A musician and composer, Luciano Berio was born in Oneglia, near Genoa, Italy. Music was an intrinsic part of his childhood. His father was his first teacher, instructing him on the organ and piano. At the age of 15, Berio went to the Milan Conservatory, where he studied composition and conducting. After graduation, he worked for a short period as a voice coach and conductor in several Italian opera houses and composed several pieces, including Due Pezzi, for violin and piano (1951); Variazioni, for piano (1952); and Chamber Music, for voice, clarinet, cello, and harp, based on poems by James Joyce.
While at the Berkshire Music Center at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, Berio studied composition with Luigi Dallapiccola. Dallapiccola introduced Berio to the artistic potentials of 12-tone music and serialism. Variations for Chamber Orchestra (1953); Nones, for orchestra (1954); and Allelujah 1, for orchestra (1956) are characterized as controlled serialism.
In 1954 Berio returned to Milan, where he founded the Studio di Fonologia Musicale in order to experiment with electronic music. He incorporated electronic sounds into such compositions as Mutazioni (1955); Omaggio a Joyce (1958), based on Chapter 11 of Joyce's Ulysses; and Momento (1958). Berio no longer confined music to pitched sound; he embraced the world of sound and experimented with and used sounds of all kinds in his compositions. Visage (1960) was the last piece of music that Berio wrote during this period of experimentation with electronics at his Milan studio.
In 1960 Berio returned to the United States. He taught music at Mills College at Oakland, California, and Harvard University before settling at the Julliard School of Music in New York.
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