Luciano Berio was born in Oneglia, in Northwest Italy, on 24 October 1925. His family, with whom he lived until the age of 18, was the first source of his musical education, particularly his grandfather Adolfo and his father Ernesto, who were both organists and composers. With them, he learned the piano and played chamber music extensively. An injury to his right hand forced him to give up on a career as a pianist, and he turned to composition. At the end of the Second World War, he entered the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, where he studied first with Paribeni (counterpoint and fugue), then with Ghedini (composition) and with Votto and Giulini (conducting).

Berio earned his living as an accompanist, and it was this work that led him to meet the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian. The two married in 1950, and together explored and collaborated on the many possibilities offered by the voice, including the celebrated Sequenza III (1965). In 1952, Berio traveled to Tanglewood to study with Luigi Dallapiccola, a composer whose work he admired greatly. Chamber Music (1953) was composed as a tribute to his teacher. During his stay, he attended the first concert in America to include live electronics, in New York. In 1953, he began writing soundtracks and scores for television. In Basel, he attended a lecture on electroacoustics where he met Stockhausen for the first time. He began experimenting with magnetic tape at that time, with (Mimusique n°1), and traveled to Darmstadt, where he met Boulez, Pousseur, and Kagel, immersing himself in serial music, of which Nones (1954) was his personal reflection. He returned to Darmstadt between 1956 and 1959, and taught there in 1960, but kept his distance from the sometimes dogmatic atmosphere there.

Berio’s love for literature (Joyce, Cummings, Calvino, Levi-Strauss) and linguistics nourished his musical reflections. In 1955, with his friend Bruno Maderna, he founded the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano, Italy’s first studio for electro-acoustics research. Products of his research there include Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) (1958). In 1956, he and Maderna launched the Incontri musicali, a concert series dedicated to the performance of contemporary music, and an experimental music journal of the same name, published between 1956 and 1960.

Fascinated by instrumental virtuosity, he began work on the Sequenzas series in 1958, and continued composing for it until 1995. Some of its pieces gave rise to a second series titled Chemins. He returned to the United States in 1960, teaching music composition at Dartington Summer School, Mill’s College in Oakland, and at Harvard and Columbia Universities. He also taught music at the Juilliard School in New York between 1965 and 1971, where he founded the Juilliard Ensemble (1967), specialized in contemporary music.

In the 1960s, he collaborated with Edoardo Sanguineti on musical theater compositions, including Laborintus 2 (1965), which received the most popular acclaim. During this time he belonged to the Italian intellectual left. In 1968 he composed Sinfonia, which, with its many collages of musical quotes from the repertoire, offers a glimpse of Berio’s unceasing need to question history. He also worked intensively as a conductor during this period.

Berio returned to Europe to live in 1972. At the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he took over as director of the IRCAM’s electroacoustics department from 1974-1980, where he supervised the installation of the 4X system, a real-time digital sound processing system designed by Giuseppe di Giugno. In 1987, building on his experience at the IRCAM, he founded Tempo Reale, an institute for electronic and experimental musical research in Florence.

His interest in folklore and folk music inspired Coro (1975), one of his major works. In the 1980s, Berio created two major lyric works, La Vera Storia (1982) and Un re in ascolto (1984), both with libretti by Italo Calvino. While continuing to write his own compositions, Berio also revisited the past with transcriptions and arrangements, as well as a reconstruction of Schubert’s Tenth Symphony in (Rendering, 1989).

In parallel with his creative work, Berio was also extensively involved in musical organizations both in Italy and abraoad. He was the recipient of many international awards and honors, including a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale (1995) and a Praemium Imperiale (Japan). Luciano Berio died in Rome on 27 May 2003.