| Sinfonia | |
|---|---|
| by Luciano Berio | |
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| Composed | 1968–69 |
| Dedication | Leonard Bernstein |
| Movements | Five |
| Scoring | Orchestra and eight amplified voices |
| Premiere | |
| Date | October 10, 1968 |
| Location | New York City |
| Conductor | Luciano Berio |
| Performers | New York Philharmonic with The Swingle Singers |
Sinfonia (Symphony) is a composition by the Italian composer Luciano Berio which was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary. Composed in 1968–69 for orchestra and eight amplified voices, it incorporates musical quotations to represent an abstract and distorted history of culture. The eight voices are not incorporated classically but rather speak, whisper and shout excerpts from texts including Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Raw and the Cooked, Samuel Beckett's novel The Unnamable, instructions from the scores of Gustav Mahler and other writings.
Leonard Bernstein states in the text version of his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures from 1973 that Sinfonia was representative of the new direction classical music was taking after the pessimistic decade of the sixties.[1]
- ^ Bernstein 1976, p. 423.