In 1347, a merchant ship traveling from Crimea in central Asia docked at Messina in Sicily with a crew of desperately sick sailors. As they were taken ashore, rats also left the vessel, carrying with them fleas infected with the bacterium for bubonic plague. The Black Death had arrived in Europe.
Most followers of electro-acoustic music recognize the contributions both Bruno Maderna and Luciano Berio have made to the field, mainly due to their collaborative work Ritratto di Citta, which established the Studio de Fonologia in 1955. Fewer, however, are familiar with their individual projects from the late '50s and early '60s that clearly set them apart from their counterparts in Cologne. Berio and Maderna were both obsessed by the human voice as a basis and endpoint in electro-acoustic music…