Glosse (author's note)

Glosse

The birth of a musical work is a complex and mysterious matter – although often unintentionally so. It is perhaps for this reason that the composer is often reticent to describe the genesis of his works.

I had already been working sporadically for some time on a new string quartet (the fourth), when I was asked to contribute an obligatory finalists' piece to the Borciani Competition. Glad to render homage to the memory of Borciani and the Italian Quartet, I took the sketches, which I had been collecting and modifying here and there, and gathered them together in such a way as to avoid the impression of a homogeneous development or of continuous variation. I thus gave up the idea of a "fourth quartet" and in its place Glosse was born, made up of short commentaries on a virtual quartet or, more precisely, on a quartet which does not exist.

A rather complex and mysterious matter...

Luciano Berio

Note d'autore: informazioni generali | Author's note: general info