Exhibition ‘Stripsody’ by Cathy Berberian

Dovetailing with the centenary of the birth of Cathy Berberian (Attleboro, Massachusetts, 1925 - Rome, 1983), this exhibition examines the genealogy of Stripsody, her début piece as a composer and one of the most unclassifiable vocal creations of the twentieth century. Created with the help of Umberto Eco, the piece combines image, performance and experimentation with the word and language based on onomatopoeic sounds inspired by the iconography and idiom of comics.

‘Music is the air I breathe and the planet I inhabit’, wrote Cathy Berberian in a brief and beautiful text shortly before she died at the age of fifty-seven. Nevertheless, it could be said that Berberian orbited far above this planet’s surface, glimpsing other ways of understanding the discipline of music and expanding its aesthetic and conceptual limits. 

A key figure of the European musical avant-garde, Berberian not only provided the voice for some of the most important works of Luciano Berio, John Cage and Sylvano Bussotti, among other composers, but also inspired these self-same works and made a decisive contribution to their creation. Berberian’s powerful and prodigiously versatile voice was, in this respect, much more than a simple instrument placed at the service of singing. 

Although Berberian’s pioneering character was evident long before the creation of Stripsody (1966), it was this piece, her first as a composer, that marked the start of her own paramusical revolution. This exhibition, which coincides with the hundredth anniversary of Berberian's birth, looks back at the genesis and the particular artistic status of this work that combines images, performance and vocal experimentation based on the use of onomatopoeic sounds inspired by the iconography and language of comics.

The display presents Stripsody as a remarkable cultural artefact from a very specific moment in time and from a very particular intellectual environment. It explores the genealogy of the piece and describes the role played in its creation and development by figures such as the semiotician Umberto Eco, the painter Eugenio Carmi and the illustrator Roberto Zamarin, who designed the logo of the Lotta Continua militant organisation and who wrote the satirical workerist cartoon strips featuring Gasparazzo.