A New Sound and Anticipation of Unimaginable Reality – Sequenza III by Luciano Berio

Valentina Radoman

doi:10.5937/newso2158053R

Valentina Radoman University of Novi Sad, Academy of Arts

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5937/newso2158053R

Keywords: Luciano Berio, singing, voice, body, signifier, soul, psychoanalytic theory

Abstract

This paper examines how composer Luciano Berio with his composition Sequenza III per voce femminile (1965/66) succeeded in exploring something that is reality behind reality through the unique treatment of artistic material, in this case musical and verbal, much like certain avant-garde artists. It is a search for something that listeners cannot see because of the complex psychological mechanism of the human organism and which is deeply covered by ideologies, spoken language, ideas and similar elements. It is what the painter Pit Mondrian refers to as “the sublime reality”, for example. I employ naturalized components of psychoanalytic theory in this study, therefore the expressions “reality behind reality” or “sublime reality” are also related to the psychoanalytical term “Reality” according to Lacan. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate, using a specific musical example, how art, in this case musical art, can attain outcomes that have been attempted by researchers from other fields, artistic or scientific.

Author Biography

Valentina Radoman, University of Novi Sad, Academy of Arts

Valentina Radoman, Ph.D., graduated from the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. At the same institution she obtained her M. A. degree. As a scholarship holder of the Republic Fund for Young Talents-Researchers of the Serbian Ministry of Science, she was engaged in teaching at the same department in the period from 1995 to 2000, and then she became an assistant to Professor Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman at the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. At the Academy of Arts of the University of Novi Sad, where she is employed as an Assistant Professor, in 2016 she obtained the title of Ph.D. Valentina Radoman is the author of two books (Muzički impresionizam / Musical Impressionism, 2018; Muzika Politika Užitak / Music Politics Pleasure, 2018).