Luciano Berio and the problem of musical language
Abstract
Among the various themes that have characterized Luciano Berio’s reflection, the comparison between music and language is one of the most representative and documented. Berio’s interest in linguistics and philosophy of language led him to an in-depth study of some among the main contemporary orientations and marked an important passage in the history of Italian reception of currents as different as structuralism and generative grammar, from which Berio drew his own theoretical synthesis. This article aims to clarify why Berio speaks of music as a «language of languages», through a comparison with some key texts by de Saussure and Chomsky, authors explicitly mentioned by the composer.
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