Luciano Berio OFANIM: the complete Universal Edition Study Score (large)

Description: This is the study score that was presented to those of us who audited Luciano Berio's workshop in 1997 during the preparation for the first Carnegie Hall performance of OFANIM. About thirty of us had the Carnegie Hall orchestra floor to ourselves as we watched Berio prepare and rehearse this remarkable work, speaking to us the while about the piece and its challenges in realization. I followed along in this score. It was obviously wonderful to meet Mr. Berio at a time when he and so many of his contemporaries were in the last decade of their lives. Along with Coro and Laborintus II, this is one of my favorite pieces of the twentieth century. The score is large but wieldy at 12" x 18"; it is also beautiful and personal in the way of many postmodern scores. - The text of Ofanìm (in Hebrew, ofanim means both “wheels” and “modes”) alternates fragments from the book of Ezekiel with verses from the Song of Songs. The dramatic vision of Ezekiel (chapter 1) - the most personal and apocalyptic of all prophets, clashes with the earthly sensuality of the verses from the Song of Songs (chapters 4 and 5). The phantasmagoric visions of Ezekiel whirl around in perpetual motion against a burning sky. The poetic images from the Song of Songs dwell longingly on the face and body of the beloved. The final fragment (Ezekiel, 19) suddenly gives a different perspective to the work: every motion is arrested, every light is extinguished. The scented orchard gives way to a withered vineyard and the image of the Mother, uprooted from her land and cast down to a “dry and thirsty ground”, evokes the memory of all the mothers of our time, of all the exiles and the havocs that have left deep wounds in our conscience. For the solo and vocal text of Ofanìm, Berio provocatively interspersed excerpts from two of the most widely disparate books in the Old Testament: Ezekiel and the Song of Songs. Switching back and forth between the physically oppressive, sunbaked desert where Ezekiel's visions whirl vertiginously and the luxuriant, perfumed pleasure-palace where pampered lovers revel in erotic endearments. Ofanìm means both “wheels” and “modes” in Hebrew, and the immediate source of Berio's title was presumably Ezekiel's surrealistic vision of wheels in the air: “...and when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up” (I, 19). But Berio's title equally well fits the score's cyclic oscillations between two Biblical modes: apocalyptic fear and carnal joy. “The music of Ofanìm develops various modes of rotation and movement in the acoustic space,” writes Berio. Lasting some forty minutes, Ofanìm is built in 12 parts alternating fragments from Ezekiel and the Song of Songs. Four of the Ezekiel sections (II, V, IX, XI) employ chorus; these tend to be hectic, even apocalyptic, with cluttering wind-repetitions and heavy electronic washes serving as a background, and the two choruses uniting as a single rhythmic mass to project Ezekiel's phantasmagoric visions in shrill cluster-cries. In the Song of Songs movements, by contrast, electronic effects disappear, gentle wind-chording predominates, and the choruses take on separate identities, providing lyric, low-register two-part texture (III), or four-part texture (X), and presenting an unusual mix of sonorities in section VII. There, the two groups simultaneously deliver the same music, but one chorus employs breathy parlando while the other sings normally. An interlude following this episode features an elaborate trombone solo. Luciano Berio OFANIM complete Study Score. Condition is Like New.

Price: 90 USD

Location: Brooklyn, New York

End Time: 2024-12-25T16:36:03.000Z

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