Luciano Berio

(b Oneglia, 24 october 1925; d Roma, 27 may 2003). Italian composer. At a relatively early stage in his career, he succeeded in transcending the closed world of the European avant garde to address a wider public.

The vivid, gestural idiom that he developed in the 1960s, and the creative consequences that he drew from other, often extra-musical aspects of the culture around him, established for him a world-wide reputation that has sustained his subsequent exploration of a wide, and sometimes challenging, arc of musical resources. Of formidable creative energy, he has proved one of the most prolific composers of the later 20th century.