Luciano Berio quotes

Luciano Berio was an influential Italian composer known for his innovative approach to contemporary classical music. His work often incorporated elements of electronic music, diverse vocal techniques, and experimentation with traditional forms. He became a leading figure in the international avant-garde and inspired generations of composers. Here are 6 of his quotes:

Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music. (Luciano Berio)
The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect. View quote
Luciano Berio
In music, as I find myself forever saying, things don't get better or worse: they evolve and transform themselves. View quote
Luciano Berio
Alas, this industrialized twelve-tone horse, dull on the outside and empty inside, constantly being perfected and dragged to a new Troy in shadow of an ideological war long since fought and won by responsible minds like Schoenberg, with neither systems nor scholarship for armor! View quote
Luciano Berio
A composer's awareness of the plurality of functions of his own tools forms the basis for his responsibility just as, in everyday life, every man's responsibility begins with the recognition of the multiplicity of human races, conditions, needs, and ideals. I would go as far as to say (as my anger comes back) that any attempt to codify musical reality into a kind of imitation grammar (I refer mainly to the efforts associated with the Twelve-Tone System) is a brand of fetishism which shares with Fascism and racism the tendency to reduce live processes to immobile, labeled objects, the tendency to deal with formalities rather than substance. View quote
Luciano Berio
A composer's awareness of the plurality of functions of his own tools forms the basis for his responsibility just as, in everyday life, every man's responsibility begins with the recognition of the multiplicity of human races, conditions, needs, and ideals. I would go as far as to say (as my anger comes back) that any attempt to codify musical reality into a kind of imitation grammar (I refer mainly to the efforts associated with the Twelve-Tone System) is a brand of fetishism which shares with Fascism and racism the tendency to reduce live processes to immobile, labeled objects, the tendency to deal with formalities rather than substance. Claude Lévi-Strauss describes (though to illustrate a different point) a captain at sea, his ship reduced to a frail raft without sails, who, by enforcing a meticulous protocol on his crew, is able to distract them from nostalgia for a safe harbor and from the desire for a destination. View quote
Luciano Berio