Resonating lacunae. Berio, Brandi and music restoration

Abstract

In this paper, we take a closer look at Luciano Berio’s Rendering (1989), a work which was explicitly conceived of as a “restoration” of Schubert’s unfinished Tenth Symphony (Berio 1989: 453). We argue that Berio’s operation on Schubert’s fragments, unconventional as it was from a philological point of view, reflects many principles envisaged by Cesare Brandi in his Theory of Restoration (1963) particularly with regard to the treatment of so-called lacunae. Berio’s analogy between music and painting restoration has interesting musicological implications and impacts on a number of philosophical issues such as originality, creativity and how we can relate authentically with the past.