Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Radio Milano

-1-

Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Radio Milano

(Technology and Technics: Alfredo Lietti and Marino Zuccheri)
In June 1955, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana granted Maestro Luciano Berios and Maestro Bruno Madernas joint enterprise by opening the Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Radio Milano at RAI Center in Corso Sempione 27, whose name grew in a short time until it became the third pole of the New Music in Europe, after the already existing ones in Paris and Kln, from which it distinguished for three great innovations: musical, technological and technical.

Studio di Fonologia di Milano: devices panoramic view. - Elettronica 1956 N 3 -

Musical Innovation
Between the end of the Forties and the beginning of the Fifties, two ways of thinking faced each other in the context of the so called contemporary music: in Paris the Concrete Musique (Pierre Schaeffer), where natural sounds (and noises) were picked up by microphones and then worked out by means of electronic devices; in Kln the Elektronik Musik (Karl Heinz Stockhausen) was preferred, where sounds were generated by oscillators or obtained from white noise by some filters and then worked out roughly the same way by means of electronic tools. These schools differentiated owing to the particular choice of the sound sources, but they both utilized the same electronic devices for elaborating and transforming sounds, therefore for musical creations. Despite of this, the Studio di Fonologia di Milano overcame this contrapposition without limiting free expressions of the attending musicians: they made use of both methods according to any own artistical or technical demand. Maestro Luciano Berio expressed his meaningful thought through the essay Prospettive nella musica, published by the magazine Elettronica (issue n.3, 1956, page 108); he wrote: [] Nowadays however, we are allowed to think that definitions such as concrete music and electronic music, partially arisen because of the simple and lawful purpose of recognizing objects of our daily speaking, may be assimilated to the general concept of music; that kind of music, I mean, seeming to be fully realized always and only through an interior and tireless handmade condition. []

Laboratorio Audio Rai-Milano

Giovanni Belletti belletti@rai.it

Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Radio Milano Technological Innovation

-2-

Phisicist Dr. Alfredo Lietti (working for RAI until 1960 and, then, scientist working for Politechnic of Losanna) deeply contributed both in realizing the Studio and in creating and projecting most of the devices, unique pieces and real technological rarities of those years, builded at RAI Laboratories in Milano: the famous nine oscillators, the white noise generator, the amplitude selector, the dynamic modulator, the ring modulators, the frequency shifter, the pulse modulator, the electronic fader, the toc generator, the cathodic comparer, the octave filters and the third octave filters. These devices were utilized for generating, transforming, measuring and controlling sound, allowing this way the compositor to handle every single audio stream and to verify his results in real time, before recording onto magnetic tape. Another important building feature of the Studio was the possibility of connecting the devices among them no matter of a prefixed scheme, therefore with a very high degree of freedom. With such technological innovations, the Studio di Fonologia di Milano was able to provide the musicians a set of very powerful tools for their musical research, gaining the leadership in this field, not only in Europe. More than ten years of experiences later, in 1968, the Studio suffered a renewal period; a RAI report of those years said: [] a little has been left of the old Studio di Fonologia [] Well, comparing some technical schemes of the Studio referring to different years (1955 and 1968), the only true innovation regarding to the New Studio was the introduction of a device aimed to substitute the toc generator; many of the devices builded in the years between 1955 and 1960 were reused, the others were rebuilded according to the latest technological innovation: the transistors. Of course, in 1968 the Studio di Fonologia was equipped with new consumer oscillators and more recent tape recorders, the devices were disposed in a more functional way, in accordance with the experience gained in the previous years. But the whole machinery dedicated to the sound manipulation and transformation was the same as Dr. Lietti projected in the second half of the Fifties, keeping being used until the closing of the Studio in 1983.

Technical Innovation
Musicians didnt know the new technology available at the Studio di Fonologia in the Fifties, so the need of a referring technician grew just for matching their requirements with the operative possibilities of those new electronic devices. Marino Zuccheri performed that job; he used to say: I happened to be picked out, but surely not for chance he was the only holder of the Studio di Fonologia from June 1955 to February 28th 1983, the day he closed the door of his Studio for the last time and, being sixty, he retired. Marino Zuccheri was Maestro among Maestros in his Studio, Maestro of Sound among Maestros of Music because sound didnt have secrets for him: he learnt his profession at RAI Radiophonic Studios with the most famous Directors of those years. His collaboration with compositors was total: from recording in studio and in external (voices, musical instruments, noises) to sound generation and transformations (oscillators, white noise, filters, modulators); from editing (the old editing by the use of scissors for cutting magnetic tape: he really was a great wizard) to sound mixing and, to end, to sound diffusion in the theatres (a task still to be consolidated in the whole): a crucial and important step because any mistake, even the smallest one, could have damaged months of hard work. According to the witness of many people, Marino Zuccheri might be defined as Maestro of Maestros; Maestro is meant not only as master of sound but also and mostly as a generous and severe master craftsman who introduced young composers, eager to know but fearful to learn, to the hidden secrets of those new and misterious devices born from the genius of Dr. Alfredo Lietti, powerful tools aimed to let their musical ideas and skill appear. Giovanni Belletti

English translation by Fabrizio Aletti

Milano, feb 28, 2007

Laboratorio Audio Rai-Milano

Giovanni Belletti belletti@rai.it