Valentina Bertolani

This article examines several distinctive elements and some intrinsic issues in Mario Bertoncini’s oeuvre using the work «Suite “colori”» for prepared piano as a case study. Indeed, Suite “colori” is an emblematic work showing a wide array of preparations and objects that Bertoncini created and devised throughout his artistic life. In the first part, pianist and musicologist Luisa Santacesaria details her close work with Bertoncini to learn how to play this piece and reflects on this multi-year process. In the final part musicologist Valentina Bertolani reflects on the fluidity of Bertoncini’s material heritage and the constitution of Bertoncini’s archive. With this article the researchers aim to contribute to the current conversation on archival practices for twentieth and twenty-first century musics, committed to understand archival formations as communal and shared responsibilities.

Avant-garde improvised music tends to elude analytical aaempts, which have so far mostly focused on transcribing and describing sound parameters (e.g., pitch, timbre, texture, etc.) in the extant recordings. However, this does not account for the irreducible immediacy of the improvisatory practice, whose recordings are just the tip of the iceberg of a more multifold and varied production (often not recorded). This issue, inherent to the type of creative process at hand, suggests that, when analyzing, we should also take into consideration what aesthetical principles influenced the choice of a succession of musical events over another. The principles of action-reaction and of non-repetition of the musical material were the guiding elements of the improvisatory practice of the Italian Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza (GINC) in the period 1965-1969. To adhere to these principles, GINC created a set of exercises to be practiced by members during the rehearsals. In this article I will analyze three examples from a 1967 video recording of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza using these exercises to understand and comment the choices made on the spot by the improvisers. This strategy affords a beeer awareness of the group actions within the improvisatory context.

Chapter included in Gianmario Borio, Giordano Ferrari, and Daniela Tortora (eds.). 2017. Teatro di avanguardia e composizione sperimentale per la scena in Italia: 1950-1975, 211–34. Venezia: Fondazione Giorgio Cini

http://omp.cini.it/index.php/FGCOP/catalog/view/3/3/9-1

FULL TEXT: https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/107006

“Improvising New Consonance: The Subterranean Connections Between North American and Italian Avant-Garde, 1963–1976” is grounded in both music history and music analysis and explores the communities created around collective improvisation in the Bay Area, Rome, and Montreal through four case studies: New Music Ensemble, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Musica Elettronica Viva and MuD / Sonde. This research challenges the understanding of collective experimental improvisation as a genre, framing the phenomenon through the contemporary paradigm of “artistic practice as research.” This reading favours a broader understanding of experimentalism as a cross-generic phenomenon.
The work is articulated in two interconnected and equally important parts to sustain my argument: 1. Using Actor-Network Theory, I examine what cultural policies were put in place within a Cold War and post-colonial context to support international exchanges among otherwise extremely localized experiences. This geography challenges dominant narratives about post-war music, normally focussed north of the Alps and on the US East Coast. 2. Building on Steinbeck’s work on the Art Ensemble of Chicago, I analyze the collective practices that allowed the groups to develop unconventional improvisatory responses. I discuss exercises developed to solve peculiar improvisational problems, and assessment strategies used to evaluate recorded sessions, linking this body of knowledge to the recordings we have to build an innovative analytical framework.

It is common knowledge that live electronic music is different from electronic music. However, it is quite difficult to find a generally accepted definition of live electronic music (or interactive electronic music), as the boundaries of this label are blurry. A major factor of disagreement is how much interaction with the electronic part is needed to consider a piece interactive electronic music. Paul Sanden’s definition explicitly shows this tension: “live electronic music is understood as any concert music, composed or performed primarily since the late 1950s presented in real time and involving some type of electronic sound. […] More recent scholars, however, understand the genre as performed music involving the electronic manipulation of acoustic sound and/or the electronic real-time production of sound. […E]lectronic manipulation must be actively generated for it to be live.” (88)
Gordon Mumma’s seminal chapter from almost forty years earlier, “Live-Electronic Music,” (1975) offers a completely different scenario. In Mumma, the label encompasses: instrument with fixed media, lone fixed media, amplified small sounds, performed electronic equipment, and live performance with digital computers. Some of these practices, for example the lone fixed media, would not necessarily considered live electronics nowadays.
Technology-wise, many things have changed since then and even more has changed from the early 1960s. Our idea of liveness followed these changes. In this paper I will use the First Festival of Live Electronic Music (FFLEM), organized in 1967 by Larry Austin and hosted by the University of California in conjunction with the Mills College Tape Centre, as a case study to explore the actual meaning of the term “live electronic music” in the earliest stages of its history. Among the pieces performed there were: Activities (1967) by Toshi Ichiyanagi, Whistlers (1966) by Alvin Lucier, Mesa (1966) and Third Horn (1967) by Mumma, Wolfman (1964) and Frogs (1966) by Robert Ashley. FFLEM also featured names of composers now disappeared from the musicological discourse such as the Californian Stanley Lunetta and Anthony Gnazzo.
FFLEM represents the perfect case study to explore the meaning of the category “live electronic music” in the 1960s: 1. It marks one of the very first occurrences of the term “live electronic music”; 2. Held in 1967, FFLEM falls between John Cage’s Cartridge Music (1960), Karlheinz Stockausen’s Mikrophonie II (1965) and David Tudor’s Rainforest (1968)—all milestones in the discourse on the development of various experiences of live electronic music (e.g. Mumma, 297–8; Manning, 159–64); 3. FFLEM was embedded in other forms of discussion on experimentalism and the use of technology: the magazine Source, edited in the same years by the same people who organized the festival, underpins the aesthetical and curatorial choices of the Festival; 4. The composers present at the Festival (especially Behrman and Mumma) picked up on the DIY aesthetics previously championed by the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and marked a rupture with the studio activity on the European model.
Reference List:
Manning, Peter. 2004. Electronic and Computer Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Mumma, Gordon. 1975. “Live-Electronic Music,” in The Development and Practice of Electronic Music, eds. John H. Appleton and Ronald C. Perera. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 286-335.
Sanden, Paul. 2013. Liveness in Modern Music: Musicians, Technology, and the Perception of Performance. New York: Routledge.

Gli spazi del visibile nel teatro musicale di Mario Bertoncini e Franco Evangelisti

Entrambi i compositori oggetto di studio di questo intervento hanno riflettuto sul concetto di teatralità praticamente in ogni opera da loro composta. Nonostante ciò, si sono concentrati sul vero e proprio teatro musicale solo in rare occasioni: la produzione teatrale di Franco Evangelisti conta un unico lavoro per il teatro, Die Schachtel (1962–63); Mario Bertoncini, nel periodo compreso fino al 1975, compone per il teatro musicale Illegonda (1968), New Beggar’s Opera (1969) e Spazio-Tempo (1967–70). Questi quattro lavori, e in particolare Die Schachtel e Spazio-Tempo, costituiscono contributi molto maturi e innovativi in tutti i temi che questa sessione vuole discutere. In particolare, tutti questi progetti hanno rappresentato un profondo ripensamento dello spazio scenico e la progettualità condivisa ha rappresentato il luogo privilegiato di  un ricco dialogo multidisciplinare.

In questo intervento cercherò di problematizzare questi due punti partendo dalla definizione di spazio performativo come compresenza nello spazio di interpreti e pubblico, proposta inizialmente da George Pierce Baker (1919) e Max Hermann (1930) e che oggi vede una nuova applicazione nella teatrologia grazie alla ricca discussione generata da Erika Fischer-Lichte (2008) e, più recentemente, dal lavoro di Caroline Heim (2016). Partendo da questo presupposto, cercherò di discutere la ricchezza dello spazio performativo nell’opera teatrale di Franco Evangelisti e Mario Bertoncini articolando il discorso in tre punti:

1. Innanzitutto proverò ad articolare in quale modo la definizione di spazio performativo come luogo di compresenza fisica tra interpreti e pubblico si applica nei casi specifici di Mario Bertoncini e Franco Evangelisti. In particolare, ipotizzo che nei casi di Evangelisti e Bertoncini questa compresenza non sia sfruttata attraverso l’empatia e la partecipazione (come avviene per i coevi lavori del Living Theater o di Musica Elettronica Viva, per esempio), ma sfruttando invece l’alienazione del pubblico stesso all’interno dello spazio performativo;

2. Lo spazio è un elemento sia di analisi che di sintesi. Da un lato lo spazio performativo di Mario Bertoncini e Franco Evangelisti è organizzato secondo una rigida divisione del lavoro tra le diverse arti degli interpreti, diversamente dalla musica strumentale degli stessi anni che richiede agli strumentisti competenze al di là della loro formazione. D’altro canto, però, lo spazio performativo è anche lo spazio interdisciplinare dove per il pubblico si risolve questa coabitazione delle diverse arti.

3. Sia Franco Evangelisti sia Mario Bertoncini fondano la loro estetica del teatro musicale negando il suo carattere di segno: Franco Evangelisti parla di oggettività (Ferrari 2000, 178 sgg.) Mentre Bertocini formula il concetto di teatro della realtà (Bertoncini 1981; Tortora 2008). Nel mio intervento, attraverso lo studio della presenza fisica degli interpreti — specialmente dei mimi — nello spazio, cercherò di esplorare ulteriormente questi pilastri dell’estetica teatrale di Evangelisti e Bertoncini.

Bibliografia citata:
Bertoncini, Mario. 1981. “Note per un teatro della realtà.” Dattiloscritto dell’autore. Anche in Décalage. Bollettino di sonorità prospettiche, supplemento a “1985 la musica”13.
Ferrari, Giordano. 2000. Les débuts du théâtre musical d’avant-garde en Italie: Berio, Evangelisti, Maderna. Paris, L’Harmattan.
Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2008 (2004).  The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. Traduzione di Saskya Iris Jain. London: Routledge.
Heim, Caroline. 2016 (forthcoming). Audience as Performer: The Changing Role of Theatre Audiences in the XXI Century. London: Routledge.
Tortora, Daniela. 2008. “Vers un théatre musical et d’art: Spazio-Tempo (1967-1969) de Mario Bertoncini.” In La parole sur scène. Voix, texte, signifié, a cura di Giordano Ferrari, 183-196. Paris, L’Harmattan.

In the last decades, sketch studies and musical philology have been expanding their object of study to include non-conventional notation and alternative supports for the diffusion of the work of art, such as tapes or pieces of code (e. g. Hall and Sallis 2004; De Benedictis 2004; Zattra 2007). Those works that can be placed in the middle of the continuum between composed works and installations pose an additional challenge to these disciplines. Intuitively, the study of the written documents might seem inadequate to understand the complexity of those works. I argue, instead, that a thorough study of the sketches, if far from providing the ultimate answers, can still be a valuable tool to frame into specific creative practice otherwise elusive aesthetical issues. In my paper I will focus on the work of the Italian composer Mario Bertoncini (born 1932), specifically on Spazio-Tempo (1967-70) – an “environmental theatre piece,” as defined by the author, performed at the Venice Biennale in 1970 – an applauded composition that counts hundreds of pages of preparatory material but has no score.

Most of Bertoncini’s sketches up to the mid-1970s are held at the Archive of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, constituting a growing collection (not entirely catalogued yet) of thousands of items. The collection is very diversified, with sketches, letters, final scores, pictures, posters, material for classes, etc. It also contains documents related to some of the most important works by Bertoncini, such as Quodlibet (1964, Gaudeamus Prize), Tune (1965) and Cifre (1964-7). More than 300 pages of the trust are taken up by documents for Spazio-Tempo.

Since 1964, with the composition of Quodlibet, Mario Bertoncini made use of non- conventional notations. A great part of the signs used were slightly modified but consistently present in later works, until the most recent ones. This interesting development can be seen through the documents in the archive, where the composer repeatedly tries to draw the “right” shape for the score as an actual part of the intermediate stages of the compositional process. For what concerns Cifre, it is possible to trace some of the signs back to the original movements improvised on the instrument (early stage of composition) thanks to drawings of the action that was played.

In the great part of the 300 and more papers dedicated to Spazio-Tempo, the modus operandi of the composer does not change much. However, this work represents a pivotal experience in Bertoncini’s opus because it represents the middle ground between the normative function of notation and the radical turn of the Aeolian harps (1973), for which the score consists of the Aeolian object itself (Borio 2012). Spazio-Tempo is the first multimedia work of the author, featuring mimes-dancers next to musicians and a conductor.

The work is at the edge of composition and installation, even though the installation and compositional elements are hard to unravel. The audience – unwittingly – inputs gestures that will trigger reactions in the dancers-mimes; the action of the dancer-mimes will trigger reactions in the musicians, and their reaction will be based on graphical indications projected on the wall. The conductor, who probably has the most detailed indications, will moderate the process. The set-up (an entangled web of tubes and resonant objects that can be performed directly by the dancers) and the lights are playing a structural role in the piece, able to give indications to the performers on how to react to certain elements. It is prescribed that the entire performance last for three days. The performance is constituted by a dress rehearsal and two executions of the work.
To the best of my knowledge, a study of the phases of Bertoncini’s compositional process has not been attempted so far. Comparing the materials about different compositions, I grouped the documents found on Spazio-Tempo as following:

1. Drafts of theoretical texts: Spazio-Tempo features an unusually rich collection of drafts of theoretical texts on the significance of contemporary musical form. In other compositions, this type of reflection seems to be linked to the early stages of the creative process, but in the case of Spazio-Tempo I suspect it belongs also to the intermediate/advanced stages, due to the complexity of the idea and the long gestation. A parallel with the published text “Il teatro della realtà” [The theatre of reality] (Bertoncini 1985) seems to be particularly useful.

2. Attempts at graphical renderings of musical gestures: in the Berlin collection, this type of material is present in almost all the folders dedicated to Bertoncini’s compositions and may represent the intermediate stage of composition (the early stage being the exploration on the instrument itself). Of particular interest in the case of Spazio-Tempo is a comparison with the gestures used in Quodlibet.

3. Accounts of unwillingness to write a score: as far as I know, this type of material is unique within the collection at the Akademie der Künste. Accounts are relatively scarce but they mark a crucial point in the change in Mario Bertoncini’s creative process, leaving the final stages of composition to the untraceable moment of the rehearsals and, perhaps, to the unfinished theoretical drafts.

4. Contextual information: pictures, letters to prospective performers, promotional material, etc.

Based on the working hypothesis that installation and compositional elements are almost equally present and absent in the written documents, I will trace continuity and discontinuity patterns in the compositional/notational process of Spazio-Tempo with previous productions. In order to achieve this goal, I will make use of archival research, the composer’s accounts and historical reconstruction. The discussion of Spazio-Tempo can represent a valuable contribution to the current scholarship not only because it is a work at the intersection of music composition, musical installation, and multimedia work, but also because its compositional process features different notational strategies, forcing a reflection on the role each of them can play.

The artistic scene of the 1960s and 1970s can be interpreted as an increasingly cosmopolitan phenomenon. Thanks to a growing number of international programs, renowned institutions – such as the Darmstadt Summer School, the di Tella Institute, etc. – were gathering musicians from all around the world. Composers started to be more vocal about their activity and vehemently engaged in discussions with commenters, cultural operators, even politicians on the role of art and on the value of their works. Specifically, counter-culture and avant-garde created an international network of their own, thanks to fanzines, specialized magazines, festivals, and other forms of communication.
In the past two decades, the study of artistic networks has become prominent in scholarly literature. Musicology has resorted to new methodologies, such as Actor-Network Theory, and new concepts, such as mediation in order to propose new narratives. However, the more work is done in this field, the more entangled and rich this web becomes.
In this paper I try to explore the role that data visualization can have in this discussion through Frame of Reference, a physical prototype based on issues 1–10 of the magazine Source. Specifically, I will investigate whether a data-driven approach of specific historical/archival information can help towards a more holistic understanding of the ontology of the network.
Source counted a considerable amount of subscriptions and collected invited contributions from composers whose work was considered on the cutting edge of music. It brought together a community of artists working all around the world, and was representative of American counter-culture and anti-academic artistic research. I identify as human agents both the individual artists involved in this network, and the collectives of composers and improvisers. I extrapolated the data from all 11 issues of this magazine – published in Davis, California, from 1966 to 1971, after an idea of composer Larry Austin. My network is shaped by 4 data dimensions (name, gender, nationality, affiliation) and 2 relationship levels (artistic association and declared inspiration).

Among the rich array of improvisation collectives formed in the 1960s and 70s, the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza (GINC) represent a distinctive case study. The collective was founded in Rome by Franco Evangelisti in 1964 and was formed of Italian and American composers. As many other avant-garde experiences of the time, GINC experimented with new concepts of performance, musical gesture, and audience interaction, challenging public assumptions and value judgements informed by the “strong work” concept inherited from Romantic aesthetics of the nineteenth century.
Avant-garde improvised music tends to elude analytical attempts, which have so far focused on the extant recordings. In fact, aiming to understand how music unfolds over time is of course helpful, but does not account for the irreducible immediacy of this performance practice. This issue, inherent to this type of creative process, suggests that, when analyzing, we should also take into consideration what aesthetical principles influenced the choice of a succession of musical events over another.
This paper will focus on two aesthetical aspects that might help to introduce the immediacy element into the analytical discourse. 1. The principle of “action/reaction”. Seeking non-repetition at every level of the musical material, as well as consistent rhythmical asymmetry, GINC created a set of exercises to be practiced by members during the rehearsals. These strategies were devised in order to achieve a better awareness of the group actions within an improvisatory context. 2. Franco Evangelisti’s notion of the “composer/performer”. It was a policy of GINC to accept into their membership only fully trained composers with performance experience as well. Comparing GINC’s aesthetical frame with their recordings, but especially with the compelling video evidence of their improvisations, could lead us towards a better understanding of the group dynamics that were at play during the performances.

With the development of new spatialization techniques and the creation of compositions with site-specific traits borrowed from installation art, composers have been showing a new awareness towards the ecology of the systems created with each performance. Concert halls with special features as well as the specific sound environments of non-conventional venues started to be considered a shaping element of the musical outcome.
These topics are at the core of the poetics of Walter Branchi, an experienced rhodologist and a pioneer of electronic music in Italy.
In this paper I will tackle the notion of Branchi’s “integrated sonic world” to the aesthetics of R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax. I will focus on four points that need further discussion: 1. The role of new technologies in the development of a new ecoaesthetics; 2. The sonic material; 3. The tension between concepts such as ‘ecology’, ‘environment’ and ‘nature’; 4. A performance practice with many beginnings and no ends.
With a continuous exchange of information between these two realities, Branchi aims to (re)establish a balanced relationship between the music and the listener as well as between the world and humankind: “[t]his type of experience […] is not a concert, where the music is typically “other” than we. We are on the inside of a complex event, where all our senses are active, where the sounds of the environment, with the wind rustling through the maple leaves, merge with the silent flight of a hawk and with the music. Everything is marvelously [sic] one.” (Branchi, s.d.).
The idea of “integration” will be discussed in three possible meanings: the relationship with the outside world and the compositional choices determined by a specific place; the relationship with the inner world and the meaning of “integral listening;” and the integrated composition of the single works as a part of a bigger conception, namely Intero.

List of references:
Branchi, Walter. S.d. “25a. Integral Listening” in “Scritti – recenti”. Walter Branchi Website. Accessed January 8, 2014. http://www.walter-branchi.com

NUEVA CANCIÓN CHILENA AND NUOVO CANZONIERE ITALIANO:
AN INVESTIGATION THROUGH LUIGI NONO’S ARCHIVE

In the Sixties and Seventies Chilean and Italian communists had quite similar views, even though Chile’s history had taken a tragic turn with the Pinochet coup. A comparison of the Nueva Canción Chilena and the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano reveals many common features from both a musical and a social perspective. Although much scholarly work has been devoted to the study of each group, a comparison between the two has not been thoroughly explored. The topic is promising, because it contains numerous research perspectives: the study of popular music in proletarian culture; field research for folk tunes and traditions; the creative use of folk material for artistic and educational purposes. These research areas are enhanced by some shared musical features: the appreciation for rough and husky voices (such as Violeta Parra’s and Giovanna Marini’s), the use of folkloric scales and rhythms, a creative interpretation of song structures and lyrics, and a consistent esthetic across a large and diverse output.
The aim of this paper is to examine the Italian reception of the Nueva Canción Chilena after 1973 and its relationship with the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano. In order to sharpen the focus, I will analyze it through a very innovative and privileged viewpoint, namely the recording collection held at the Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono in Venice. The Archive contains a rich array of meaningful documents (letters, memorabilia, books…) but for this topic the most important are the recordings. The archive offers a comprehensive collection of Italian counter-culture books and recordings documenting the intense musical and social activity of the NCI. It also holds many documents on the NCC—many of them quite rare because of the brutal destruction of this material by the Pinochet regime. Furthermore, the strong bonds of friendship and commitment between Luigi Nono and the band Inti Illimani is still generally overlooked, notwithstanding the many events organized by Nono and the Chilean group in exile within the activity of the Italian Communist Party.
A careful examination of the material held in the Archivio Luigi Nono can contribute to a better understanding of the Cold War context within which these artists lived and worked. The horizon disclosed by this triangle (NCI, NCC and Nono) is very attractive and offers a new hint for future reflections both on the theme of political commitment and, more specifically, on Nono’s connections with folk and commercial/popular musicians—an aspect of his activity totally overlooked by scholarship. Analyzing the poetics of the NCI and NCC, the reception of the latter in Italy and their relationship to Nono, this paper seeks a better understanding of the musical scene during the Cold War in Italy, a frontier country where one of the most important Communist parties in the Western World and a huge influence of the USA co-existed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an as yet unexplored network of relationships that developed between American and Italian avant-garde composers in the 1950s and 1960s. In Europe the centres of the post-war avant-garde are usually located north of the Alps (Darmstadt, Donaueschingen, Paris, etc.). This geographic assumption generates incomplete narratives of how new music developed after World War II. My paper will show that significant lines of communication established between Italy and California had far-reaching consequences for the development of new music in both of these places, and beyond.
My object of study will be the work of Franco Evangelisti (1926-80), who was active both as a composer and as a member of a collective of composers/improvisers, the Rome-based Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, founded in 1964 by Evangelisti himself after the meeting with the American composer Larry Austin, founder of the collective New Music Ensemble. The reception of Evangelisti, like the one of other Italian composers, was important. Evangelisti’s music and performances of the Gruppo (in U.S. and abroad) had great visibility on American journals and newspapers. Moreover, the network of artists Evangelisti was in touch with sheds light on a wide subterranean system of relations within the avant-garde that is neglected by musicological scholarship.
Hence, this case study does not only provide unexpected historical information, it also opens the door to a different geography of music, reassessing the role of composers active around Rome from the Fifties onward.