Mario Bertoncini

Mario Bertoncini died early yesterday, January 19, in Siena, Italy.=20

Mario was hugely influential to my music, introducing me and my =
classmates at McGill in 1975 to the idea of music design =E2=80=94 =
essentially, if you really want to make new music, why start with =
existing instruments? =E2=80=94 make them. But then, even the idea of =
=E2=80=9Cinstrument=E2=80=9D falls short, for once you have devised and =
built something entirely new to make music with, where does the =
discovery end and the composition start? Should they even be different =
things? We eventually substituted for =E2=80=9Cinstrument=E2=80=9D the =
words =E2=80=9Csound source=E2=80=9D, which sat better with =E2=80=9Cmusic=
 design=E2=80=9D =E2=80=94  idea, design, construction, discovery =
(through a kind of pure improvisation), and performance all being the =
same composition, having one name. (These sound sources were not a =
=E2=80=9Ctool=E2=80=9D for sounding something else.)

Mario=E2=80=99s sound sources are beautiful to look at. He could quote =
Dante in the original endlessly. His performances of Chopin and of Terry =
Riley=E2=80=99s Keyboard Studies amazed.

If you know of him, it might be through his being in Gruppo di =
Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.

There is another thing to tell you about Mario: he developed a method =
for teaching improvisation, to which I was exposed, also in 1975. Since =
at the beginning of that semester we students had not yet built =
anything, and we were scheduled to meet regularly anyway, and Mario had =
to do something with us, he taught us how to improvise. It was a skill =
we would need once we had something ready to play. First, he would rant =
on, passionately and effusively poetically, about all that was wrong =
with =E2=80=9Cthe official avant-garde=E2=80=9D =E2=80=94 the =
predictable gestures, the annoying conceits of dynamics and form, the =
pitch-centricity, the yearning for newness battered by the desire to =
impress, the hierarchy of leaders (divided by nationalities and sorted =
by fame), etc. etc. Then, once we were terrified, he would demand that =
we start playing. No further instructions (no father instructions). Each =
time we did, he would stand by until someone in the room did something, =
anything, that offended his sensibilities. =E2=80=9CSTOP THAT SHIT.=E2=80=9D=
 =E2=80=9CYou crush my soul.=E2=80=9D =E2=80=9CMust we hear that again? =
Hasn=E2=80=99t the official avant-garde already done that enough that =
even my dead grandmother would recognizes it=E2=80=9D (These are not =
exact quotes, but you get the idea.) The first try we lasted maybe 3 =
seconds before Mario saved us from ourselves. Little by little, we would =
survive longer and longer. Because of his unswerving vigilance, we never =
played a bad note (other the the last one, the one that caused him to =
immediately capture and snuff out the horror). By term's end, we might =
even pull off an acceptable 14 minutes of improvisation without =
intervention. I do recall at least once reaching our own ending. Not =
bad, considering there were about 15 classically trained young hotheads =
in the room who initially barely knew one another.

Mario was a huge soul, a huge artist, a mentor, a friend.

Andrew Culver