I
If you are tired of the usual singers and speakers pizzeria that infest ears, walking along quiet roads should meet with Cathy Berberian, know that you, as well as being a very charming lady, and maybe even a mermaid, but is primarily a musician has made his voice a laboratory. American mezzo-soprano of Armenian descent, a composer, a prominent figure in contemporary music at the turn of the sixties and seventies, Cathy Berberian (1925-1983) was the most popular performer of avant-garde vocal works of the second half of the twentieth century. Composers such as Stravinsky, Cage, Henze, Bussotti wrote expressly for her, always committed to executing the fall of classical music elite prejudices against the people. The extension consisted of three octaves of his voice, and his repertoire ranged from Monteverdi to "Sequenza III" for voice and tape by Berio, her husband for seventeen years. From "Stripsody" (1966), his most famous composition built on the onomatopoeic sounds of comics, the Beatles' songs, love songs from Azerbaijan to the traditional Sicilian folk songs taken from the collection of Alberto Favara. Armenian in America, American, European, Cathy Berberian and his voice did not know borders.
II
Pierre Boulez: "I think the voice is like the percussion. He has the ability to tap extra-musical fields as well as to fully integrate into the music. He sounds determined, but also uncertain, as the percussion. The Western tradition in particular has too forced entry in extremely restrictive agreements that have prevented a full development. " Luciano Berio: "Investigate the voice is a bit 'like peeling an onion." Cathy Berberian's voice is also imaginary theater. In the "Berceuse du Chat" for voice and three clarinets of Stravinsky, the Berberian tries to make his voice so much resemble the three clarinets that accompany it, the cat as implied in the title and intention of the composer. In "Lullaby-sieptes canciones popolares" by Manuel de Falla, his execution has nothing of the traditional concert so that you consciously try to avoid. "I'm trying to find the sound that is closer to that the 'singing jondo' the real Spain which De Falla took to make his songs popular. " In Paris, the stage of the Theatre de la Ville, testing the performance of John Cage on "The best form of government is not the government," she wearing lion masks and plays with the office chair, with the sudden kazoo , sings and typist. Laughing at every flag-raising ceremony. Still on the characterization of the voice in the theater: in "L'Enfant et les witchcraft", an opera for children in an act of Ravel, with texts by Colette, Berberian uses a fake language, invented by including aspects of Chinese Eastern used as a way threat but also recognition. Or his interpretation of traditional songs of Bulgaria: a vocal gesture, as if made by a Sicilian un'abbanniata storyteller as Celano. "Music is the air we breathe and the planet that I live," wrote the singer.
III
On winter evenings Cathy told me that once, when he was seven years old, fell while chasing the White Rabbit in his hole, and for hours - or minutes - she found herself falling down what seemed a very deep, dark well, until when he landed on a pile of notes and records, and the fall was over. She had arrived in the wonderful Country Music. There were nonsense, that the talking animals and magic. In that place she could be an African princess, a gypsy or burning, or a courtesan with a heart of gold: the important thing to know that it was his mother. Others, studying the course of the stars, they say that she's a lady who comes from the moon, America but also from Armenia. They say that as a child, while walking through the woods and pools of water, was touched by the voice of a nymph and all, when she sings, smiles. Because she uses the vocal cords sounded as if a terhemin, or as if he were to arm wrestle with the Fantastic Four, one by one, I mean. Type when the strips of Betty Boop and then my heart with songs c'incatena tradizionali della sua terra. Che poi lei è una signora con una pettinatura favolosa, e una voce ancora meglio, che sa volare da un ramo all’altro. Della musica, chiaro.
IV
Cathy Berberian : “Il tuo autore preferito nella prosa?”
Sylvano Bussotti : “Il Marchese De Sade è uno dei preferiti”
Cathy Berberian : “Qual’è la tua eroina prediletta nella vita reale?”
Sylvano Bussott i: “Cathy Berberian”.
