A-Ronne/Cries of London

Luciano Berio and Swingle II - A-Ronne/Cries of London

LP released in 1976

Swingle II: Olive Simpson, Catherine Bott - sopranos; Carol Hall, Linda Hirst - mezzo-sopranos; John Potter, Ward Swingle - tenors; John Lubbock, David Beavan - basses

"A-Ronne" was recorded in February 1976, "Cries of London" in July 1976, both in Decca Studio 3, West Hampstead, London

The subject of "A-Ronne" is the elementary vocalisation of a text and its transformation into something perhaps equally elementary but difficult to describe. In fact this is not a case of a musical composition in the usual sense of the term, even if the procedures which often organise its course are musical (use of inflections and intonations, development of alliterations and of transitions between sound and noise, occasional use of elementary melodies, polyphonies and heterophonies). The musical sense of "A-Ronne" is basic: that is, it is common to any experience, from daily speech to theatre, where changes in expression imply and document changes in meaning. This is why I prefer to define this work as a documentary on a poem by Edoardo Sanguineti, as one would say a documentary on a painting or on an exotic country. Sanguineti's poem, which undergoes different readings, is not treated as a text to set to music but rather as a text to be analysed and as a generator of different vocal situations and expressions. But finally "A-Ronne" is also a kind of madrigale rappresentativo - i.e. theatre for the ear of the late Italian XVI century - and a vocal naive painting because the range of the given situations, no matter how wide, can always be related to elementary situations, to recognisable, familiar and often obvious feelings: a social gathering, speech in a square, a speech therapy session, the confessional, the barracks, the bedroom, etc.

Sanguineti's poem - which in "A-Ronne" is repeated about twenty times and almost always from beginning to end - exposes three themes: in the first part the theme of the Beginning, in the second part the theme of the Middle and in the third part that of the End. The poem is strictly built on quotations in different languages that go from the beginning of the New Testament of John (in Latin, Greek and German: Luther's translation and changes made by Goethe in "Faust") to a verse by Eliot; from a verse by Dante to the first word of the Communist Manifesto; from a few words of an essay by Barthes on Bataille to the last three words, the three signs (ette, conne, ronne) with which the Italian alphabet, in old times, concluded after z: from which comes the dictum, no longer in use "from A to Ronne" instead of "from A to Z". Therefore this poem is also a very articulated and discontinuous sequence of figures of speech. This is why in "A-Ronne" one often encounters musical figures of speech. The occasional sung sections do not have an autonomous musical significance: they are moments among many others - and perhaps the simplest - in the liturgy of vocal gestures. Only the brief final section, based on a series of very elementary harmonic "alliterations" has its own musical autonomy.

Thus the musical sense of "A-Ronne" is not to be found in the sung sections but in the relation that is established between a written text and a "grammar" of vocal behaviour, between a poem that is constantly faithful to its own words and a vocal articulation that continuously modifies its meaning and its referential apsects. Thus it happens that the two levels (that of the written text and that of the vocal behaviour) always interact in a different way, always producing new meanings. This is directly analogous to what generally happens in vocal music and in daily speech where the relation between the two levels (the grammatical one and the acoustical one) is substantially responsible for the infinite possibilities of human speech and singing.

These "Cries of London" for eight voices (2 Sopranos, 2 Altos, 2 Tenors, 2 Basses) are a re-working of a composition of the same name written in 1974 for the "King's Singers" (2 Counter Tenors, 1 Tenor, 2 Baritones, 1 Bass). In this new version the "Cries of London" become a short cycle of seven vocal pieces of a folk nature in which a simple piece regularly alternates with a musically more complex one and where the fifth "cry" is the exact repetition of the first (the text of which is also used in the third "cry"). The seventh piece, "Cry of Cries," is a commentary on the preceding "cries": although it uses the same melodies and the same harmonic characteristics it is musically detached as if recalling them from a distance. . . . As a whole this short cycle can also be heard as an exercise in characterisation and musical dramatisation. The text is essentially a free choice of well-known phrases of vendors in the streets of Old London. (Luciano Berio)
Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. A-Ronne {29:06}

Side 2

1. Cries of London {14:44}

(1)