Allelujah II - BERIO'S PROOF COPY WITH HIS MARKINGS

The important twentieth-century composer's own engraved pre-publication proof copy of his 1958 work Allelujah II for five instrumental groups, with his own extensive corrections, annotations, and performance notes throughout. The copy has been initialed by Berio on the cover, and is heavily marked up in pencil, colored pencil, and pen on all 76 pages, evidently including pre-publication revisions for both the editor/publisher and markings for performance use. The markings include: two measures completely rewritten (p. 43), note corrections (p. 64), added clefs and staff names (p. 76), all neatly executed in black pen; added time signatures, accidentals, and dynamics, corrected metronome markings, and correction of the page layout (parts of staves crossed out, and lines showing the continuity of the staves) in pencil; and many performance markings such as conducting symbols, brackets, and numbers, eyeglasses, and tempo indications circled, in red and blue pencil. The page numbers have been changed in pencil at the foot of each page from p. 8 onwards. On the inside back cover, Berio has listed the instruments and the groups to which they belong in pencil. The proofs are printed by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, on heavy paper with plate marks, with the plate number S. 5507 Z. Dated on the last page: Milan, 1956-1958. Hardcover, gray boards, half blue cloth. Resewn and rebacked, new flyleaf bound in. In fine condition. 

An important and rare working score from the influential Italian musician, whose success as theorist, conductor, composer, and teacher placed him among the leading representatives of the musical avant-garde, and whose style is notable for combining lyric and expressive musical qualities with the most advanced techniques of electronic and aleatory music.  Autograph manuscripts and working scores of the composer are virtually non-existent in the marketplace and we have traced only one significant single page manuscript on the market in over 30 years of records. 

From the collection of David M. Greene, author of the "Biographical Encyclopedia of Composers" (New York: Doubleday, 1985), professor at Lehigh University, and a lifelong friend of Berio's wife, mezzo soprano Cathy Berberian. After meeting in New York in the late 1940's, Greene and Berberian carried on a correspondence over 35 years, during which time Greene and Berio also became friends. Berio gifted this score to Greene, presumably at one of their relatively few meetings in the US or in Milan.

Allelujah II was one of Berio's first experiments with new configurations of instruments, an interest which would be borne out in Epifanie (1959-1961), Sinfonia (1968-9), and the later Formazioni (1985-7). The five groups of instruments are to be spread out through the hall, surrounding the listeners. Berio saw the piece as a development of his 1955 Allelujah, in which he "was interested in an extremely elaborate and concentrated development of a simple initial statement. But the distribution of six orchestral groups on a conventional concert stage was not acoustically suitable." He wrote Allelujah II, therefore, "in search of a deeper homogeneity and coherence between the acoustic and spatial dimension on one side and the musical dimension on the other...The purpose, given the complexity of the score, is to help the audience approach the work from different acoustic standpoints and to become more involved with the musical development, in a continuous “alleluiatic” expansion." (Berio, author's note to Alleluja II). Indeed, Berio's proofs bear witness to the extreme complexity of the score and the laborious editing process, as well as the difficulty of conducting such a work. It was premiered in Rome in May 1958, with the composer and Bruno Maderna conducting.  For the composer's complete Note on the present composition, see: http://www.lucianoberio.org/node/1315?105063376=1 (13575)

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Signed Document/Item

Printed Music

Classical Music

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