's pointillistic palette evokes an atmosphere at once somber and surrealistic. His work is constructed on a 13-tone row (the pitch of D is repeated) made up of two segments having the pitch of A-flat in common. Significantly, each of the two segments contains three-note cells within which the "traditional" intervals of major and minor third are contrasted. These cells provide a vital source for his motivic material: thirds (sometimes in chains), sixths and tenths. By departing in these respects from orthodox tone-row construction, Berio brings to mind the observation of his compatriot and former teacher Luigi Dallapiccola that the "12-tone method must not be so tyrannical as to exclude a priori both expression and humanity."

Drawing upon these materials Berio constructs a tightly integrated work consisting of a "theme" (perhaps better described as a complex of pitch relationships and rhythms) and five variations. The opening 12 measures, which present the essentials of pitch and motive, follow the row forms closely. Clearly audible in measure one, for example, are the first three pitches of the original form of the row: pitches one and two are given to the harp, pitch three to trombone and lower strings. And a few measures later the electric guitar sounds the motive of a rising third and falling sixth.

Taken as a whole, the "theme" and variations approximate an arch form. Tension approaches a maximum in the course of variations two through four, while the outer sections suggest relative stability and relaxation. This cycle of relaxation- tension-relaxation is perhaps best understood in terms of a complex of interactions. This involves the manipulation of pitch materials just described in conjunction with at least five other factors. These include: 1) a series of seven basic note values or durations affecting also the treatment of silence; 2) a series of seven dynamic values (ppp to sffz); 3) five modes of articulation or ways of sounding a note (legato, staccato, tremolo, etc.); 4) a related procedure, derived from Schoenberg's Klangfarbenmelodie (tone- color melody) concept, whereby each pitch of a chord or melodic line interlocks different instruments, each instrument playing that pitch with different articulation and note values; 5) the alternation of tense passages of rapid rhythm and dense chromaticism with relaxed moments of "polarization" on one pitch in octaves. --Joshua Berrett

Art by Marco Nones