The composer (Luciano Berio) and the librettist (Talia Pecker Berio) in front of the "wall" of the Felsenreitschule (Photo © Sturm foto, courtesy: Salzburg Festival)

He is not only one of today's most renowned composers and conductors. Luciano Berio is a force in late 20th century music. From the start of his career in the 1950s, he has been on the leading edge of musical explorations where today at age 73 he still stands.

Indeed his life has been one long journey of unending musical explorations. He was born in 1925 in Oneglia, Italy to a musical family. His musical tutelage began with his grandfather and father, both organists and composers. In 1945 he started formal studies in composition with G. C. Paribeni and G. F. Ghedini at the Milan Conservatory. Following his graduation in 1951, he won a Koussevitzky Foundation scholarship to study with Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood in Massachusetts (USA). On returning to Milan, he worked for Radiotelevisione Italiana di Milano (Italian Broadcasting Corporation) 1953 to 1960, during which he cofounded the Studio di Fonologia Musicale with Bruno Maderna and Incontri Musicali - a series of concerts and a journal dedicated to contemporary music. In 1962, Mr. Berio set upon a career that had him living alternately in Italy and the United States. He taught at Mills College in Oakland (California), Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts), and The Juilliard School in New York City, with stints at the Summer School in Dartington (England) and Darmstadt (Germany). On his return to Europe in 1972, he collaborated with French conductor/composer Pierre Boulez in developing the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, heading its electro-acoustic department until 1980. In 1987 he founded Centro Tempo Reale di Firenze, his own research studio where to this day he collaborates with a team of musicians and computer experts in developing new forms and techniques in music composition.

A prolific composer, Mr. Berio has produced a body of works that are a testament to his musicianship, intellect, and passion for innovation. About music, he has said: "In music, as I find myself forever saying, things don't get better or worse: they evolve and transform themselves." It is an axiom that has informed his own musical development. While his early compositions are post-Webern, his later works are a trove of diversity, reflecting the breadth and depth of his interests.

Though considered avant-garde, he is no iconoclast and maintains an enthusiasm for exploring "from the inside a piece of music from the past: a creative exploration that was at the same time an analysis, a commentary and an extension of the original. This follows from my principle that, for a composer, the best way to analyze and comment on a piece is to do something, using materials from that piece. The most profitable commentary on a symphony or an opera has always been another symphony or another opera." Thus, his transcriptions of works by composers ranging from Monteverdi to Mahler and pieces after sketches by Mozart and Schubert, and the occasional participation of the Baroque in the complexities of his musical creations. His fascination with literature has also found its way into his works: in addition to the bible, he has found inspiration in James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and Italo Calvino has written the text for some of his works for the stage. A truly modern composer possessing a remarkably broad "bandwidth," he pioneered the use of electronics in composition and today applies advances in digital processing to his creative explorations of the human voice in combination with solo instruments and orchestra, harmonizing discrete quanta of sound into the continuum he calls azione musicale.

Luciano Berio's works are performed regularly throughout the world and have been recorded by the major labels. His 70th birthday was celebrated during the 1995-96 season with world premieres and performances of his works by the world's leading musical institutions. Among his many honors: Honorary Membership in the Royal Academy of Music, London (1988), the prestigious Siemens Prize (1991), Wolf Foundation Prize of Jerusalem (1991), the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale (1995), the prestigious Charles Eliot Norton Chair in Poetry at Harvard (1993-94), a 5-year appointment as Distinguished Composer-in-Residence at Harvard University that began in the 1994-95 schoolyear, and Japan's top music award - the Praemium Imperiale (1996).

Cronaca del luogo is the composer's second azione musicale commisioned by the Salzburg Festival, his first being Un re in ascolto which he composed for the 1984 Festival.