Berios Sequenzas Essays On Performance, Composition and Analysis (Janet K. Halfyard (Editor) )

BERIO’S SEQUENZAS
Dedicated to
David Osmond-Smith (1946–2007)
Berio’s Sequenzas
Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis
Edited by
JANET K. HALFYARD
UCE Birmingham Conservatoire, UK
With an Introduction by David Osmond-Smith

First published by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2007 Janet K. Halfyard
Janet K. Halfyard has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
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Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Berio’s Sequenzas: essays on performance, composition and analysis
1. Berio, Luciano, 1925–2003. Sequenzas 2. Berio, Luciano,
1925-2003 – Performances
I. Halfyard, Janet K., 1966-
780.9’2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berio’s Sequenzas: essays on performance, composition and analysis /
edited by Janet Halfyard.
p. cm..
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5445-2 (alk. paper) 1. Berio, Luciano, 1925–2003.
Sequenzas. I. Halfyard, Janet K., 1966-
ML410.B4968 B47 2007
784.18’94–dc22
2006032277
ISBN 9780754654452 (hbk)

Contents
List of Music Examples vii

List of Tables and Figures xi
Notes on Contributors xiii
Foreword xix
Acknowledgements xxiii
Notes on the Text xxv
Introduction 1
David Osmond-Smith
Part 1 Performance Issues
1 Rhythm and Timing in the Two Versions of Berio’s Sequenza I

for Flute Solo: Psychological and Musical Differences
in Performance 11
Cynthia Folio and Alexander R. Brinkman
2 Rough Romance: Sequenza II for Harp as Study and Statement 39
Kirsty Whatley
3 Phantom Rhythms, Hidden Harmonies: The Use of the Sostenuto
Pedal in Berio’s Sequenza IV for Piano, Leaf and Sonata 53
Zoe Browder Doll
4 A Dress or a Straightjacket? Facing the Problems of Structure
and Periodicity Posed by the Notation of Berio’s Sequenza VII
for Oboe 67
Patricia Alessandrini
5 Shadow Boxing: Sequenza X for Trumpet and Piano Resonance 83
Jonathan Impett
Part 2 Berio’s Compositional Process and Aesthetics
6 Provoking Acts: The Theatre of Berio’s Sequenzas 99

Janet K. Halfyard
7 The Chemins Series 117

Paul Roberts
8 The Compass of Communications in Sequenza VIII for Violin 137
Eugene Montague
vi Berio’s Sequenzas
9 Sequenza IX for Clarinet: Text, Pre-Text, Con-Text 153
Andrea Cremaschi
10 Proliferations and Limitations: Berio’s Reworking of the Sequenzas 171
Edward Venn
Part 3 Analytical Approaches
11 Vestiges of Twelve-Tone Practice as Compositional Process in

Berio’s Sequenza I for Solo Flute 191
Irna Priore
12 Sonic Complexity and Harmonic Syntax in Sequenza IV for Piano 209
Didier Guigue and Marcílio Fagner Onofre
13 The Nature of Expressivity in Berio’s Sequenza VI for Viola 233

Amanda Bayley
14 A Polyphonic Type of Listening In and Out of Focus: Berio’s 255
Sequenza XI for Guitar
Mark D. Porcaro
15 …and so a chord consoles us: Berio’s Sequenza XIII (Chanson) 275
for Accordion
Thomas Gartmann
Bibliography 291
Discography 299
Index 301
List of Music Examples
1.1 Sequenza I: the 1958 edition, phrase 1 16

1.2 Sequenza I: the 1992 edition, phrase 1 17
1.3 Typesetting of Berio’s handwritten example of Sequenza I
from a letter to Nicolet (1966) 17
1.4 Sequenza I: hash marks 55–56 17
1.5 Sequenza I: hash marks 145–46 18
1.6 Sequenza I: hash marks 243–50 (at the first tempo change) 18
2.1 The opening bars of Sequenza II 45

2.2 Sequenza II: page 1, system 3, bars 1–4 46
2.3 Sequenza II: page 1, system 4, bar 10 46
2.7 Sequenza II: page 4, system 3, bar 7 to system 4, bar 4 51
3.1 Sequenza IV: bars 109–16 56

3.4 Leaf: bars 1–10 63
3.5 Sonata: bar 47 64
5.1 Sequenza X: segments 1–3 89

5.2 Sequenza X: pitch set outlined in segments 1–4 89
5.3 Sequenza X: segment 6 92
5.4 Sequenza X: pitch bands in segment 6 90
5.5 Sequenza X: pitch reduction of segments 9–11 91
5.6 Sequenza X: segments 22–26 93
5.7 Sequenza X: pitch range in segments 20–26 91
7.1 Chemins I 121

7.2 Sequenza VI: idiosyncratic viola chord-types 123
7.3 Chemins II: two bars after D (extract) 124
7.4 Chemins IV: two bars after A (extract) 127
7.5 Melodic development of folk elements 128
7.6 Two-part polyphony 129
7.7 Development of motifs in Chemins V 131
viii Berio’s Sequenzas
7.8 Sequenza X: page 4, last line 133
7.9 Sequenza IX pitch groups 135
8.1 Phrase structure in the opening of Sequenza VIII 140

8.2 Sequenza VIII: the compass as registral and rhythmic ground 145
8.3 Sequenza VIII: tonal references at the end of section 1 146
8.4 Sequenza VIII: tonal implications and the compass 147
8.5 The opening of section 3 of Sequenza VIII 148
8.6 Sequenza VIII: D minor triad within three distinct clusters 149
8.7 Sequenza VIII: symmetry around the compass dyad 149
8.8 Sequenza VIII: change in the compass at the end of section 3 150
8.9 The changed compass in the final section of Sequenza VIII 151
9.1 Main pitch-field of Sequenza IX 154

9.2 Sequenza IX: rhythmic and melodic patterns on page 1 155
9.3 Sequenza IX: pages 2–3 156
9.4 Sequenza IX: rhythmic pattern on page 2 156
9.5 Sequenza IX: page 3 157
9.6 Sequenza IX: melodic patterns on pages 5–6 157
9.7 Sequenza IX: melodic and rhythmic patterns on page 7 158
9.8 Sequenza IX: pages 7–9 160
9.9 Central improvisatory section in ‘Chemins V’ 164
9.10 Pitch framework for La vera storia 167
10.1 David Osmond-Smith’s outline pitch structure of Sequenza VI 176

10.2 Figures from Sequenza VIII 179
10.3 Corale: bars 1–4 180
10.4 Corale: bars 9–11 181
10.5 Corale: bars 16–20 183
10.6 Structural differences between Chemins II and Chemins IIb 188
11.1 Opening of Sequenza I 197

11.2 Sequenza I: pairings of forms of the row 198
11.3 Sequenza I: entries of the four complete occurrences of P9 199
11.4 Sequenza I: half-step and whole-tone motifs (segmentation) 200
11.5 Sequenza I: multidimensional layers of P9 203
11.6 Sequenza I: Magnani’s series 204
12.1 Sequenza IV: A-category chord objects, including

matrices and declensions 215
12.2 Sequenza IV: B-category chord objects, including
matrices and declensions 215
12.3 Sequenza IV: B-matrix chords at the dynamic climax 222
List of Music Examples ix
12.4 Sequenza IV: pendular movement between registers in
the chord sequence of page 6 224
12.5 Sequenza IV: maximum contrast of register in the two
chords of page 8 225
12.6 Sequenza IV: dilution of the pendular motion 225
12.7 Sequenza IV: the anticipation of chords in the the final section 225
12.8 Sequenza IV: chords arranged in order of decreasing complexity
of inner pitch distribution 228
12.9 Sequenza IV, chord progression between 1610 and 1713 229
13.1 Opening of Sequenza VI 234

13.2 Sequenza VI: melodic interjection from the first section of
the piece, 1:43–1:49 244
13.3 Sequenza VI: transition into section 2, 2:04–2:22 246
13.4 Sequenza VI: 7:23–7:56 248
13.5 Sequenza VI: section 6, 11:26–12:08 250
13.6 Sequenza VI: section 1, 0:43 251
13.11 Sequenza VI: section 5, 9:30 253
14.1 First four chords of Sequenza XI 259

14.2 Sequenza XI: section 1, beginnings and endings of segments 260
14.3 Sequenza XI: pitch boundaries of the outer voices in section 1 262
14.4 Sequenza XI: section 2, parts X, Y and Z (2.4–3.3) 263
14.5 Sequenza XI: section 2 cadence chord (2.4) 264
14.6 Sequenza XI: α and β chords in section 2 (2.7) 264
14.7 Sequenza XI: new chord at 11.6 265
14.8 Most common arrangement of hexachords in Sequenza XI 266
14.9 Sequenza XI: arrangement of the pitches in hexachord a 266
14.10 Sequenza XI: pitch groupings based on hexachords (6.6) 267
14.11 Sequenza XI: alternating hexachords (4.5–6) 267
14.12 Sequenza XI: alternation of hexachords a and b (10.2–4) 268
14.13 Sequenza XI: section four divided into three voice parts
by range (7.6) 269
14.14 Sequenza XI: voice 1 fragmentation (7.6–9) 270
14.15 Sequenza XI: voice 2 (8.6–9) 271
14.16 Sequenza XI: similarity and overlap between sections 1 and 2 (1.1) 273
15.1 Sequenza XIII: opening theme 278

15.2 Sequenza XIII: reduction of the bass line, page 1, system 1–3 278
15.3 Sequenza XIII: virtuosic passage, page 3, system 3 278
x Berio’s Sequenzas
15.4 Sequenza XIII: pairs of pitch-class minor seconds in the
opening theme 280
15.5 Sequenza XIII: second 11-note sequence, page 1, system 2 281
15.6 Sequenza XIII: prominent E♭ in the third fanning-out sequence,
page 1, systems 2–3 281
15.7 Sequenza XIII: restatement of theme, Sequenza XIII, page 1,
system 4 282
15.8 Sequenza XIII: page 2, systems 1–2 283
15.9 Sequenza XIII: development of accompaniment motif on page 2 283
15.10 Sequenza XIII: gestures and layers, pages 2–3 284
15.11 Sequenza XIII: page 3, system 4 285
15.12 Sequenza XIII: B4–D♭6 leap associated with the MM 112 tempo,
page 4, end of system 4 286
15.13 Sequenza XIII: 11-tone field from the final page 289
15.14 Sequenza XIII: altered forms of the theme on the final page 289
15.15 Sequenza XIII: final appearance of the theme 290
Disclaimer: The Publisher acknowledges that the quality of certain music examples
is not perfect, but this was the best that could be achieved with what was supplied
by the contributors.
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
1.1 Segment locations 20

1.2 Ideal timings for S and F segments 21
1.3 Tempos of measured segments for each performer in beats
per minute 23
1.4 Total duration of each recorded performance 24
1.5 Timings (all segments) – Nicolet, Fabbriciani, Cherrier and
ideal timings 25
1.6 Deviation from the ‘ideal’ in measured-segment length in seconds
for each performer 26
1.7 Deviation from ‘ideal’ in fermata-segment length in seconds
for each performer 28
4.1 Line durations in seconds 69

4.2 List of harmonic fields and their relation to the grid 70
4.3 Harmonic fields and their durations 71
4.4 Line durations in Holliger’s 1976 recording 76
4.5 Line durations in the Hadady recording 78
4.6 Comparison of timings in the three sections as given in the score
and in the two recordings 80
6.1 Complete sung phrases in the score of Sequenza III 106

6.2 Character types extrapolated from the expressive directions 107
10.1 Relationship between structures of Sequenza VI, Chemins II 185

and Chemins IIb
11.1 Recognizable row forms appearing between 1.1 and 3.3 198
11.2 Appearances of the main chromatic motif 201
12.1 The piano’s registers categorized according to acoustic criteria 213

12.2 Analysis of sonic structure of A-category chords 218
12.3 Analysis of sonic structure of B-category chords 221
13.1 Textural and gestural structure of Sequenza VI 242
14.1 Pitches used in section 1, arranged chromatically 261

xii Berio’s Sequenzas
Figures
1.1 Contour graphs of the first phrase for each performer 30
3.1 Attack points and decay times in Sequenza IV, bars 105–6 58
3.2 Attack points and decay times in Leaf, bars 1–10 63
4.1 First and last pitch-fields in normal form 69
9.1 Vowel matrix for ‘Chemins V’ 162

9.2 Outline of the relationships among the Sequenza-related works 169
11.1 Seven interpretations of the formal structure of Sequenza I 206
12.1 Evolution of Q and A weights in the B matrices 219

12.2 The chronological order line of amplitude values 222
12.3 The chronological order line of object’s registers 224
12.4 The chronological order line of H values 227
12.5 Excerpt of Fig. 12.2 (order ns. 1 to 41) with tendency line 227
12.6 Excerpt of Fig. 12.4 (nn. 105 to 137, corresponding to 1610–1713),
with tendency line 229
12.7 Minimum, average (mean) and maximum values for
Amplitude (A), Relative Range (R), and Harmonicity (H)
for all chords and declensions 231
12.8 The global formal tri-partition according to the three sonic vectors 231
13.1 Plan of Sequenza VI 241

13.2 Dynamics in Sequenza VI 243
13.3 Tempo changes in Sequenza VI 245
13.4 Sequenza VI: representation of notated timbral events 247
14.1 Form diagram for section 1 260

14.5 Form diagram for all sections 272
Disclaimer: The Publisher acknowledges that the quality of certain figures is not
perfect, but this was the best that could be achieved with what was supplied by the
contributors.
Notes on Contributors
Patricia Alessandrini is a PhD candidate in composition at Princeton University,

working on a dissertation using computer applications for musical analysis. She
previously studied composition, music theory and computer music at Columbia
University, the Conservatorio di Bologna, the Conservatoire National de Région
de Strasbourg, CUNY, and IRCAM. Her compositions have been performed at
the Pacific New Music Festival (California) and Festival Musica (Strasbourg), by
ensembles including Accroche Note, Ensemble InterContemporain, New Millennium,
and Ensemble Itinéraire. She has taught music theory at Queens College, CUNY
and Princeton University, as well as computer-assisted composition at the École
Nationale de Musique de Montbéliard. From 1997–99 she was a reader for Current
Musicology, and is actively engaged in translation in the field of musicology.
Amanda Bayley is Reader in Music at the University of Wolverhampton. She

completed her PhD on Bartók Performance Studies at the University of Reading
in 1996. She is Editor of The Cambridge Companion to Bartók (Cambridge
University Press, 2001) and has published on twentieth-century string quartets. Her
research interests include twentieth-century music, analysing recordings, issues of
performance and analysis, and ethnomusicology. She is President of the Society
for Music Analysis and is involved in a British Academy-funded research project
with the Kreutzer Quartet on creative processes in contemporary string quartets.
Following her work as Edison Fellow at the British Library Sound Archive, she
is currently preparing a book for Cambridge University Press on Recorded Music:
Society, Technology, and Performance. Her research on the performance analysis of
Bartók’s String Quartets is also contributing to a monograph on Bartók Performance
Studies.
Alexander R. Brinkman holds a PhD from the University of Rochester, and

was a member of the theory faculty at the Eastman School of Music for 27 years
before accepting his current position as Associate Professor of Music Theory at
Temple University. He has done extensive work in computer applications, encoding
languages, data structures and algorithms for music analysis, as well as multimedia
programming for ear training and presentation of music analyses. He is the author of
Pascal Programming for Music Research (University of Chicago Press, 1990) and
many articles. As a jazz bassist, he has performed with Joe Williams, The Modernairs,
Tex Beneke, Bill Dobbins, Carl Atkins and Christopher Azzara. He played on a CD
with Kelly Roberts, released in 1998, and on Songs of Alec Wilder, recorded with
soprano Valerie Errante and pianist Robert Wason for the Eastman American Music
Series, Volume 10 (Albany Records, 2000).
xiv Berio’s Sequenzas
Andrea Cremaschi was born in 1976 in Voghera, Italy. He graduated in musicology
from the University of Pavia with a dissertation on the aesthetics of live electronics. He
also studied composition and electronic music at Parma Conservatoire and followed
composition courses and workshops with Helmut Lachenmann and Gérard Grisey.
He is a composer, performer (electroacoustic music diffusion) and musicologist.
His main research fields are Italian twentieth-century composers and the analysis
of electroacoustic music. He teaches harmony in Voghera and is a composition tutor
at Parma Conservatoire. He also collaborates with Centro Tempo Reale in Florence
and Archivio Luigi Nono in Venice.
Zoe Browder Doll is a professional pianist, and holds a DMA and MMus in Piano
Performance from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she was a
student of Christina Dahl. In 2003, she earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study piano
in Amsterdam, Holland, with renowned avant-garde pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama. A
specialist in contemporary music, she has participated in the premieres of numerous
works in New York, Amsterdam, Den Haag, and Helsinki. She has had many pieces
written for her, including Steven Bryant’s RedLine (1999). She gave her New York
debut recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2000 and was an artist-in-
residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada in 1999.
Cynthia Folio is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Temple University, where

she was recognized with a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. She earned a
PhD in music theory from the University of Rochester and a Performer’s Certificate
in flute from the Eastman School of Music. She authored (and co-authored) chapters
on jazz in New Musicology (Poznan Press, 2006) and Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz
Since 1945 (Rochester Press, 1995). Writings on other topics, such as the relation
between analysis and performance and the analysis of contemporary music, appear in
various journals, and she has served on the editorial board for Music Theory Spectrum
and ex tempore. As a composer, Cynthia has received numerous commissions and
her works have been described as ‘confident and musical in expressing ideas of great
substance’. A CD of eight of her compositions, Flute Loops: Chamber Music for
Flute (with Folio performing on four) was released May 2006 by Centaur Records.
Thomas Gartmann is a musicologist and violinist, and is an assistant at the

University of Zurich, as well as teaching at colleges in Bern, Basel and Lucerne. He
has published widely on contemporary music, particularly on the music of Berio, and
is a contributor to Swiss and German radio, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He has been president of the Consortium
for the Promotion of Swiss Music since 1996 and is Deputy Director of Pro Helvetia,
the Swiss Arts Council.
Didier Guigue was born in France and has lived in Brazil since 1982. He holds
a doctorate in twentieth-century music and musicology from the EHESS/IRCAM,
France and is currently a professor at the Federal University of Paraíba and a
Notes on Contributors xv
researcher and consultant for several Brazilian Councils and Foundations. His
activities focus on contemporary music aesthetics and analysis. He has published
in La Revue de Musicologie, The Journal of New Music Research, the Electronic
Musicology Review, and his second book is to be published in France by L’Harmattan
in 2007. As a composer of mainly electronic music, he has had his work played at
the Synthèse (France) and Elektrokomplex (Austria) Festivals, released on CD in
Brazil and included in two international compilations released by Organized Sound
and Leonardo Music Journal.
Janet K. Halfyard is a senior lecturer at Birmingham Conservatoire, a faculty of the

University of Central England. Her research includes work on Luciano Berio, Cathy
Berberian, extended vocal technique and performance practice issues in contemporary
repertoire. She performs as an extended vocalist, working with composers such as
Simon Emmerson, Joseph Hyde and Simon Hall, and is a founder member of the
ensemble decibel with the composer Ed Bennett. Her publications also include work
on film and television music, and she is the author of Danny Elfman’s Batman: A film
score guide (2004) in the Scarecrow Press Film Score Guide series.
Jonathan Impett is a trumpet player and composer. His work deals primarily with
the intersection of composition, improvisation and technology in interactive music,
for which he was awarded a Prix Ars Electronica. As well as informing his own
music, this concern with the changing nature of musical creativity has led to projects
such as the Metaorchestra and his recent research into the music of Luigi Nono. His
solo recordings include Berio’s Sequenza X, and he is a member of the Amsterdam
Baroque Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. He is a lecturer at
the University of East Anglia.
Eugene Montague is an assistant professor of music theory at the University of

Central Florida. His research interests include music and physical movement, music
in contemporary culture, and links between music and the study of consciousness.
He is interested in a wide range of repertoire from seventeenth-century French dance
music to contemporary punk rock. He has presented on the music of Berio and Xenakis
at regional conferences of the Society for Music Theory and has read papers on music
and movement at international conferences on musical semiotics and consciousness.
Current research projects include a critique of the notion of dissonance in rhythmic
theory, an investigation of the influence of punk rock on mainstream popular music
and an exploration of the relationships between contemporary literature, literary
theory and music.
Marcílio Fagner Onofre is a composer, pianist and theorist. He studies composition

with the Brazilian composer Eli-Eri Moura and analysis with the French composer
and musicologist Didier Guigue. His works include pieces for solo, chamber groups
and orchestra, as well as music for the theatre. His music is played in Brazilian
events such as the Bienal de Música Contemporânea Brasileira. He has been active
xvi Berio’s Sequenzas
as a member of the New Composers of Paraíba Group, taking part in several of its
concerts.
David Osmond-Smith (1946–2007) was Research Professor of Music at the

University of Sussex, where he taught from 1973. As well as publishing a broad
range of essays on twentieth-century music, he was widely recognized as the leading
authority on Berio’s work, publishing two books on Berio’s music and translating
his Two Interviews (Marion Boyars, 1985) into English. He also translated writings
by Berio, Eco and Sanguineti, chaired the British Section of the ISCM, and acted as
Music Commissioner for the Venice Biennale. He lectured regularly for Glyndebourne
Festival Opera, and also in France, Scandinavia and Italy.
Mark D. Porcaro completed a PhD in Musicology at the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA) in 2006 with a dissertation on ‘The Secularization
of the Repertoire of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: 1949–1992’. He is a graduate
of Brigham Young University, and received a Masters degree in Musicology from
UNC Chapel Hill with a dissertation on Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XI for guitar. His
professional interests centre on twentieth and twenty-first century music, American
music, as well as guitar and lute performance and literature.
Irna Priore is currently Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of

North Carolina at Greensboro. She holds a PhD in music theory from the University
of Iowa and a DMA in flute performance from the Graduate Center (City University
of New York). She was a fellow at the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in
Music Theory in 2001. She has served as visiting professor of music theory at the
University of Iowa and as adjunct professor of music theory at the University of New
Mexico. She has presented papers in regional and national societies in the USA and
abroad in the areas of Schenkerian theory, post-tonal analysis, performance practice
and Brazilian popular music.
Paul Roberts is a freelance composer, music editor and engraver. He was Luciano
Berio’s musical assistant for Universal Edition Vienna for over 13 years, and has
been responsible for the engraving of many of Berio’s works, including Sequenza
I, Sequenza IV, Sequenza VII, Sequenza XIV, Chemins IV, Chemins V and Récit
(Chemins VII). In this respect he is often required to collaborate with BMG Ricordi
Milan, the Teatro Comunale di Firenze and the Orchestra Regionale di Toscana.
He has published articles on Sequenza VII and Cronaca del Luogo, and his
compositions include Consequents for soprano and ensemble (1994), commissioned
by the Southbank Centre, London for a concert that presented performances of all
11 Sequenzas written up to 1994. The piece is scored for the combined forces of of
those Sequenzas and is based on their music.
Edward Venn is Lecturer in Music at Lancaster University (UK). His research

focuses on contemporary music and performance, and especially contemporary
Notes on Contributors xvii
British music. He has published articles on Adès, Wood, Tippett and Finzi, and his
book, The Music of Hugh Wood, is to be published by Ashgate in the Twentieth
Century Music series.
Kirsty Whatley wrote her MA dissertation on the development of the harp idiom
in twentieth-century art music and has delivered several seminars, papers and
workshops on this subject. She is currently extending her performance research
into the technical and historical diversity of the harp family at the Schola Cantorum
Basiliensis in Switzerland. As a contemporary musician she frequently collaborates
with composers and has premiered several works, including Andrew Keeling’s
Sacred Time for solo harp.
Foreword
Janet K. Halfyard
Berio’s Sequenza series is one of the most remarkable achievements of the late
twentieth century, a collection of virtuoso pieces that explores the capabilities of a
solo instrument and its player, making extreme technical demands of the performer
whilst developing the musical vocabulary of the instrument in compositions so
assured and so distinctive that each piece both initiates and potentially exhausts the
repertoire of a new genre.
My original motivation for proposing this volume had three separate but
interlinked sources. The first is my own relationship with Sequenza III, a piece I
first encountered as an undergraduate student and subsequently started learning in
the early 1990s. The process is ongoing: I doubt I shall ever stop learning Sequenza
III. The second source is my students at Birmingham Conservatoire, all of whom
are required by their course to engage with ideas of performance practice and
contemporary composition. The Sequenzas are always popular choices for their
seminars, but the continual complaint has always been ‘I can’t find any books on
this’. Finding myself in a position to provide one, it seemed only fair that I should,
and given the general dearth of literature on Berio in the English language, such a
book seemed both timely and much needed.
The final source of motivation, however, was the Sequenzas themselves.
Sequenza III is the one I am closest too as a musician and musicologist, but through
my students and the work that the best of them have done – indeed, it tends to be the
best of them that tackle these noticeably demanding pieces – I have come to know
and admire the rest of the series more thoroughly. Berio offers us a series of what on
the surface might appear to be miniatures as arguably his most outstanding legacy to
instrumental repertoire. They are brief in terms of their duration, ranging from six to
eighteen minutes (interestingly, these are the durations of the first and penultimate
pieces – they evidently got longer as time went by) but in terms of their musical
depth, they are giants of our time.
This book therefore brings together a collection of essays on a uniquely
important group of pieces by one of the major figures of twentieth-century music.
The Sequenzas have been significantly influential in the development of composition
for solo instruments and voice, and there is no obviously comparable series of works
in the output of any other modern composer. Series of pieces tend to be linked by the
instruments for which the composer writes, but this is a series in which the pieces
are linked instead by particular compositional aims and preoccupations – virtuosity,
polyphony, the exploration of a specific instrumental idiom – applied to a series of
different instruments.
xx Berio’s Sequenzas
The contributors to this volume bring a range of expertise to the discussion of the
Sequenzas. Most are based in the UK and the USA, but there are also contributions
by authors from Switzerland, France, Italy and Brazil. All can be considered experts
in their field, and I am indebted to all of them for their commitment to this volume.
I am particularly grateful for the contributions from Thomas Gartmann, who has
already published extensively on Berio’s work, and from Paul Roberts, Berio’s
assistant from 1990 onwards, both for his own essay and the various insights he has
been able to give on issues related to the composition of the Sequenzas that have not
previously been in the public domain. I am especially and lastingly grateful to David
Osmond-Smith, who passed away late in May 2007, just as this volume was going
to print, and whose encouragement and support right from the start of the project I
very much appreciated.
The essays have been grouped into the three main categories of performance,
composition and analysis, although these categories are, in practice, far from
exclusive. The essays in the performance section address issues that arise in the
physical performance of the pieces concerned, frequently basing conclusions on
interviews with practitioners and analysis of recordings, as well as often drawing
on the personal knowledge and experience of the authors themselves as both
musicologists and musicians who perform these pieces. Cynthia Folio is a flutist
writing, with Alexander Brinkman, about Sequenza I, its many recordings, and the
issues arising for performers from the implied differences between the 1958 and 1992
editions of the score. Zoe Browder Doll is a pianist, looking specifically at Berio’s
use of the sostenuto pedal in Sequenza IV, Leaf and Sonata, and the sometimes
unpredictable results this can cause in performance. Patricia Alessandrini’s essay
addresses the notation of Sequenza VII, its renotation by Jacqueline Leclair and how
the proportions of the work’s structure are articulated by these two versions and
by the timings that occur in performances of the piece. A theme that emerges here
and elsewhere in the volume is the extent to which the Sequenzas often challenge
conventional ideas of the nature of the instruments for which they are composed.
Kirsty Whatley is a harpist, addressing the practical necessities and aesthetic results
of performing Sequenza II, in particular the way the work distances itself from the
traditional Romantic–Impressionist image of the instrument. In the final essay in
this section, the British trumpeter and musicologist, Jonathan Impett, examines the
rhetoric of the trumpet itself as an instrument situated between musical cultures in
Sequenza X, addressing ideas of gesture, structure and performance in the composition
and realization of the piece.
The essays in the composition section discuss some of Berio’s specific
compositional concerns and his aesthetic standpoint in relation to a range of
issues. Paul Robert’s essay here is devoted to the Chemins series, elucidating
Berio’s compositional processes and intentions, drawing on the author’s firsthand
knowledge as Berio’s assistant throughout the 1990s. Andrea Cremaschi focuses
on the relationships in a particular constellation of works surrounding Sequenza IX,
the withdrawn ‘Chemins V’ for clarinet and electronics, Part II, scene seven of La
vera storia and Récit (Chemins VII). My own essay looks at the theatricality of
Foreword xxi
the Sequenzas, from the ideas of character, narrative and action that are present in
many of them, to the theatrical nature of the virtuosity that unites them all. Two
essays in this section bring Berio’s relationship with Umberto Eco to the fore:
Edward Venn’s essay interrogates Eco and Berio’s notions of the Open Work across
a broad range of Berio’s compositions, including Sequenza I and the Chemins, while
Eugene Montague examines aesthetic concurrences between Eco’s novel Foucault’s
Pendulum and Berio’s Sequenza VIII for violin.
Finally, the essays on analysis take a variety of different approaches to specific
works. Irna Priore’s essay addresses issues of vestigial serial practice in the
construction of pitch material in Sequenza I, while Didier Guigue and Marcílio
Onofre examine the sonic character of chords in Sequenza IV, employing the system
of analysis that Guigue is responsible for developing as part of an ongoing project
developing methodologies for twentieth-century music analysis. Amanda Bayley
explores the way in which Sequenza VI challenges our concept of expressivity in
performance through analysis of how structural qualities such as dynamics, tempo,
texture and gesture are perceived by the listener. Again, focusing on how the piece
might be heard, Mark Porcaro examines the ‘structural polyphony’ of Sequenza XI
and the manner in which different layers of this structure come in and out of focus
in the course of the piece. Finally, Thomas Gartmann’s analysis of Sequenza XIII
(Chanson) examines the gestures and layers of the work, its number games and its
stylistic ambivalence, as Berio’s composition articulates the confrontation between
the traditions of classical music and vernacular performance.
There are some apparent absences in the fifteen essays presented here: although
Sequenzas III and V are discussed in some detail in David Osmond-Smith’s
introduction and Chapter 6, Sequenza XII for bassoon and Sequenza XIV for cello
are mentioned only briefly, and this reflects the simple fact that no proposals were
made regarding these pieces. Sequenza XIV’s absence is undoubtedly because it was
the last composed and is still the least well known, with no commercial recording
available when this volume was commissioned, but there is no equally obvious
reason for the absence of Sequenza XII. Although in an ideal world each of the
fourteen Sequenzas might have had their own essay, the absences should not perturb
us unduly: this book is not intended to be the last word on the series or the definitive
version of how they should be understood. In fact, as much as anything, these essays
reveal rather effectively the extent to which different – and potentially conflicting
– understandings and readings of the pieces are both possible and unavoidable. Any
writer comes to any composition with their own intellectual and musical intentions
and preoccupations, and these agendas play a necessary and productive role in
allowing our understanding of the material being addressed to develop, pointing to
new directions that might be pursued and new approaches that might be taken. This
volume, therefore, aims to be inclusive but makes no claims to being an exhaustive
account of the Sequenzas. It brings together a range of approaches and a range
of readings of both the pieces and the series that demonstrate the richness of this
repertoire and the many levels on which Berio’s compositions can be considered.
xxii Berio’s Sequenzas
A project like this can evidently not be accomplished by one person on their own,
and I have cause to be grateful to many people: George Caird and Peter Johnson at
Birmingham Conservatoire for their practical support of my work; Helen Beecroft
for her moral support and practical help with the musical examples; Duncan Fielden
and David Saint; the library staff at the Conservatoire, particularly Robert Allan,
Sanshia Bedford and Sandy Price; Paul Robertson, for introducing me to Thomas
Gartmann; and all the contributors for their hard work and perseverance in bringing
this project to completion. I would also like to thank Ben Newing, Rod Taylor and
Adrian Connell at Universal Edition (London), and Heidi May and the editorial staff
at Ashgate for their advice and support.
Acknowledgements
Examples 1.1–1.2, 1.4–1.6, 2.1–2.8, 3.1–3.7, 5.1, 5.3, 5.6, 7.1–7.9, 8.1–8.9, 9.1–9.8,
10.2–10.6, 11.1, 11.3, 13.1–13.11, 14.1–14.7, 14.10–14.16, 15.1, 15.3 and 15.5–
15.15 are reproduced from Luciano Berio’s scores. Copyright by Universal Edition
A.G. Vienna. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.
Example 9.9 reproduces a page from Berio’s sketches for ‘Chemins V’ held by the
Paul Sacher Stiftung. Copyright by Talia Pecker Berio and Paul Sacher Stiftung,
Basel. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.
Example 10.2 reproduces Example IV.2 from David Osmond-Smith, Berio (Oxford/
New York, 1991), pp. 45–6, by permission of Oxford University Press.
Notes on the Text
Octave designation
Where authors refer to specific pitches, the text uses the octave designation system
employed by the Acoustical Society of America, which numbers octaves from lowest
to highest as follows:
Dates of composition
There are some differences betweens dates of composition as shown on the scores of
some of the Sequenzas and the dates of composition attributed to the pieces in other
sources such as David Osmond-Smith’s catalogue for his 1991 monograph on Berio.
These apparent discrepancies can largely be attributed to the fact that they tend to
refer to different aspects of a work’s progress. For example, in the case of Sequenza
XII, Berio started work on the composition around 1992, a fact easily obtained from
Pascal Gallois’ own account of his work with Berio (see www.pascalgallois.com);
most sources give the date of composition as 1995 (the year of completion and the
piece’s premiere), while Universal Edition gives the date of the final score as 1997.
All of these dates are accurate within their own terms of reference, although this
variety of dates may at first appear contradictory.
Introduction
David Osmond-Smith
Luciano Berio knew enough about words not to laugh at musicologists (or at least,
not as often as they perhaps deserved). In a world dizzy with verbiage, he knew
well enough that the space through which music may follow its own compass must
be defended from logos by logos: fighting words, cautious scholarly words or, in
his own case, playful raids upon the inarticulate which never underestimate the
vastness of the territories into which they have ventured. When one of the regiment
of commentators found the mot juste, he applauded; when they floundered in
labyrinthine elucubrations, he sighed wryly – but did not mock.
He also knew enough about words to choose cannily when it came to titles for
his compositions. To call one piece for flute in 1958 a Sequenza helps focus
listeners’ attention upon how musical time passes. To call seven of them thus – as
he had done by 1969 – sets up expectations of a series which at the time prompted
the question: having started, where would he stop? (As the sixties concluded, it
looked as though this series – then seven, with numbers III to VII produced in a
continuous flow from 1965–69 – had indeed also drawn to a close. Yet in 1976 he
returned to the concept with a large work for violin, and thereafter composed
roughly two Sequenzas per decade until seven had become fourteen.) It also, of
course, prompts the interviewer or journalist, forever in search of ‘a few words’ for
a publisher to print, to ask why these fourteen large works for single performer are
all called ‘Sequenza’?
Berio was ready for his questioners: it was because these works set in play a
sequence of fixed harmonic fields. For those seeking a first handhold when coming
to grips with the scores, that is unquestionably a useful starting-point – at least
from Sequenzas V and VI onward. But as Berio observed of himself, like a good
Ligurian, he never threw anything away, so you must also expect of the Sequenzas
that they become ever more fascinated by revisiting past procedures from the fresh
perspectives opened up by a new instrumental domain. They become more and
more like Finnegans Wake: full of echoes, full of interweaving levels. Since it is
the subtlety of the weave that lends fascination, one risks the prosaic if one
solemnly teases out the threads. But if the musicologist is the fall guy of the art that
they serve, a little mockery is worth the risk.
2 David Osmond-Smith
The ‘sequence’ alluded to in the title of the 1958 virtuoso work for flute is
primarily a melodic sequence. More accurately, it incorporates a series of
rereadings of a pitch sequence.1 Generating the new by rereading an established
musical ‘text’ – modifying octave placement and rhythmic proportion to the point
where melodic identity dissolves into transformation – is a predilection that derives
from the experience of serialism (as indeed does Berio’s concern, at this point in
the later 1950s, to make active use of the full chromatic pitch resources at his
disposal). We are as yet at some distance from the concept of ‘harmonic field’ as it
was to be subsequently understood. The sequence of pitch-classes is established for
at least those portions of Sequenza I dedicated to ‘rereading’; but octave placement
and durational proportions are maximally variable. Yet such pitch-class identities,
quickly evident to the score reader, are calculatedly occult for the listener deprived
of perfect pitch and a photographic memory. The same could not be said when the
‘rereading’ principle re-asserts itself as a major structural force in the first part of
Sequenza VI (1967). For now the basic ‘text’ – a long, chromatically ascending
sequence of chords – is instantly recognizable in each of its various manifestations.
The ‘rereading’ of a basic repertoire of chords may be done either by adding or
subtracting pitches. In the case of Sequenza VI the principle is subtractive: a
hypothetical sequence of four-note chords (fully manifest in the electronic organ
part of Chemins II, elaborated in the same year around Sequenza VI) is subject to
deletions or sketched allusions according to what conveniently lies beneath the
hand of the viola player, whereas in Sequenza IV, written over the previous two
years, a collection of chords2 built from superposed triads (and thus again
elaborating a vocabulary from the traditional placement of hands on instrument) is
playfully corrupted by the displacement and addition of individual pitches. The
exploratory verve derived from juxtaposing chords selected from an established
collection – from interrogating the syntactic potential of that collection – has much
in common with the similarly open-ended, self-regenerating choice of melodic
relations from a fixed pitch-field.
Drawing consequences from the juxtaposition of dissimilar objects or gestures
is in fact one of the most consistent features of the Sequenzas – muted in the case
of a purely melodic conception, such as Sequenza IX for clarinet (1980), but blatant
in the case of Sequenza II for harp (1963), Sequenza III for voice (1965–66), or
Sequenza XI for guitar (1987–88). On a structural level, such consequences are the
fruit of a tension – one might adopt one of Berio’s favourite metaphors, and call it
a counterpoint – between musical time and dramaturgical time. Berio’s deep
knowledge of the nineteenth-century repertoire was such that he felt no
compunction in engineering the most traditionally ‘organic’ of climaxes, followed
1
For a few examples, see David Osmond-Smith, Berio (Oxford/New York, 1991), p.
31, or the essay by Irna Priore, chapter 11 in this volume.
2
In a public interview at the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival, 2002, Berio
introduced this Sequenza by recalling the jazzmens’ enquiry of each other: ‘How many
chords you got?’
Introduction 3
by meditative relaxation. Sequenza VI is an evident case in point, and Jonathan

Impett’s essay in this volume points to the same sensibility at work in Sequenza X
for trumpet (1984). Yet Berio’s sense of dramaturgy – even if it be simply the
drama of a virtuoso wrestling with their instrument – has a much more specific
origin. If asked what was the most profound influence operating upon his sense of
theatre, Berio would invariably reply: ‘Brecht’. This might at first surprise those
who know him principally from his musical theatre – which at least in later years is
devoid of the didactic motivations that underlay Brechtian dramaturgy. But it will
not greatly surprise those who know the Sequenzas well.
Berio’s reflections upon Brechtian dramaturgy stem from a specific and
formative experience. In the winter of 1955–56, a few months before his death,
Brecht attended the final rehearsals of Giorgio Strehler’s production for the Piccolo
Teatro in Milan of Die Dreigroschenoper. Bruno Maderna conducted the band and
was thus able to negotiate Berio’s presence among the small body of artists and
intellectuals permitted to follow rehearsals. Watching Brecht and Strehler at work
became a profoundly formative experience for many of those accorded this
privilege, and since Berio and Maderna were constantly at work together
consolidating the newly opened Studio di Fonologia, it is fair to assume that their
understanding of the dramaturgical principles that Brecht strove to realize was
reinforced by their own discussions.
Because they have their echo in various of the Sequenzas, it is worth pausing
for a moment to consider the theoretical nexus formed by the two cardinal
dramaturgical concepts underlying Brecht’s epic theatre: Verfremdung, usually
translated as ‘alienation’, and Gestus.3 Alienation is essentially the critical
suspension of empathy – of the pleasing illusion that we ‘know how some other
person feels’. In its simplest and crudest form, it is achieved when an actor giving a
‘realistic’, post-Stanislavskian performance suddenly steps out of role. The
spectator is confronted by the fact that the actor is giving a performance, and is
implicitly invited to consider whether one is equally ‘performing’ one’s everyday
‘self’.4 Importantly for Berio, Brecht generalized the principle. Theatre consisted of
a bundle of mutually alienating praxes: naturalistic acting, mannered acting, song,
projected texts, and so on Their juxtaposition within theatre obliged the spectator
to adopt a critical appraisal of their status and intention as artifice, to ask why they
were thus juxtaposed rather than ‘going with the flow’ of any one of them. The
most immediately evident example within Berio’s work is Sequenza III for voice,
where lyric singing, speech and ‘everyday vocal acts’ such as laughter or coughing
3
For a concise history of Brecht’s introduction of the term Verfremdung, see John
Willett’s note in Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. John Willett (London,
1964), p. 99. For an exemplification by Brecht of Gestus as employed in his New York
production of Die Mutter, see the same volume, pp. 82–3.
4
C.f. Chuang Tzu’s well-known parable on the lability of identity. He had dreamt that
he was a butterfly. On awaking, he had no means of knowing whether he was a man who
had dreamt that he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was a man.
are juxtaposed in a vertiginously compressed manner, mutually alienating one

another. And as Janet Halfyard points out in her essay on Sequenza III in this
volume, the fact that the performer is instructed to walk on to the stage already
producing muttering vocalizations inevitably throws into confusion an audience
engaged in the usual concert-hall ritual of applauding a soloist’s entrance – a
classic Brechtian alienation device in that it compels the audience into self-
consciousness of what they are doing, row upon row, staring at this woman. Yet
this implosion of what Brechtians refer to as the ‘A-effect’ is only the most
extreme of its applications within the Sequenzas. For the same ‘encyclopaedic’
sensibility, the same quintessentially twentieth-century preoccupation with finding
ways whereby traditionally incompatible idioms may be persuaded to inhabit the
same musical space, comes straight to the fore when Berio writes Sequenzas for
instruments that did not develop their identities within the Western orchestra, such
as the guitar (Sequenza XI) or the accordion (Sequenza XIII). In both instances
performative and harmonic gestures that would traditionally articulate popular
forms of dance and song instead have to find ways of survival in mutually
alienating dialogue with those features of Berio’s musical language – the gradual
exploration of the potential of a fixed harmonic field, for instance – that serve to
dynamize his fluid, wandering forms. Similarly Sequenza XII for bassoon
persuades into cohabitation the extraordinary ‘extended’ techniques developed by
its dedicatee, Pascal Gallois – such as the immensely slow downward glissando,
supported by circular breathing, that opens the work – and gestures from its
traditional orchestral personae: the agile staccato bass, the lyrical tenor register,
and so on. Technical innovation and encyclopaedic historical awareness mutually
alienate one another.
The Brechtian A-effect does not of itself necessarily have wider formal
implications. It falls to his related concept of Gestus to give a sense of the wider
dimensions operating in theatrical time. Gestus is a theatrical praxis that Brecht –
and his commentators – tended to exemplify rather than to define, but one may risk
a simple metaphor. If there are concurrent and mutually alienating threads running
through a performance, the Gestus is achieved where they are knotted together to
form a striking and semantically dense theatrical moment. One might take an
example from Strehler’s 1956 production of Die Dreigroschenoper – one
sufficiently striking that Strehler transposed it to his two subsequent productions of
the work.5 In Act 1, scene ii, Tiger Brown, High Sheriff of London, has taken an
hour off from his professional duties to attend the wedding of his old pal, the arch-
hoodlum Mac the Knife. They grow sentimental about the good old days when
both served together in the British Indian army, keeping subject nations in order.
Lights change, the organ is lit up, and the two launch into their favourite routine
from the old days: the ‘Kannonensong’. Mac’s gang, all in their best suits, listen to
the first two verses in silence. In Strehler’s version, by the third verse they have
5
I am indebted to the description given in David L. Hirst, Giorgio Strehler
(Cambridge, 1993), pp. 98–9.
Introduction 5
taken to marching on the spot and, while reaching into their pockets for the tools of
their trade – knives, guns, knuckle-dusters – bawl out the chorus’s sardonic
celebration of putting to cannibalistic use the shredded flesh of lesser peoples,
while a back-projection glows red with fire. The chorus ends; guns are fired;
blackout. Then the sardonic celebration of a mobster marriage resumes as if
nothing had happened.
This momentary intertwining of political and criminal violence emerging from
a façade of low-life elegance, this underlining of ‘as above, so below’ – which after
all was the fundamental topos of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, which Brecht took
as his model – is a typical, if fairly rudimentary example of Brechtian Gestus. One
may see a similarly overt and raw example in Berio’s Sequenza V for trombone.
The very name of the instrument unleashes a whole cloud of associations for an
Italian speaker. Trombone – a big ‘tromba’ or trumpet – is also a big tube or pump.
It is also (among many other things) a blunderbuss. ‘Trombare’ is, in Tuscan slang,
‘to copulate’, but also ‘to fail’. ‘Trombonare’, by aural metaphor, is to act the
windbag, yet for lovers of obscene visual metaphor the trombone slide may evoke
the male phallus in action (and of course phalluses and guns are all too familiar a
popular comparison, and are both rich sources of masculine performance anxiety).
No surprise, then, that the performer enters (in full evening dress), ‘strikes the
poses of a variety showman about to sing an old favourite’ – in other words,
intimates to the audience his intention to perform – raises his trombone–phallus–
rifle aloft and ‘shoots’ a single note before lowering his instrument. The gesture is
repeated several times to allow the associations to sink in; then other notes of a
fixed field are gradually introduced, as are frantic clatterings of a vibrating hand-
held plunger mute at the bell of the trombone. As hysteria reaches its height, the
performer suddenly lowers his instrument and asks the most devastating (and
eminently Brechtian) of questions that one might address to a male erection or to
an aimed rifle: ‘why?’. The performer sits down, and continues his private
meditations with both mute and voice through the trombone echoing that all too
probing ‘[u]–[a]–[i]’.
Such associations will of course strike different spectators with different force.
And for the pure in heart, and curious of mind, Berio had ready a further layer of
meaning – one agreeably tailored for the manufacturer of programme notes. His
anecdote concerning Grock is discussed in Janet Halfyard’s essay in this volume:
and it is precisely the sort of mimed parable on performance anxiety that might
most readily accrete to itself a cohort of more Rabelaisian shadows.6 Sequenza V’s
use of Brechtian Gestus to generate dark comedy was plainly not lost on Edoardo
6
As will be obvious upon reflection, Grock’s routine was a mimed parable upon
failure in musical performance (a theme taken up by the unfortunate tenor in Berio’s
Opera). But Berio’s Sequenza does not act out failure – it speaks of it in the inevitable
programme note. So a good Brechtian would ask: ‘just what has failed?’
Sanguineti, who concluded his introductory poem for the work: ‘why do you want
to know, I say to you, why I say to you why?’7
Such ‘open’ use (in the sense espoused by Umberto Eco) of Brechtian Gestus is
by no means confined to those Sequenzas traditionally acknowledged as
‘theatrical’. To give but one example, when feeding to commentators an
interpretive strategy for Sequenza VIII for violin, Berio never failed to mention
Bach’s solo violin partitas – and particularly the Chaconne from the second Partita
in D minor. Although Berio was certainly not going to activate such associations
by an overt musical quotation, he nevertheless placed at the structural core of the
violin Sequenza a musical object that is capable of arousing such associations for
those listeners disposed to weave an extra semantic layer into their reception of the
work: an accented, dissonant dyad of A plus B. The Bach Chaconne is propelled
into its magnificent gyre by leaping, in its second bar, onto an analogous accented
dissonant dyad: D plus E. In Berio’s Sequenza, the dyad is, if anything, a
gravitational fulcrum differing from the analogous sustained B that anchors the
oboe Sequenza only by the fact that it never loses its bowed accent – in other
words, the performance gesture that links it to the Bach Chaconne. So although the
gesture of bowing a heavily accented dissonant dyad functions as a structural
marker – as does a Brechtian Gestus, which in effect marks a punctum in the flow
of dramaturgical time – it also reminds us that Berio, although perfectly
understanding the practical devising of the Brechtian Gestus, nevertheless engages
in a ‘creative misreading’ of the device when theorizing around it. While Brecht
took repeated pains to emphasize that dramaturgical Gestus does not necessarily
involve physical gesture, Berio, in his 1961 essay ‘Du geste et de Piazza Carità’,
projects a proto-semiological interpretation onto the term, evoking the rich
semantic cloud of associations behind any gesture (including, of course, a
performative gesture):
One cannot invent a gesture entirely anew, because it always implies a relation with the
diverse histories and customs, both social and expressive, that cohabit within it. The
gestures of Brecht’s epic theatre are in part inhabited by the gestural repertories of silent
8
cinema and Japanese Nֲ theatre.
Brecht might have assented to the observation but would almost certainly have
pointed out that whether or not the use of such gesture functions as Gestus depends
upon its role in dramaturgical structure. The recurrent accented dissonant dyad of
7
ti dico: perché, perché? e sono la secca smorfia di un clown:
perché vuoi sapere, ti dico, perché ti dico perché?
8
Luciano Berio, ‘Du geste et de Piazza Carità’, La Musique et ses problèmes
contemporains, Cahiers Renaud-Barrault 41 (1963), reprinted in a revised Italian version in
Sequenze per Luciano Berio (Milan 2000), pp. 275–77. English translation by David
Osmond-Smith.
Introduction 7
Sequenza VIII makes sense as Gestus; the individual quixotic ‘incidents’ of

multiphonics – singular sound-objects – in Sequenza VII for oboe do not.
Such a proliferation of semantic currents within purely instrumental works,
such an overt acknowledgement of responsibility towards the history of the
instrument in question, places formidable burdens upon the musicological
commentator. Sequenzas that are patently ‘studies’ in traditionally intra-musical
matters – Sequenza IV for piano as a study in harmonic density and syntax,
Sequenza IX for clarinet as a study in melodic thought – lend themselves to the
‘parametric’ preoccupations of traditional analysis. Not, of course, that the others
do not, but they in addition solicit a semiological exegesis that is far harder to do
more than sketch.
As I suggested at the start of this introduction, Berio would have empathized
with the commentator’s dilemma – but might well have seized the opportunity to
underline that there are certain dimensions of human experience upon which music
exerts a surer hold than does language. His readiness to bridge that gap, to offer
something to those eager for a verbal hand-hold by which to lower themselves into
the swirls and eddies of music, could at times create problems for the general
commentator. Like many creative personalities, he was most ready to reach for the
metaphors that illuminated his most recent music. A simple case in point is the
series of Chemins that he elaborated around certain of his Sequenzas. Beyond the
early seventies, it became an accepted critical commonplace to employ Berio’s
own favoured metaphor: the Sequenza was a rich and multilayered text to which as
composer he would return to supply musical ‘commentary’. But unlike verbal
commentary, where one absorbs first text and subsequently commentary – even if
it be by alternating between the two – Berio’s musical commentaries elaborate
upon a text simultaneously with that text’s own unfolding. They add extra layers to
it or pare it down, so that an alternative way of describing the phenomenon – one
to which Berio himself resorted as a corrective to critics’ descriptions of the third
movement of Sinfonia as a ‘collage’ – is that it focuses upon differing degrees of
harmonic density. In other words, rather than ‘rereading’ a pre-established musical
harmonic or melodic sequence as a mode of development and extension within a
given work – as noted above in relation to Sequenzas VI and I – Berio is taking a
completed work and accreting around it further layers of material that reflect and
develop what was laid down in the musical text. That text thereby generates its
own harmonic backdrop (as in Chemins IV), or its own partial self-annihilation (as
in Chemins II).
The crux here for some commentators is ‘what is pre-established?’ The
metaphor of text and commentary implies that one antecedes the other; and the
narrative dear to musicologists that they are hovering at the composer’s shoulder
watching the work being created obliges them to posit a chronological succession.
Nor is that succession in question as regards the later Chemins. Six years separate
the composition of Sequenza VII for oboe and the Chemins IV that is formed
around it.. Similarly, four years separate Sequenza VIII for violin and its own
‘chemins’, Corale; twelve years separate Sequenza X for trumpet and Kol Od
(Chemins VI); four years separate Sequenza XI for guitar and Chemins V; and
fifteen years separate Sequenza IXb and Récit (Chemins VII). But turning back to
the roots of the Chemins series, such metaphors become more equivocal. As Paul
Roberts explains in his essay upon the Chemins series, what Berio elected to name
Sequenza II was a step – albeit a fully autonomous step – on the way to the harp
concerto that was Chemins I. Thus was laid the base for the complex
interrelationships that hold together the two ‘constellations’ of works: Sequenza
VI–Chemins II–Chemins IIb–Chemins III, discussed in this volume by Edward
Venn, and the withdrawn ‘Chemins V’–Sequenza IX–La vera storia Part II, scene
7–Chemins VII, discussed in this volume by Andrea Cremaschi. Here problems of
actual compositional chronology are not always clear and not always a major
hermeneutic or critical incentive. Sequenza VI and Chemins II were developed
more or less concurrently – so that, as already noted, the first part of the Sequenza
‘subtracts’ from an underlying chord sequence that reappears complete in Chemins
II. The analogous places in both compositions are in effect extrapolations from this
underlying ‘text’. When Cremaschi goes to Berio’s sketches to show how (pace
Paul Roberts) Sequenza IX emerged from the withdrawn ‘Chemins V’ he replicates
more or less exactly the process that Berio described himself as undertaking when
he was composing the work.9
Although Berio – when questioned in public (by myself, among others) as to
whether when he was composing a Sequenza he did not already discern in it a
Chemins in nuce – would always reply emphatically and clearly in the negative,10
one perhaps needs a more flexible formula for approaching Chemins I and the
components of the Sequenza VI and Sequenza IX constellations. Edward Venn hits
upon a formula with judicious precision when he elaborates upon Berio’s own
thoughts about transcription and observes that ‘there is no reason to assume that
any one work has any ontological primacy over any other.’11
That constellation of relations – not just between Sequenzas and Chemins, but
between Sequenzas and the history, both expressive and gestural, of the
instruments for which they were written – was caught by Berio’s long-term
collaborator and friend Edoardo Sanguineti in dedicating the poems that he wrote
to preface each of the Sequenzas:
incipit sequentia sequentiarum, quae est musica musicarum secundum lucianum
Here begins the sequence of sequences, which is the music of musics according to
Luciano.
9
In conversation with myself.
10
Thus naturally prompting an established collaborator such as Paul Roberts to
question accounts of the genesis of Sequenza IX: see Chapter 7 in this volume.
11
See Chapter 10 in this volume.
PART 1
Performance Issues
Chapter 1
Rhythm and Timing in the Two Versions

of Berio’s Sequenza I for Flute Solo:
Psychological and Musical Differences
in Performance
Cynthia Folio and Alexander R. Brinkman
The music leaps off the page in a way that the less conventional Suvini Zerboni score
does not suggest. Yet there is a price to be paid. The fluid spring of the original resolves
into simpler relationships, often suggesting an underlying quaver or crotchet pulse for a
few seconds. The conventional use of beams to join smaller rhythmic units into quaver
and crotchet groups encourages a very different view of structural priorities within the
phrase. It would be interesting to hear performances from the two notations side by side:
I think one could tell them apart.1
The above quotation suggests that the notational differences between the two
editions of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I for flute solo (henceforth called 1958 and
1992) might suggest radically different interpretations. The first edition was
notated proportionally – with pitches placed on a ‘temporal grid’ delineated by
hash marks – while the later one translates these proportions into conventional
rhythmic notation. (See Exx. 1.1 and 1.2.) Our initial hypothesis was that the new
notation results in significant differences in performances. To test this, we did a
computer analysis of precise timings from eleven professional recordings of the
piece, which we have divided into two groups: those playing from the old edition,
and those either playing from the new edition or ‘informed’ by the new edition.2
1
David Osmond-Smith, ‘Only Connect…’, The Musical Times, 134/1800 (1993),
p. 80.
2
The recordings are listed in Appendix A at the end of the chapter. We have grouped
the recordings in this way because of the small number (one to be exact) of performers that
use 1992. The reason for the imbalance of old versus new is that (from what we have
ascertained), not many flutists yet use the new edition and many of the established
professionals prefer the old. In one case, the performer (Anna Garzuly) is clearly aware of
the new edition; she states in her liner notes: ‘The performance on the CD follows the first,
1958 edition … The alternative notation allows the player a certain freedom and flexibility
12 Cynthia Folio and Alexander R. Brinkman
The discussion consists of four parts: (1) background, which includes a history
of the notation of Sequenza I and a short summary of other writings that compare
old and new editions; (2) a discussion of the real and psychological differences in
playing from the two different scores, supported by interviews with professional
flutists; (3) a description of our method; and (4) results, including presentation of
the performance data and a summary of the rhythmic and interpretive differences
among performances.
The primary aim of our study is to analyse professional recordings in order to
provide insights into the performance tradition of Sequenza I and de-mystify the
real musical differences between the ‘free’ and ‘controlled’ notational systems of
the two editions.
Background: the two versions of Sequenza I
The history of Berio’s notational decisions for this piece is quite interesting and
has been described by Benedict Weisser.3 Evidently, Berio’s initial intention was
to use precise, metred notation for 1958: ‘He originally wrote it in exceptionally
fine detail (almost like Ferneyhough in the original form), but Gazzelloni could not
handle it, so Berio decided to use proportional notation’.4 This suggests that the
proportional notation came about, at least in part, as a solution to a problem. Berio
had this to say about the issue of notation in an interview with Weisser:
Usually, I’m not concerned with notation itself. When I’m concerned, that means there’s
a problem. The issue of notation comes out, at least in my own musical perspective,
when there is a dilemma, when there is a problem to be solved. And that pushes me to
find solutions that maybe I was never pushed to find before.5
in the frame of strictly notated disciplin [sic]’ (see Anna Garzuly, Flute Visions of the 20th
Century (Hungaroton Classic, 1996), liner notes). When we say the flutist is ‘informed’ by
the new edition, we mean that they have studied it and have incorporated some of the
information from 1992 while still reading from 1958. When we did not have direct
documentation (either in the liner notes or through correspondence with the performers), we
determined which edition was used from isolated instances in which notes and/or register
were changed in the new edition.
3
Benedict Weisser, Notational Practice in Contemporary Music: A Critique of Three
Compositional Models (Luciano Berio, John Cage and Brian Ferneyhough) (PhD
dissertation, City University of New York, 1998), pp. 37–76.
4
Ibid., p. 38. This quote is from a letter to Weisser from Nicholas Hopkins (Berio’s
former musical assistant); according to Hopkins, these sketches now reside in the Paul
Sacher Stiftung in Basel.
5
Ibid., Appendix A.
Sequenza I for Flute 13
Whether he intended it or not, Berio’s notation of Sequenza I became the focus of
attention for both musicians and literary theorists who were proponents of the
opera aperta, or ‘the open work’. Umberto Eco lists the Sequenza alongside
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956) and other works of the period that
offered a multiplicity of interpretations, based on performers’ choices.6 Thomas
Gartmann considers this inclusion of Berio’s work in this list as a ‘well-known
misunderstanding’ [ein fruchtbares Missverständnis] of Berio’s intent. 7 Since its
premiere by Gazzelloni in 1958, Sequenza I has become one of the three most
important twentieth-century solo pieces in the flute repertoire – the others being
Debussy’s Syrinx (1913) and Varèse’s Density 21.5 (1936) – and is probably the
most cited example of proportional notation. As Weisser states, ‘… it is one of the
works that led to a pedagogy of new music’.8
As early as 1966, Berio expressed dissatisfaction with the way flutists
performed the piece. That year Berio wrote a letter to flutist Aurèle Nicolet just as
the flutist was preparing a recording of the piece.9 The letter includes a renotation,
in conventional rhythmic notation, of the first phrase of the piece and the first
phrase of the first complete return of the prime row.10 The following is the main
portion of that letter:
Dear Aurèle, … concerning the Sequenza, I would like to thank you first for your
recording, which is very virtuosissimo and very wonderful. But permit me to make some
comments. This piece has already been recorded several times, unfortunately always in
an imprecise manner. This time I have the chance to intervene before the record is
pressed and I have the privilege to get a recording by an artist as good as you; I would
not want to miss the opportunity to receive an interpretation that could serve as a model
and as a reference for other performers. In your recording, there is a misunderstanding:
it is with regard to the proportions of time and speeds. It is not so much the question of
slower or faster speed, but rather – once the speed is selected – the proportions of the
durations. It follows as a consequence that one must also choose a tempo (I have MM 70
indicated, that should be interpreted with a little flexibility), which permits one to
respect these proportional relations. These proportions will always be a little
6
Umberto Eco, ‘l’opera in movimento e la coscienza dell’epoca’, Icontri musicali, 3
(1959): 32–54, translated by Anna Cancogni as The Open Work (Cambridge, 1989).
Francesca Magnani situates the Sequenza in the context of musical and literary explorations
of the 1950s. See ‘La Sequenza I de Berio dans les Poétiques Musicales des Années 50’,
Analyse Musicale, 14 (1989): 74–81.
7
Thomas Gartmann, ‘Das neu erschlossene Kunstwerk: Luciano Berios
Überarbeitungen der Sequenza’, in Kathrin Eberl and Wolfgang Ruf (eds), Musikkonzepte –
Konzepte der Musikwissenschaft. Bericht über den Internationalen Kongreß der
Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Halle (Saale) 1998 (Kassel, 2001), vol. 2, p. 611.
8
Weisser, p. 48.
9
Written from Watertown, Mass., 14 October 1966.
10
For a discussion of the row and its treatment, including this important structural
marker, see Chapter 11 in this volume, ‘Vestiges of Twelve Tone Practice as Compositional
Process in Berio’s Sequenza I for Solo Flute’.
approximate to be sure because of the adopted notation. But I only selected this
‘proportional’ notation in order to allow a certain accommodation for the interpreter in
the extremely dense and quick passages. Each flutist can therefore adapt the degree of
speed, but always keeping the indicated proportions. For example, the beginning of the
piece can be envisioned as follows: …11
We have quoted a large part of this letter because it provides much insight into
Berio’s intentions. We can conclude that absolute tempo was not as important to
him as maintaining a consistency in rhythmic proportions (a word he underlines
twice in his letter).
Berio’s renotation in the Nicolet letter is shown as Ex. 1.3.12 This version
shares features of both editions. The fact that it fits into a 2/8 metric grid makes it
closer to 1958, since there is a one-to-one correspondence between hash marks and
beats, while Ex. 1.2 adds a demisemiquaver to the first two beats (more about this
below). At the note-to-note level, the first bar of Ex. 1.3 is more similar to Ex. 1.2,
while bar two of Ex. 1.3 is more similar to Ex. 1.1. The three versions are quite
similar in the middle, but Ex. 1.3 greatly extends the sustained A at the end.
Several times between the letter to Nicolet and the ultimate release of 1992,
Berio expressed his dissatisfaction with the way flutists performed Sequenza I; one
early instance is in a private conversation with Robert Dick at the Institut de
Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in 1978.13 In an
interview after the release of 1992, Berio explained:
11
This letter and the musical examples from the letter are quoted in Thomas
Gartmann, ‘Das neu erschlossene Kunstwerk’. We want to express thanks to Gartmann for
sending us copies of his articles and a copy of Berio’s letter to Nicolet. [Cher Aurèle, ... à
propos de Sequenza, je te remercie, avant tout, de ton enregistrement qui est très
virtuosissimo et très étonnant. Mais permet moi de faire quelque remarque. Cette pièce a
etée enregistrée deja plusieurs fois et, malheuresement, toujours d’une façon assez
imprecise. Cette fois que j’ai la chance d’intervenir avant que le disque soit imprimé et j’ai
le privilège d’avoir un enregistrement fait par un artiste comme toi, je ne veut pas perdre
l’occasion d’avoir une éxecution qui puisse servir de modèle et de reference à des autres
éxecutants. Dans ton enregistrement il y a un malentendu: c’est au regard des proportions
des temps et des vitesses. Ce n’est pas donc tellement question d’un tempo plus ou moins
rapide mais – une fois choisi le tempo – des proportions des durées. Il arrive, comme
consequence, qu’il faut aussi chosir un tempo (j’ai indiqué MM 70, qu’il faut interpreter
d’une façon un peu flexible) qui permet de respecter ces proportions de durée. C’est vrai que
ces proportions, à cause du type de notation adopté, seront toujours un peu approximatives.
Mais j’ai choisi cette notation “proportionelle” seulement pour permettre un certain
accomodament de la part de l’interprete, dans les passages extrement denses et rapides.
Chaque flutiste peut donc adapter le degré de vitesse, mais toujours gardant les proportion
indiqués. Pour exemple, le commencement de la pièce peut être envisagé comme ça: ...]
12
We typeset this example for clarity; our copy of the original hand-written example
was too blurred to reproduce here.
13
Email from Robert Dick to us in response to our questionnaire, 3 November 2004.
At the time I wrote Sequenza I, in 1958, I considered the piece so difficult for the
instrument that I didn’t want to impose on the player specific rhythmical patterns. I
wanted the player to wear the music as a dress, not as a straitjacket. But as a result, even
good performers were taking liberties that didn’t make any sense, taking the spatial
notation almost as a pretext for improvisation. Certainly some sort of flexibility is part
of the conception of the work. But the overall speed, the high amount of register shifts,
the fact that all parameters are constantly under pressure, will automatically bring a
feeling of instability, an openness which is part of the expressive quality of the work – a
kind of ‘work-in-progress’ character if you want.14
In preparing the revised version, Berio told Weisser that he made use of the
original, ‘pre-proportional’ sketches from 1958:
[Berio] copied the old version in pencil, then modified all the rhythms in order to
simplify them. This process consisted of regularizing or ‘rounding off’ the rhythms so
they would fit into rational meter. Berio describes it in a wonderfully understated, pithy
manner: ‘I eliminated some excess of complexity’.15
Although it is clear that Berio authorized this new edition, it was, until now, less
clear how closely he was involved in actually creating it. According to Heinz
Stolba, who is from the editorial house for Universal Edition, the ‘transcription to
“conventional” notation’ was done by Paul Roberts, who was Berio’s assistant.16
We contacted Paul Roberts, who gave us his first-hand account of the history of the
piece, along with many interesting insights into Berio’s use of proportional
notation in general:
The truth is that Berio originally composed the flute Sequenza in standard notation back
in 1958. It was written using very strict serial rhythms, and was barred in 2/8 from start
to end. The notation was very similar to his other works published by Suvini Zerboni,
for example the Quartetto (1956), or Serenata I (1957). (It would be of no surprise to
learn that Gazzelloni actually gave the first performance in Darmstadt from this
original.) This is the moment when proportional notation was ‘born’ because Berio
rightly felt that the original notation was too awkward. He therefore proceeded to
transform this Sequenza visually into the version that we all now know. Unfortunately,
over the years, he became increasingly disappointed with how flute players approached
this notation which is by no means as free as it seems. (This was the case, in effect, with
all his proportionally notated pieces.) … Mo Berio asked me to process the original
version on the computer (I worked from his personal original transparencies). With this
in hand he ‘corrected’ his own notation, smoothing the original rhythms down. In a
14
Theo Muller, ‘“Music is Not a Solitary Act”: Conversation with Luciano Berio’,
Tempo, 199 (1997), p. 19.
15
Weisser, p. 49; the quote is from an interview Weisser conducted with Berio.
16
Email message from Heinz Stolba to Irna Priore, 31 August 2004 (forwarded on the
same day). We wish to thank Priore for her help with this and for sharing other materials
with us.
sense, he did in 1991 what he perhaps should have done back in 1958. There is no
question that I began from a renotated version. The Suvini Zerboni publication is in
reality a renotated version of the original.
Just for the record, as far as I know, there is not a single piece of Berio’s that began life
in proportional notation. This may disappoint some, but even the harp Sequenza was
originally composed like the flute Sequenza.17
Differences: real and psychological
At first sight, it appears that 1992 is more precise than 1958, but is it really? The
fermata areas are certainly more controlled: all fermatas (and several long notes
without fermatas) in 1958, are assigned a specific length in seconds in 1992. But
the translation of the spaces between hash marks to crotchets (where the hash mark
in 1958 is equivalent to the crotchet in 1992), is far from precise. The differences
in notes, register, dynamics and articulation are minor compared to the profound
differences in rhythm and rhythmic grouping.18 In many instances, the proportional
spacing of 1958 is translated into rhythms that exaggerate the proportional
distances between notes or even contradict them. Furthermore, small values are
sometimes added to (or less frequently subtracted from) the beat, which affects the
tempo and the original proportions. Even at the start, 1992 begins with two ‘long’
beats of a crotchet plus a semiquaver (see brackets below Ex. 1.2), which
effectively slows down the audible pulse of 70MM by a fifth, to 56MM.19
Example 1.1 Sequenza I: the 1958 edition, phrase 1
17
Email message from Paul Roberts, 12 December 2005. Out thanks to him for his
enlightening response.
18
For a detailed comparison of the two editions, see Cynthia Folio, ‘Luciano Berio’s
Revision of Sequenza for Flute: A New Look and a New Sound?’ The Flutist Quarterly,
21/2 (1995–96): 43–50.
19
Weisser discusses these ‘added values’ extensively and transcribes the new edition
using changing metres: most of the piece is in 2/8; the bars with an extra demisemiquaver
are transcribed as 5/16.
Example 1.2 Sequenza I: the 1992 edition, phrase 1
Example 1.3 Typesetting of Berio’s handwritten example of Sequenza I

from a letter to Nicolet (1966)
Examples 1.4–1.6 illustrate just three of many examples where the grouping of
notes is changed such that a note (or group of notes) shifts relative to the hash mark
(1958) or to the crotchet pulse (1992). The G4 in Ex. 1.4a comes right before a
hash mark, but occurs on a beat in Ex. 1.4b. The flurry of fluttered notes in Ex.
1.5a is grouped completely differently in Ex. 1.5b: the B#6 begins slightly after the
hash mark in 5a, but on the beat in 5b; the notes within the flourish begin close
together, but get farther apart gradually in 5a, but they become suddenly slower in
5b, beginning with the G5, which now occurs on the beat. Ex. 1.6a is six and a half
beats long from the tempo change to the final CҖ4, but the same span in Ex. 1.6b is
seven and a half beats long. Some implied accents are also shifted in this example:
the C6 near the end occurs immediately after a hash mark in 6a, but is in the
middle of a beat in 6b; the D4 that follows soon after is in between two hash marks
in 6a but begins a new beat in 6b.
Example 1.4 Sequenza I: hash marks 55–56
a. 1958 edition b. 1992 edition

Example 1.5 Sequenza I: hash marks 145–46
a. 1958 edition b. 1992 edition
Example 1.6 Sequenza I: hash marks 243–50 (at the first tempo change)
a. 1958 edition
b. 1992 edition
Paul Nauert suggests that decisions made in the renotation might have been
influenced by three possible musical aims: to widen the range of degrees of
association among various musical figures (for example, by assigning precise
rhythms to similar motifs); to articulate the piece’s formal design; and to maintain
a high degree of rhythmic irregularity (by the addition and subtraction of small
values).20
We tend to agree with Nauert’s view that 1992 is ‘an interpretation – “a
performance,” if you will – of the original 1958 score’.21 Evidently, this is
consonant with Berio’s view, since he admitted to John Heiss that the new edition
is just one possible interpretation of the old one.22 This idea finds support in the
20
Paul Nauert, ‘Berio’s Re-Notation of Sequenza I: Representations of Surface and
Structure in Nonmetric Music’, paper presented at MTSNYS conference, April 1996. Our
thanks to Nauert for sending us his paper.
21
Ibid.
22
Telephone conversation with John Heiss, 7 June 2005.
history of the piece when one observes that Berio renotated the first phrase in
several different ways. It is interesting to note that Samuel Baron required his
students to renotate the piece and that he created his own version in 6/8 metre.23
As a part of our study, we sent out a questionnaire and/or interviewed
professional flutists, many of whom have ‘lived’ with this piece for many years.24
We first asked which edition(s) they (1) use for performing/recording; (2) use for
teaching; (3) learned from; and (4) prefer. The overwhelming majority of flutists
answered ‘old’ to all questions, with a few answers of ‘both’ for question (2).
Appendix B shows unedited excerpts from their responses. For those flutists who
prefer the old edition, several threads appear. Many mourn the loss of flexibility
and feel that phrasing, shaping and rhythmic vitality are lost in the renotation,
which is unnecessarily complex. Some believe that the original notation frees the
performer to think of time in a different way, without the burden of beats and
subdivisions. Several flutists suggest that the proportional notation is actually more
precise, not less, if one takes the time to study it carefully. Some flutists are
sceptical that the new edition is actually by Berio. Several flutists believe (as do
Nauert and Berio) that the later edition is just one interpretation of the original.
Some comment on the history of the piece, harking back to its early fame as an
example of proportional notation. We will see below to what degree performers’
interpretations differ as a result of renotation.
Method
Part I: Overall tempos and timings
Our first step was to parse the score into segments based on ‘measured’ areas,
called Segments (S1, S2, etc.) and areas with one or more fermatas (F1, F2, etc).
(See Table 1.1 for order and location of S and F areas.) Our main purpose was to
study the measured areas in order to compare the tempos (not only among soloists,
but also various segments within each performance). We then imported each track
into BIAS Peak and put markers at the beginning of each S and F area.25 The time
23
Telephone conversation with Erich Graf (former student of Samuel Baron), 1 May
2005. It is interesting to note that when Harvey Sollberger studied with Baron, Sollberger
argued passionately against renotating it; he told Baron it would be a desecration (telephone
conversation with Sollberger, 3 July 2005).
24
Our thanks to Robert Dick, Roberto Fabbriciani, Helen Bledsoe, Claudia Anderson,
Tara O’Connor, Sharon Bezaly, Erich Graf, John Heiss, Harvey Sollberger and Patti
Monson for their responses. In addition, we wish to thank Patti Monson for meeting with us
and sharing many of her materials, including the results of a similar survey that she
conducted December 2002–March 2003, with responses from Harvey Sollberger, Patricia
Spencer, Jayn Rosenfeld, John Fonville, Elizabeth McNutt, and Rachel Rudich.
25
BIAS Peak is a popular stereo audio editing, processing, and mastering application
for the Macintosh computer.
values at each marker were entered into a spreadsheet programme in order to

facilitate comparisons and various calculations. To create a baseline for
comparison of the performances, we calculated ideal timings for all Ss and Fs
based on how long each segment would last if the performer followed the
indications in the score exactly. The S timings are based on the old edition,
according to the number of hash marks and based on tempo (70MM most of the
time). The F timings, on the other hand, are based on the new edition, since the
fermata lengths are precisely indicated. (See Table 1.2 for the ideal timings.) Based
on this admittedly imperfect baseline, we calculated an ideal length for the piece of
317 seconds, or five minutes and 17 seconds (5:17).
Table 1.1 Segment locations
1958 1992
S/F Tactus Tempo/1st note
pg.line pg.line
S1 0 1.1 1.1 70 MM/sffz A4
F1 14 1.3 1.2 ff E4 grace note tied
S2 16 1.3 1.3 mf F4
F2 48 2.1 1.7 ppp D4
S3 54 2.3 1.8 F4 grace note
F3 86 2.7 2.4 ff D6
S4 87 2.8 2.4 mf C6
F4 92 2.9 2.5 ‘return’ – ff A4
S5 93 2.9 2.5 p G5
F5 127 3.4 2.9 B#6
S6 131 3.5 2.10 p F4
F6 146 3.7 3.2 ppp A4 flutter
S7 147 3.7 3.2 sffz B6
F7 160 3.9 3.3 ppp C6
S8 162 3.10 3.4 pp B5
F8 210 4.7 4.1 mf F/G# tremolo
S9 211 4.9 4.2 E4 grace note
F9 219 5.1 4.3 C6–G5 multiphonic
S10 222 5.3 4.3 pp C5 grace note
S11 244 5.6 4.6 60 MM/F4 grace note
S12 257 5.8 4.8 72 MM/mf F4
F10 271 5.10 4.10 sfz–pp C4
The last step in our study of overall timings was to examine how much each
performer ‘deviated’ from the ideal timings for both the S segments and the F
segments. Then we calculated the mean for each segment and ran a t-test to see if
there was a statistically significant difference between deviations for performers
that used 1958 and those who used or were influenced by 1992.
Table 1.2 Ideal timings for S and F segments
Segments No. of ‘beats’ Additional time ‘Ideal’ time

S1 14.15 @ 70 MM 12.129
S2 32.12 @ 70 MM 27.531
S3 31.37 @ 70 MM 26.889
S4 4.88 @ 70 MM 4.183
S5 33.33 @ 70 MM 28.569
S6 14.88 @ 70 MM 12.754
S7 13.00 @ 70 MM 11.143
S8 48.26 @ 70 MM 41.366
S9 7.63 @ 70 MM 6.540
S10 20.37 @ 70 MM + 1.46 @ 60 MM 18.920
S11 11.52 @ 60 MM + 1.33 @ 72 MM 12.628
S12 13.93 @ 72 MM 11.608
Fermatas No. of seconds Additional time ‘Ideal’ time
F1 5 + 1.08 @ 70 MM 5.926
F2 23 + 4.42 @ 70 MM 26.789
F3 4 + 0.50 @ 70 MM 4.429
F4 5 + 0.67 @ 70 MM 5.574
F5 8 + 3.00 @ 70 MM 7.571
F6 5 5.000
F7 8 + 2.00 @ 70 MM 9.714
F8 12 + 5.67 @ 70 MM 16.860
F9 11 + 4.50 @ 70 MM 14.857
F10 6 6.000
Total (segments and fermatas) 316.980
Note: the number of beats was calculated by counting hash marks; when an S or F segment
began between hash marks, the distance in millimetres was used to calculate partial beats. In
some cases, additional time was added because the tempo changed within an event (a
sustained note or silence); in other cases, notes were tied from fermatas into measured time.
Part II: Timings and accents within the first phrase
Our study in Part I gave us timings and tempos for segments, but did not tell us
much about proportions within a segment. In order to compare proportions at a
more detailed level, we selected the first phrase (which corresponds to the first line
in both editions), and marked the exact times for the attack of each note. We then
determined each performer’s pace for the first phrase, by taking the precise timing
(number of seconds into the piece) on the note B5, since it falls just after the fourth
hash mark in 1958 (and corresponds to a downbeat in 1992). From this note, we
divided the timing by four to determine where the other hash marks (or beats)
would be placed, both before the B5 and two hash marks beyond the B5, in order to
see how steady each performer was within his or her own tempo. We also made
contour graphs of each flutist’s performance of the first phrase. Limits of time and
space did not permit the analysis of other phrases, but we believe the opening
phrase is important, not only in defining the character of the piece, but in
presenting the twelve-tone row in its complete form.
Results and conclusions
Part I: Overall tempos and timings
We calculated the tempos for each performer in each measured (S) segment to see
how closely they matched the tempos indicated in the score (see Table 1.3).26 The
averages for each segment indicate that the slowest average tempo (42.8 MM)
occurs in segment S11; we suspect this is not only because the tempo indication
changes to 60 MM, but also because of the extreme amount of activity. Fabbriciani
(at 56.6 beats/minute) comes closest to the indicated tempo for this segment. The
fastest segment on average (58.9 MM) is S7, which has very few notes. It is
obvious from Table 1.3 that none of the performers reaches the indicated tempo for
any of the segments. Fabbriciani comes closest, with an overall average tempo of
63.8; Nicolet (60.3) and Cherrier (60.0) also come close.
The variability in total duration (including both measured segments and fermata
segments) for the various performances is remarkable, ranging from 4:54 to 7:58
(see Table 1.4). Fabbriciani, at 5:30, is closest to the ideal length of 5:17 for the
piece. When comparing the lengths of each segment (see graph in Table 1.5), his
timings also correlate closely with the ideal timings. The possible factors contributing
to this astonishing closeness are: his careful attention to the original notation and
tempo markings; the fact that the recording was made in 1994, after 1992 was
published, meaning that he had access to the new timings for fermatas; and the fact
26
We calculated the tempo (T) for each segment as follows: T = B/S x 60, where B is
the number of beats in the segment and S is the number of seconds it took the performer to
play the segment; B/S is multiplied by 60 to convert beats/second to beats/minute.
Table 1.3 Tempos of measured segments for each performer in beats per minute
Fabbr- E. P-L. Soll-

Dick Garzuly Gazzelloni Nicolet Zöller Bezaly Cherrier Ave.
iciani Graf Graf berger
S1 48.0 68.7 67.8 46.4 37.6 48.3 62.0 52.2 59.0 60.0 64.1 55.8
S2 46.6 66.1 51.8 45.8 42.0 44.3 63.5 61.9 59.3 51.8 58.3 53.8
S3 48.9 63.6 57.9 43.1 36.6 45.8 67.9 56.7 54.2 51.4 59.7 53.3
S4 49.5 60.8 30.4 34.2 41.7 45.4 59.5 43.5 51.8 40.8 42.9 45.5
S5 52.1 69.0 54.6 46.7 47.4 54.8 62.4 58.6 65.7 52.8 62.5 57.0
S6 48.9 64.6 50.6 51.8 39.4 52.4 57.6 50.6 46.4 49.1 62.4 52.2
S7 69.0 66.5 65.2 58.4 37.1 59.5 62.7 50.6 59.6 51.5 68.2 58.9
S8 50.8 62.9 55.1 56.1 41.8 48.0 60.8 63.3 61.6 56.1 69.6 56.9
S9 37.0 57.7 48.0 34.1 30.8 40.1 53.8 51.4 43.3 41.9 57.9 45.1
S10 42.7 61.1 49.3 48.5 32.0 50.0 56.4 58.1 50.8 39.2 52.1 49.1
S11 36.4 56.6 41.0 36.0 36.7 41.4 44.4 53.1 33.0 44.0 47.8 42.8
S12 30.8 59.1 35.1 38.0 35.0 45.9 60.6 44.2 32.5 40.4 54.9 43.3
Ave. 46.6 63.8 51.5 46.3 38.9 48.0 60.3 56.2 52.7 49.6 60.0 52.2
Note: Average tempos are calculated from the total number of measured beats divided by total time in seconds x 60 (not from the average
of the 12 segments)
Table 1.4 Total duration of each recorded performance
Performer Time (min:sec) Edition

Nicolet 4:54 1958
Fabbriciani 5:30 hybrid
Cherrier 5:59 1992
Zöller 6:02 1958
Sollberger 6:10 1958
Garzuly 6:21 hybrid
P-L. Graf 6:37 1958
Gazzelloni 6:43 1958
Dick 7:12 1958
Bezaly 7:20 hybrid
E. Graf 7:58 1958
Note: these timings differ from those indicated on the recordings because we eliminated
silences at the beginnings and ends of tracks. The ideal time for the piece is 5:17. ‘Hybrid’
indicates that the performer plays from 1958 but studied 1992.
that he played the piece for Berio.27 The two flutists who came closest to ideal
timings after Fabbriciani are Nicolet (old edition) and Cherrier (new edition).
Cherrier is also close to ideal timings in each segment, whereas Nicolet tends to play
most fermata segments short and most measured segments long. (See Table 1.5.)
Tables 1.6 and 1.7 show the amount of time each performer deviates from the
ideal time for each S segment and each F segment. In Table 1.6, all deviation
values are positive, indicating that all performers in every S segment were slower
than the ideal times. From the mean deviation values, we see that segment S8 is
most deviant for performers using 1958, while S12 is most deviant for performers
using 1992. The totals, shown in the bottom row, clearly indicate a wide range of
values for deviation, from 18.465 seconds (Fabbriciani) to 167.696 (E. Graf). A
one-tailed t-test comparing the mean deviations for all S segments between the
1958 group and 1992 or hybrid group indicates that the differences are statistically
significant (p < 0.0001). 28
27
In his email response to our questionnaire, 29 November 2004, he stated that he
worked with and performed for Berio ‘innumerable times’ [innumerevoli volte] using the
1958 edition. He also stated that, while he performs from 1958, he uses both editions in his
teaching.
28
We want to thank our colleague in the Temple University Department of
Psychology, Robert W. Weisberg, for assisting us with statistical analyses.
Cynthia Folio and Alexander R. Brinkman 25
Table 1.5 Timings (all segments) – Nicolet, Fabbriciani, Cherrier and ideal
timings
Section Nicolet Fabbriciani Cherrier Ideal time

S1 13.7 12.4 13.2 12.1
S2 30.4 29.1 33.1 27.4
S3 27.7 29.6 31.5 26.9
S4 4.9 4.8 6.8 4.2
S5 32.1 29.0 32.0 28.6
S6 15.5 13.8 14.3 12.8
S7 12.4 11.7 11.4 11.1
S8 47.6 46.0 41.7 41.4
S9 8.5 7.9 7.9 6.5
S10 23.2 21.4 25.2 19.9
S11 17.4 13.6 16.1 12.6
S12 13.8 14.1 15.2 11.6
F1 2.5 4.6 5.7 5.9
F2 10.8 26.3 31.6 26.8
F3 1.3 3.7 3.4 4.4
F4 2.2 4.8 5.0 5.6
F5 5.0 5.8 11.5 7.6
F6 1.2 5.5 4.2 5.0
F7 4.2 15.6 11.2 9.7
F8 10.2 13.9 16.8 16.9
F9 6.0 11.8 15.5 14.9
F10 3.1 4.5 5.8 6.0
In Table 1.7, most of the mean deviation values are negative for the performers
playing from 1958 (indicating durations less than ideal) most likely because
fermata lengths were not specified in the old edition. The only 1958 performers
with positive sums are Dick and Sollberger. Nicolet was the most deviant and
entirely on the short side (all negative numbers). The only positive mean by
segment for 1958 performers is F10, probably because this segment is the final
gesture of the piece. The 1958 performers were most deviant in segment F2,
averaging 7.215 seconds shorter than ideal. This high number probably results
from the fact that the F2 segment contains more fermatas than any other. The 1992
or hybrid performers showed the largest span for F2, from a low of -9.867
(Garzuly) to a high of 11.004 (Bezaly). A one-tailed t-test comparing the mean
deviations for all F segments between the 1958 group and 1992 group indicates
that the differences are statistically significant (p = 0.012).
Table 1.6 Deviation from the ‘ideal’ in measured-segment length in seconds for each performer
Old Edition (1958) New Edition (1992) or hybrid

Gazzel- E. P-L. Soll- Cher- Fabbri- Gar-
Dick Nicolet Zöller Mean Bezaly Mean
loni Graf Graf berger rier ciani zuly
S1 5.545 6.177 10.473 5.447 1.574 4.121 2.259 5.085 2.029 1.106 0.229 0.400 0.941
S2 13.950 14.658 18.449 16.094 2.919 3.682 5.085 10.691 9.743 5.638 1.718 9.741 6.710
S3 11.617 16.814 24.604 14.211 0.820 6.314 7.827 11.744 9.723 4.644 2.720 5.642 5.682
S4 1.738 4.388 2.837 2.273 0.734 2.544 1.469 2.283 2.996 2.638 0.630 5.458 2.930
S5 9.851 14.246 13.621 7.910 3.487 5.580 1.847 8.077 9.340 3.412 0.413 8.025 5.298
S6 5.488 4.493 9.922 4.268 2.750 4.880 6.480 5.469 5.418 1.562 1.064 4.878 3.230
S7 0.159 2.222 9.890 1.965 1.305 4.274 1.944 3.108 4.014 0.289 0.593 0.823 1.430
S8 15.622 10.258 27.853 19.021 6.246 4.382 5.614 12.714 10.231 0.264 4.669 11.168 6.583
S9 5.817 6.882 8.318 4.888 1.966 2.368 4.023 4.895 4.376 1.364 1.399 2.994 2.533
S10 10.752 7.097 21.068 6.261 3.291 2.618 5.886 8.139 13.493 5.230 1.507 6.623 6.713
S11 8.540 8.773 8.359 6.001 4.728 1.899 10.734 7.005 4.891 3.518 0.994 6.194 3.899
S12 15.519 10.400 12.302 6.618 2.174 7.286 14.115 9.773 9.104 3.604 2.529 12.228 6.866
Totals 104.598 106.408 167.696 94.957 31.994 49.948 67.283 88.983 85.358 33.269 18.465 74.174 52.817
One striking observation from Table 1.7 is that Sollberger is much closer to the
fermata timings of the new edition than the other performers, even though his
recording predates the new edition. Even the sum of the absolute values of all his
deviations is less than that for each of the other performers. This led us to look
more closely within each fermata section (since some fermata sections had
multiple fermatas). We found that the timings are remarkably close. For example,
within the F2 section Sollberger’s timings in seconds are as follows (1992’s
specified times are given in parentheses): D4 = 4.6 (5); B4 = 5.3 (6); C6 = 7.6 (7);
G4 = 5.0 (5). The strong correspondence between these timings suggests that the
fermata timings in 1992 may have been modelled after Sollberger’s recording,
which was well-known and highly respected.29
Part II: Timings and accent within the first phrase
Figure 1.1 shows each flutist’s performance of the first phrase as a contour graph,
which shows the exact placement of each note or gesture in time. The vertical axis
is pitch, with each tick representing a C (from C4 to C9). The horizontal axis is
time, with each tick representing 0.5 second (beginning at -0.5, or half a second
before the first note).30 The grey vertical lines represent the location of hash marks
in the score, calculated according to each performer’s individual tempo. The
musical example above the graphs shows the 1958 version of the phrase, with
musical events numbered. These graphs are arranged in order of duration from
shortest (5.5 seconds) to longest (10.7 seconds).
The most ‘accurate’ performance of the first phrase, at least as far as concerns
placement of notes within the hash marks, is Robert Dick, who had one of the
slowest tempos for this phrase. At this point we might recall Berio’s directive to
Nicolet (quoted above): ‘Each flutist can therefore adapt the degree of speed, but
always keeping the indicated proportions’. Two of the flutists who come closest to
Berio’s tempo of 70 MM for this segment (Nicolet at 62 MM and Cherrier at 64.1
MM), make numerous adjustments according to the hash marks: both ‘jump the
gun’ three times in the first part; then Cherrier is late for the last grace-note
gesture. Dick and Nicolet use 1958; Cherrier uses 1992. In this first phrase, Dick
comes closest to realizing Berio’s proportions while Fabbriciani also comes very
close, with just one note coming sooner than the hash mark. One possible
conclusion is that Berio’s suggested tempo necessitates compromises. Then again,
29
It is equally possible that Sollberger anticipated the desired timings as a result of
coachings by Berio, who urged him to take more time with the fermatas (personal interview
with Sollberger, 14 August 2005).
30
The programmes used to create these contour graphs were written by Alexander
Brinkman as part of a suite of programs for graphic analysis of musical scores. See
Alexander R. Brinkman and Martha R. Mesiti, ‘Graphic Modeling of Musical Structure’,
Computers in Music Research, 3 (1991): 1–42.
Table 1.7 Deviation from ‘ideal’ in fermata-segment length in seconds for each performer
Old Edition (1958) New Edition (1992) or hybrid

Gazzel- E. P-L. Soll- Cher- Fabbri- Gar-
Dick Nicolet Zöller Mean Bezaly Mean
loni Graf Graf berger rier ciani zuly
F1 -1.643 -2.348 -1.197 -1.228 -3.462 -0.723 -2.100 -1.814 0.469 -0.259 -1.336 -1.540 -0.666
F2 -8.145 -6.767 -3.487 -9.215 -15.973 1.588 -8.507 -7.215 11.004 4.846 -0.440 -9.867 1.386
F3 0.869 -2.348 -0.285 -0.398 -3.086 -0.391 -0.665 -0.889 -0.527 -1.018 -0.682 -1.918 -1.036
F4 -1.576 -1.799 -1.504 -1.839 -3.392 0.197 -2.951 -1.838 1.174 -0.527 -0.755 -1.580 -0.422
F5 0.642 -0.829 0.526 -0.639 -2.616 2.101 -0.797 -0.230 6.795 3.938 -1.800 -1.337 1.899
F6 1.320 -2.224 -2.452 -1.527 -3.787 -1.382 -1.336 -1.627 -0.789 -0.834 0.455 -1.271 -0.610
F7 -1.537 -0.682 0.165 -0.406 -5.541 -0.597 -3.244 -1.692 7.516 1.492 5.885 0.697 3.897
F8 12.683 -3.030 0.090 -3.736 -6.692 1.125 -0.478 -0.005 5.918 -0.014 -2.948 0.463 0.855
F9 3.024 -2.935 -4.022 1.480 -8.826 -2.522 -5.037 -2.691 3.878 0.655 -3.096 -2.782 -0.336
F10 3.834 1.667 4.128 1.391 -2.870 2.580 1.830 1.794 1.554 -0.238 -1.517 8.314 2.028
Totals 9.471 -21.295 -7.958 -16.117 -56.245 1.976 -23.285 -16.208 36.992 8.041 -6.234 -10.821 6.995
Fabbriciani comes quite close in maintaining a brisk tempo and at the same time
rendering the notated proportions. As Claudia Anderson states: ‘Tension arises
when performers strain to maintain the metronome pulse of 70, while
simultaneously coping with notes, dynamics, and articulations. It is just this tension
that helps create successful performances’.31
The graphs in Fig. 1.1 also suggest an answer to a larger question relating to
the perceptual difference between performances from proportional versus metric
notation: does the listener perceive a pulse?32 The performances from or influenced
by 1992 are no more ‘periodic’ than those from the old edition. The notes that
should occur on the beat (corresponding to the vertical grey lines in Fig. 1.1) in the
first part of the phrase actually occur early.33 According to Joel Lester, ‘without
sufficient regularity in any set of impulses, there are too few cues which resonate
within a listener to enable him or her to establish a metric grid’.34 John Roeder
suggests that there exist other modes of perception through which we can
understand this piece: ‘it – like much of Berio’s music – seems to have a clear
temporal directedness arising from the distinctions one observes between stressed
points in time, and the apparent continuity from one timepoint to the next’.35
Fig. 1.1 suggests that it is doubtful that a listener would perceive a pulse in any of
the performances, regardless of edition.
31
Claudia Anderson, ‘An Operatic View of Sequenza’, Flute Talk Magazine, 24/2
(2004), p. 12.
32
Although one might argue that 1992 is not metric because there are no metre
signatures, the traditionally notated rhythms imply 2/8 metre, with frequent changes to other
metres based on added and subtracted values.
33
One would actually expect these notes to occur later, since the first two ‘beats’ in
1992 are each a demisemiquaver longer.
34
Joel Lester, ‘Notated and Heard Meter’, Perspectives of New Music, 24/2 (1986),
p. 122.
35
John Roeder, ‘A Calculus of Accent’, Journal of Music Theory, 39/1 (1995), p. 2. It
is curious that Roeder does not mention the 1992 edition, nor whether it might be heard and
understood in the same way as 1958.
Fig. 1.1 Contour graphs of the first phrase for each performer
Fig. 1.1 (cont.)
Fig. 1.1 (cont.)
To address proportion at an even more detailed level we examined the defining

motif for the piece: the first three notes – A4–G4–G5 (a three-note chromatic
segment).36 Berio’s renotation in both the Nicolet letter and 1992 make the first
note twice as long as the second two notes. (See Exx. 1.1–3.) Note the slight
difference between Exx. 1.2 and 1.3: the latter is written as a demisemiquaver
quintuplet. The distance between the first three notes in 1958 measured from the
centre of each note-head shows that the last two notes are closer together than the
first two, but only by a slight margin, not half the distance. The downward versus
upward stem direction makes the second two notes look much closer together than
they actually are. Did Berio expect the performer using 1958 to interpret the
precise distance or to depend on the optical illusion created by the stems?
Assuming that the rhythm of 1992 is the desired result, the only performer who
matched the timing precisely is Cherrier,37 who plays from the new edition.
Bezaly’s rhythm (hybrid) is also close to the rhythm of the new edition, but so are
Fabbriciani (hybrid), Dick and Sollberger (both 1958). Again, we find that
performers who use the old edition often come close to what appear to be Berio’s
desired results.
The pervasive three-note chromatic motif mentioned above occurs again after
the first hash mark, as F6–G5–F5. The rhythm in 1992 helps the performer to make
this association, but this rhythm is not an accurate representation of either 1958
(Ex.1.1) or the Nicolet-letter version (Ex. 1.3).
In general, we found it difficult to determine which edition a performer used
from timing information alone. Performers using both editions could be either
close or far from the ideal values, both overall and for individual segments. The
most obvious difference between performances using 1958 and those using 1992 is
that the former did not sustain the fermatas for as long, remembering the fermata
timings from 1992 were used as the ideal because they were not specified in 1958.
While statistical analysis sheds some light on the differences between the two
editions, it would have been helpful to have more recordings from the new edition
– statistically, it would have been desirable to have an equal number of each.
However, in our preliminary survey, we found that most professional flutists
dislike the new edition and do not use it, except perhaps for teaching.
We want to emphasize that our analysis of deviations in timings should not be
taken as the only criteria for aesthetic judgements about the recordings. Closeness
to notated timings, tempos and proportions does not necessarily make a
performance outstanding and deviation does not necessarily make one poor. We
find much to admire in all of the recordings. Each interpretation is virtuosic and
demonstrates superb technique, control and lyricism. Furthermore, each
performance is unique and expressive in different ways. Performers who approach
Berio’s tempo, for example Fabbriciani and Cherrier, demonstrate phenomenal
36
For an analysis of this three-note motif/gesture, see Cynthia Folio, ‘Luciano Berio’s
Sequenza for Flute: A Performance Analysis’, The Flutist Quarterly, 15/4 (1990): 18–21.
37
The time from A4 to G4 is 0.446 seconds; the time from G4 to G5 is 0.223 seconds.
acrobatics and generate a high level of excitement by playing ‘on the edge’; both
are crisp and vibrant, and events are connected with a sense of breathlessness.
Nicolet, whose overall time also comes close to the ideal, projects a sense of
urgency through his clipped staccato, short fermatas and quick grace notes.
Performers who play at slower tempos bring out the lyrical qualities of the piece,
for example Dick, Bezaly, P-L. Graf and E. Graf. While E. Graf’s performance is
expansive (as the longest of the eleven), P-L. Graf’s sounds deliberate and
somewhat cautious.38 Dick projects an improvisatory, almost whimsical quality,
while maintaining the most accurate proportions in the first phrase; he also
employs a colouristic effect in substituting whistle tones for two of the harmonics.
Bezaly’s performance could be described as ethereal, due in part to her astounding
dynamic contrast and the lengths of her fermatas, played almost entirely without
vibrato. The performances by Sollberger and Garzuly are particularly distinguished
by their articulation. Sollberger’s staccatos seem to crackle and the accents explode
like firecrackers; the contrast between the articulated and the sustained notes
results in a more ‘polyphonic’ performance. Garzuly seems to make a conscious
effort to differentiate marcato and staccato by making the former longer.
Gazzelloni’s version is distinguished mainly because it was the first, recorded
before a performance tradition for the piece had been established; his tone and
vibrato are in a more romantic tradition (especially in contrast to Bezaly) and he
takes many liberties in his interpretation. Zöller also uses an intense vibrato and
projects an assertive and vigorous quality.
It is fascinating to listen to all eleven performances in succession. The
differences in interpretation speak to the quality of the composition, as well as the
artistry of the performers. The rich variety probably results, at least in part, from
the freedom suggested by the spatial notation of the original edition. We tend to
agree with Weisser’s account of what was gained and what was lost in creating
1992:
Berio may have finally achieved the original precision he sought from the very
beginning, but I believe certain things were ‘lost in translation.’ … For all the control,
precision, and intent Berio sacrificed in the 1958 version, I am persuaded that he got
back something far more interesting. The subtext of the 1992 revision is that Berio feels
it is now more important to have a ‘proper result’ than to have the possibility of a richer
amount and variety of relationships.39
38
One of the reasons for Erich Graf’s expansiveness is probably that, in a coaching
session with Berio in the late 1960s, ‘he [Berio] was adamant that I not be inhibited in
serving the silences for as long as he had delineated’ (email message from Graf, 23 May
2005).
39
Weisser, p. 51.
Appendix A
Recordings of Sequenza I studied: timings omit silence at beginning/end
Bezaly, Sharon, Solo Flute A-Z, vol. 1 (BIS Records, 2000–01), 7:20.
Cherrier, Sophie, on Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998),
5:59.
Dick, Robert, Ladder of Escape 5 (Babel, 1990), 7:12.
Fabbriciani, Roberto, Flute XX (Arts Music, 1994), 5:30.
Garzuly, Anna, Flute Visions of the 20th Century (Hungaroton Classic, 1996),
6:21.
Gazzelloni, Severino, Music for Flute (Time Records, 1961), 6:43.
Graf, Erich, A Flute Recital (Aeolus, 1991), 7:58.
Graf, Peter-Lukas, Works for Flute Alone (Claves, 1989), 6:37.
Nicolet, Aurèle, on Luciano Berio, Circles, Sequenza I, Sequenza III, Sequenza V
(Wergo, 1991), 4:54.
Sollberger, Harvey, Twentieth-Century Flute Music, Group for Contemporary
Music (Nonesuch Records, 1975), 6:10.
Zöller, Karlheinz, Flute Passion (EMI Classics, 2003), 6:02.
Appendix B
Excerpts from Responses
Below are responses (excerpts) from professional flutists regarding the

advantages/disadvantages of the two editions of Berio’s Sequenza I for flute solo
(names are included only when explicit permission has been granted; all quotes are
from email messages):
• The first edition is better because it corresponds to the original compositional

thought but surely presents greater difficulty interpretatively, while the second
explicit edition obviates these difficulties and supplies a path to execution that
is more detailed. (Fabbriciani)40
• The first edition motivates the fantasy and the inventiveness of the interpreter.
It favours the interpretive freedom that is an actual parameter of the aesthetics
to which the Sequenza I belongs. (Fabbriciani)41
40
[La prima edizione è migliore perché corrisponde al pensiero compositivo originale
ma sicuramente presenta maggiori difficoltà interpretative mentre la seconda edizione ovvia
a queste difficoltà e fornisce una via esecutiva più dettagliata.]
41
[La prima edizione incentiva la fantasia e l’inventiva dell’interprete. Favorisce la
libertà interpretativa che è un parametro proprio dell’estetica alla quale la Sequenza I
appartiene.]
• The ‘old’ edition is the piece. The new edition exists only because flutists have
played the original so badly. Berio himself told me this at IRCAM in Paris in
1978. (Dick)
• The proportional notation in the original gives rhythmic life that can’t be
notated traditionally, while the new edition smothers this and makes the
phrases much harder to see. (Dick)
• Although there is in fact very little margin for freer interpretation with spatial
[notation], due to all the activity in the piece, I see the score as more of a
sound AND visual landscape that I am operating in, compared to the
traditional score. Particularly after learning from the spatial score, I find the
measured one confining and almost ‘patronizing’ … (Anderson)
• The original score is quite clear and exacting, and I believe that anyone who
wouldn’t take pains to learn it accurately would do the same with a notated
score. And you would have the added problem, with measured notation, of not
seeing the forest through the trees of notes, counting and subdividing and
rearranging duples and triples, etc. (Anderson)
• The new edition, besides being rhythmically verbose unnecessarily, changes
some of the phrase structures, changes drastically the nuance of some notes
because of their now strong to weak placement and the need to fit them into a
more traditional rhythm. (Monson)
• [Berio] started a little historical cell in our repertoire [because of the spatial
notation]… and then so many years later he takes the history out of the piece?
(Monson)
• … the only advantage of the new version is to see a possibility of
interpretation of the original (Bledsoe)
• … having a spatially notated score in front of you (or even in your head if you
are playing from memory) would make for a different performance entirely;
the differences would be psychological and therefore musical (I’m not sure
there can be such a separation in this case). (Bledsoe)
• The [proportional] version takes a lot of getting used to, and so the exact
version could be helpful when learning the piece. However, the precise
[version] is restrictive while performing. (Bezaly)
• [Sam Baron showed me] a rewrite he had made of Berio’s Sequenza in 6/8
meter. I thought at the time that it might be a fine ‘teaching tool’, but could
compromise the extemporaneous Baroque-ornamentation quality of the piece
that Berio was attempting to achieve. (E. Graf)
• I find the new version tense and stiff. In a masterclass on the piece, my
students thought they could hear the difference between those who used the
old edition and those who played from the new one. (Heiss)
• The great thing about the original version was just the very fact that the player
was called upon to play very precise rhythms WITHOUT all the tuplets and
hair-splitting that minute subdivisions in conventional notation engender. In
my experience, though, very few flutists did really look closely enough at the
visual placement of the notes and their relations to each other as notated in the
original version. (Sollberger)
• I had to warn my students that this new [proportional] notation didn’t really
make the piece easier to play; it just made it different. (Sollberger)
• … when playing off of the new version, having a pulse is very grounding for
my students and for me. (O’Connor)
• When studying the old [edition], I remember sitting down with [Sam] Baron
and a ruler to measure where things were in each ‘measure’ and what value
each note should have. He had a very systematic approach to the piece.
(O’Connor)
• … the music is a bit more spontaneous when played from the old version.
• I feel it has lost something important, that imposing a ‘beat’ inflection
interferes with the ‘life,’ the internal generation of musical shapes in the
spatial notation. Furthermore, … the spatial notation is MORE specific, not
less so.
• … the meters and note values can be an imperfect translation of what the
composer has conceived. In the case of the Sequenza, the initial conception,
with the clarity of its spatial notation, is stronger than the later one. A helpful
analogy might be ‘digital’ (the new version) vs. ‘analog’ (the old).
• I feel the musical shapes of the Sequenza lose something if they are forced into
a metered, quantifiably measured rhythmic frame.
• The original Sequenza is full of possibilities and opportunities for the
interpreter, and is important also from a historical and pedagogical standpoint.
• I don’t want to be manipulated by another person’s interpretation of the work
(which is, I suspect, not even Berio’s vision, but more likely that of one of his
student assistants).
Chapter 2
Rough Romance: Sequenza II for Harp as

Study and Statement
Kirsty Whatley
Musical instruments are symbolic objects. Visually arresting, each can conjure an
abundance of historical, social and personal associations into a persuasive
mythology and distinct identity. As such, the instrument ‘performs’ before a note is
even played. In Sequenza II for harp (1963), these extra-musical acquisitions are
manipulated into subject matter, directing specific musical material into an
assertive character study, playful critique and cogent musical discourse. Filtering
together a technically explorative agenda with contemporary cliché, the piece is
prismatic, refracting the instrument’s relationship with composer, performer and
spectator alike. While not overtly theatrical in the sense of Sequenzas III and V, it
is nonetheless driven by more than the unfolding of purely musical processes, its
rhetoric pressed by a desire to both use and abuse stereotype as its creative fuel.
The harp is an especially willing partner in this, as its dominant associations have
long framed it as an icon of romanticism, gentility and femininity, affinities which
too often imply a subtext of superficiality, weakness and limitation. Berio here
seeks to frame this frame, redrawing the instrument as dynamic, powerful and
assertive. In this context, the piece becomes a statement within a broader discourse
on image and instrumental mythology; on ‘the harpist’ as a musical caricature; and
on history as a complex incendiary, sparking both modern creativity and modern
musical prejudice. It is the purpose of this essay to examine these aspects in light
of the context within which the harp acquired its primary iconography, taking in a
brief overview of the instrument and Berio’s relationship with it, before moving on
to a more detailed analysis of Sequenza II as an interweaving of artistic statement
and instrumental study, with emphasis on its implications for the performer.
Sequenza II’s protagonist, the modern double-action pedal harp, should be seen
as one member in an extended instrumental family. This family is self-defining in
that harps differ profoundly from other instruments, particularly in matters of
technique, and because to think of ‘the’ harp is to neglect the incredible diversity
of harps in existence. In European culture alone, to say nothing of Africa, South
America and Asia, the harp is prominent in all manner of musical traditions, each
characterized by its own specific form, repertoire, techniques and socio-historical
identity. From the familiar depiction of biblical musician King David as harpist
40 Kirsty Whatley
and regulator of well-tuned universal harmony, all manner of constructions and

attendant modes of playing proliferate: single, double and triple layers of strings;
lap harps; lever harps; harps strung on right or left of the neck, or both; cross-
strung harps; harps with buzzing brays; single- and double-action pedal harps;
instruments born from both the simplest constructional principles and from the
most elaborate aesthetic and engineering ingenuities. These instruments share a
kaleidoscopic capacity for colour which renders them persuasive polyphonic
vehicles, articulating contrastive musical voices through diverse timbral
techniques, while harmonically the Western harp served as a key continuo player,
as an alternative to the organ in church, and as a sensitive tool for chamber
accompaniment. Solo pieces of the late renaissance and baroque, particularly in
Italy and Spain, reveal it in multiple moods, at times lyrical but also dramatic,
vibrant, rhythmic and dynamic, in energetic music that can be highly chromatic,
full of complex fingerings, cross-rhythms and clashing harmonies. In ancient
Ireland, harpers combined nail and finger-pad on wire-strung instruments in a
distinctively ornamented pluck-and-damp technique. Adopted by itinerant
musicians, the Irish harp became a symbol of political defiance and the instrument
Thomas Moore sent into war with the hero of his 1798 song The Minstrel Boy. It
has been favoured by the poor and the aristocracy alike, by men and by women,
combining the iconography of the divine, the decadent profanity of the elite and the
earthy spirituality of folklore.
It is curious then that in Western classical music, the prevailing view of harp
and harpist is currently a narrow perception, drawing on one instrument and one
school of playing. Indeed, the harp has been overwhelmed in popular – and to a
large extent, musicological – consciousness by a shallow romantic-impressionism.
Enlightened composers and performers must often be defenders and challengers on
its behalf, a testament to subliminal romantic influences in modern and postmodern
times, and a justification of Berio’s own views on the necessity of historical
awareness in liberating the creative process.1 Officially created around 1720, the
single-action pedal harp became the obsession of eighteenth-century Paris.2
Elevated to fashionable supremacy by Marie Antoinette, it was the essential
plaything of cultured drawing-room society. Although the harp had often elicited
the most lavish decorative tendencies from its constructers, the pedal harp in
particular is still symbolic of high society and its ornate visual aspect must have
been key to its success. Overtly feminized, it could also prove eminently suitable
1
See Luciano Berio, Two Interviews with Rosanna Dalmonte and Bálint András
Varga, trans. and ed. David Osmond-Smith (New York/London, 1985), pp. 66–8. This
includes discussion of Berio’s views that ‘there can be no tabula rasa’, and the way in
which this informs his creative approach.
2
There is some dispute about exactly when the single-action harp was first created.
For this and other issues surrounding the history of the harp, see Sue Carole DeVale and
Nancy Thym-Hochrein, ‘Harp’, §V, 7, in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell (eds), The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 10 (London, 2001), pp. 881–929.
Sequenza II for Harp 41
for the objective pleasure afforded by the sight of young ladies demonstrating their
accomplishments. With the patenting of the fully chromatic double-action pedal
harp in 1810, and the rise of virtuosi performers such as Elias Parish-Alvars, its
perceived technical deficiencies diminished. Composers embraced its sumptuous
characteristics in sweeping enharmonic glissandi and arpeggios, while Debussy
and Ravel went on to fine-tune its image and idiom with colouristic, textural
poeticism.
It is here that the musical argument played out in Sequenza II originates. So
effective was its adoption by French artistic circles and so complete its aesthetic
synonymy with romantic and impressionist expression, the pedal harp could hardly
fail to escape the vitriol of subsequent anti-romantic movements and it struggled
throughout the twentieth century to find those willing to explore and extend its
possibilities. It seemed to epitomize all the shallowest values of the previous era,
its celestial connotations jarring with the religious scepticism promulgating from
world war and from Darwin and Nietzsche’s respective scientific and philosophical
destruction of God. Slonimsky notes the impact of a shifting zeitgeist when he
states: ‘it is interesting that Stravinsky had three harps in the original scoring of his
early ballet The Firebird, but eliminated them entirely in a later revision of the
score, an eloquent testimony to the obsolescence of the harp as a decorative
instrument in modern music’.3 Boulez, although he subsequently revised his
opinion, is quoted by harpist Dewey Owens as initially considering it unsuitable:
‘previously it was his opinion that it was strictly a woman’s instrument, “all
animation, virtuosity and no power”’.4 Little imagination is required to understand
how the harp appeared a twentieth-century anachronism: a defunct, extravagant
monstrosity on which was possible only the kind of swift-fingered, empty-headed
virtuosity that is the antithesis of Berio’s Sequenzas.5 As it is, such prejudice
proves itself creatively fertile.
Berio’s involvement with the harp can be traced from his early compositions
and endured throughout his life, his approach seemingly unhindered by doubt in
either its technical possibilities or its appropriateness for modern musical
expression. His distinctive compositional voice is always recognizable, suggesting
a relationship with the instrument found through genuine exploration, such that he
reached an understanding of it entirely on his own terms. Stylistically, the mid to
late 1950s show the biggest conceptual leap in his approach, probably as the result
of two influences: the harpist, Francis Pierre, and the general and pervasive
3
Nicolas Slonimsky, Lectionary of Music (London, 1989), p. 215. Stravinsky’s
conception of the harp is varied, not always placing it in the decorative role Slonimsky
mentions here. Good counterexamples include the rhythmically vital Symphony in 3
Movements and the ballet Orpheus. While his writing can be physically awkward and
unconventional to play, it is often effective and entirely modern in idiom.
4
Dewey Owens, From Aeolian to Thunder: Carlos Salzedo, a Biography (Chicago,
1992), p. 93.
5
Berio, Two Interviews, p. 90.
42 Kirsty Whatley
influence of electronics on his composition. This shift is apparent if one compares

the assured but safe treatment of the harp in Chamber Music (1953), through the
shifting, malleable material of the electronic Différences (1959), to the
chameleonic instrument of Circles (1960). That Berio was by this stage working
with a specific and adventurous performer is also in evidence on the printed page.
His writing is less ‘textbook’, more ingenious and sophisticated, more difficult in
reflection of his harpist’s abilities, and exploits a greater range of the instrument’s
resources. The subsequent influence of Circles on Sequenza II – and thus on
Chemins I (1965) – is palpable. As one might expect from Berio, these pieces are
familial, developing, expanding and exploring elements of each other. For the harp,
Sequenza II is the point at which the spotlight rests, creating a brief but focussed
interlude of technical study and rhetorical statement.
The idea of ‘study’ is useful to this piece on multifarious levels. As noted
above, Sequenza II is a study in cultural legacy and the semiotic aspect of
instruments, drawing on contemporary and historical context to give impetus to
content. It is also to some extent a retrospective study of Circles and a preparatory
one for the harp ‘concerto’, Chemins I. From this angle, it functions as a sketch for
a larger canvas and a detailed investigation of the inherent properties of the
instrument. Thirdly, in the interest of both rhetorical and compositional purposes,
the piece is a critique of specific harp techniques. ‘Typical’, associatively weighted
techniques are examined, extended and subverted to disrupt the typecast image of
the instrument. Consequently, Sequenza II could also be approached by the
performer as a pedagogical technical study. Each section of the score emphasizes
distinct techniques, reminiscent of a traditional study book in which one finds an
exercise on scales, on arpeggios, on chords and so on. Through such study, the
performer attains a deeper knowledge of their instrument, developing their arsenal
of playing possibilities. Unlike such books, however, Sequenza II does not
propound a ‘correct’ method but instead provokes investigation of conventional
technical wisdom.
Technique is an invention, governed in part by the shape of the hand and the
mechanical requirements of sounding a string with facility and without physical
injury. It is also the product of the aesthetic values and musical processes of a
particular era. In compositions like Sequenza II, traditional practice methods can be
of limited assistance. It cannot be surprising that a harp technique rooted in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century musical and aesthetic ideals, although far from
redundant, does not always answer twentieth- and twenty-first century needs, the
emphasis on scales, arpeggios and a ‘good, clean sound’ proving only partially
adequate for a musical language with fundamentally other priorities. Instrumental
technique is a flexible, open-ended and creative process all too often viewed as a
fixed and finished manifesto. In fact, the piece should direct the technique, not vice
versa, physical decisions arising organically from the needs of the music, rather
than the music being enslaved to the dogma of predetermined, fixed systems. In
modern practice, most instrumental students learn by repeating set exercises and
techniques in isolation that can then be mapped onto a piece. If the techniques
cannot answer to the needs of the piece, then it is usually (and sometimes rightly)
the piece that is deemed inadequate or impossible. It is less usual to suggest that
the practised methods themselves may be inappropriate to the composition, and
that what is needed is greater flexibility in the accepted version of ‘good’
technique. This is key to the nature of Berio’s virtuoso: the performer who thinks
independently, questioning the standard truths about what is ‘correct’, and who
thus finds their instrument anew, allowing all possibilities to arise.
Such issues prompt the question as to how one decides which pieces outstrip
technique and which are just badly composed. In Sequenza II, the quality of the
material balances the struggle to produce it and the piece to some extent even
depends upon this. The demanding nature of the learning process can translate in
the onstage performance rhetoric into both an intensified intimacy between
performer and instrument, and a taut dramatic battle. Part of the theatrical potential
of the piece lies in the tension between harpist and harp as they engage in an
absorbing mental and physical confrontation. Confrontation itself runs counter to
traditional notions of the harpist’s musical identity. In considering such
conventional expectations, it should be remembered that the harpist is also the
product of their time and society. Society to some degree possesses and projects
imagery of both a musical instrument and the type of person who plays it. In the
initial acts of choosing and learning their instrument, many performers identify
with and then reinforce, relearn and react to a character role determined by their
instrument’s established associations. Sequenza II asks, at times, that the performer
physically and mentally ‘step outside the box’, offering the harpist the opportunity
not only to reassess their technique and their instrument, but to explore and re-
imagine their own musical identity.
Thankfully, Sequenza II is more sophisticated than to make its point through a
banal barrage of aggressive sonic novelties. Berio’s palette of special effects,
detailed in a key accompanying the score, is actually very restrained, certainly
holding nothing very avant-garde for the 1960s. The piece does not strive to
express newness through such techniques, but rather assimilates them as tools in a
more ingenious musical language. The gentle, sweet facets of the harp sound are
allowed voice and subjected to metamorphosis, radically transformed rather than
destroyed. The piece thrives on the counterpoint of rough and romantic elements,
lyrical voices throwing their violent counterparts into starker relief. The overall
expressive shape is formed by an array of heterogeneous shades and sonorities, the
resulting work defined by a distinctly poetic aggression or, paradoxically, a new
kind of impressionism. In fact, it was a curiously impressionist image that Berio
himself evoked when he said that ‘at certain moments it must sound like a forest
with the wind blowing through it’.6 Although this phrase was intended to capture
the idea of simultaneity as much as to describe the sound world, it is apt. Many of
Sequenza II’s passages are quiet, stifled and multi-layered, hinting at restrained
rather than released force. Ultimately, the piece aims not so much to deny the
6
44 Kirsty Whatley
harp’s familiar face as to transform and combine it with others, enunciating a broad
polyphony of both expressive musical voices and extra-musical visions of
instrumental identity.
Although a miniature musical portrait at less than six pages, Sequenza II’s
compact material is of considerable density. Strands of distinct material are folded
together, interpenetrating and appearing simultaneously in a kind of musical
origami. A glance at the large-scale structure of the piece shows the first two pages
as expository sections, divided by a fermata and by their concern with developing
separate motifs.7 Pages three and four work together to create a centrepiece that, in
echo of Circles, forms Sequenza II’s greatest morphological extreme, fully and
fearlessly exposing the instrument’s alternative face. From here, the piece ebbs
toward a stammering coda-like section to its close. In the course of this structure,
Berio develops various musical parameters while usually controlling the element of
pitch as either fixed, coupled to unpitched sounds or tending toward the
indeterminate. Through such close pitch control, the instrument’s colours and
sonorities are thrown into relief and become definitive in moulding the work.
Meanwhile, the techniques selected for critical attention each raise interesting
questions about their historical precedents, about the ways in which they are
manipulated anew and about how the performer deals with them.
The opening phrase of Sequenza II is the cell from which all else proliferates. It
incorporates the two most pervasive facets of the piece in the striking, direct
manner of a fanfare: polyphony of colour and, co-dependently, an independence of
musical line which allows simultaneity. The gesture is nine bars long, eight of
which sustain and reiterate one note in different guises (Ex. 2.1). In the first bar,
this foundation note triggers the start as a fortissimo harmonic, forming a plosive
not dissimilar to the soprano beginning of Circles where the ‘stiƾ-’ of ‘stinging’
sounds a vocally equivalent attack. The two pieces share this opening device of a
punctuated, syllabic entry followed by a sustained melodic line. However, in
Sequenza II the melody is not of pitch but colour; a harp equivalent to the tone-
colour melodies for woodwind described by Bruno Bartolozzi, in which the player
differentiates a single note by shading it with alternative fingerings.8 This is
transcribed for harp by the variation of the opening note through four forms: itself,
its enharmonic equivalent, a harmonic, and the enharmonic of the harmonic – or, to
paraphrase, a unison pitch is produced on four different strings. The idea of fanfare
is heightened by the prevalence of the harmonic as a device, as this technique is
historically resonant with horn calls and bells. For the player, however, the
challenge lies in conveying the independence of the musical lines. Right and left
hand counterpoint each other in dynamics, achieving the dimensional effect of one
7
Page, system and bar references refer to the original (1965) edition of the score (UE
13715), a reproduction of Berio’s hand-written final copy, and not to the more recent edition
(UE 18101) which is substantially revised – and more performer friendly – in layout.
8
See Chapter 2, ‘Monophonic possibilities’ in Bruno Bartolozzi, New Sounds for
Woodwind, trans. and ed. Reginald Smith Brindle (London, 1967), pp. 12–34.
line advancing while the other retreats. As the opening statement, this demands the
utmost clarity. Meanwhile, the choice of note is not insignificant: falling in the
centre of the harp’s range, it is a fitting point from which to expand toward the
ensuing climactic mêlée.
Example 2.1 The opening bars of Sequenza II
The remainder of page one continues to extend the opening’s obsession with
individual pitches and their colouration through equivalent forms: the second
gesture is underpinned by an interest in G#; the third by G and E; the fourth and
fifth fixate on C (Ex. 2.2); the sixth, C and G; the seventh reiterates a fragment
of the opening, but with E interwoven, and so on. With a little scrutiny, one
becomes aware that beneath an apparently complex surface lies a fantastically
simple skeleton, the first five systems of page one bouncing a series of tone-colour
echoes on the augmented fourth/perfect fifth (C to G/G), with a pitched
ornamental commentary providing harmonic enrichment. Perhaps these intervals
embody something of the pull between purity (perfect fifth) and dissolution
(diminished fifth) that is magnified in other parameters in the piece.
Misunderstandings of the tonal character of the harp factor strongly in its neglect in
post-serial composition, and so commentary on the perfect fifth seems fitting to
Sequenza II’s agenda. Throughout the opening section, gestures remain short and
intervallic with a high percentage of diminished, perfect and augmented fifths. The
complexity of the musical surface is compounded by rapid changes in articulation,
almost every note marked with a different and contrasting attack. It is this which
presents a substantial challenge to the performer, psychologically as well as
physically, rather than the notes themselves, which fall under the hands readily
enough. The independence of hand and individual finger extends from the opening
to demand minute attention to detail and fractional levels of muscle memory.
Aurally, the resultant impression is of a simultaneous polyphony of processes
employed across all parameters and embedded within the texture from background
to foreground.
Such polyphony is heightened by careful control of the harp’s resonance and the
specific use of silence through the damping technique. This technique is integral to
the first section, silence functioning not as cessation but as an active participant in the
articulation of material. Berio frequently asks for the stifling of all strings between
gestures, cleanly defining each utterance, and also designates individual strings for
stopping within a thicker texture. In bars two to four of the third system on page one,
the G3 pitch sounds three times: natural, sharp and then natural again (see Ex. 2.2).
46 Kirsty Whatley
Example 2.2 Sequenza II: page 1, system 3, bars 1–4
The addition of the separate stem to the G in this passage indicates that it should
be damped immediately while the naturals ring on beneath, the technique
somewhat like that enabled by the piano sostenuto pedal. Aurally, this contributes
to the impression of unison pitches reverberating against each other in various
forms, strengthening the relationship of the three notes. While such subtle stifling
devices have precedents in other harp traditions, not least in ancient Ireland and
Wales, they are not often exploited for the pedal harp as a truly sophisticated,
incorporative playing skill. Noticeably, a single fortissimo chord in the final bar of
the fourth system strikes one as ringing alone (Ex. 2.3).
Example 2.3 Sequenza II: page 1, system 4, bar 10
Sounding stark within the otherwise complex surface texture, it is a ‘stray’ gesture
from the closing sections of the Sequenza where the issue of damping recurs.
Within the context of Sequenza II, the physical gesture of placing both hands flat
across the strings also forms a coincident part of a visual aspect which sees further
development.
The complex, inter-reflecting colours of page one accord its lyricism a
staggered, disjointed feel. Thus the continuity found in the final gesture (system
six, bars six to ten), can initially be a relief. Here, totally new material enters,
murmuring and mumbling in the right hand over four left-hand glissandi (Ex. 2.4).
A texture as much as a theme, this is an important recurrent motivic strand,
forming the primary subject of page two before combining with additional material
to reach maximum intensity in the central section where its tight, closely drawn
lines make the score the visual equivalent of a barcode. Its identity is marked by
quickly revolving pitch circles, normally doubled in both hands but sometimes in
the right alone while the left pursues glissandi or other effects. Pitch, which was
controlled on the level of single notes for much of page one, is fixed again, but
now as small nucleic clusters which contain, within their limited sphere, a degree
of indeterminacy. This is effected by the pedals which also ‘revolve’, varying the
chosen handful of strings through their flat, natural and sharp forms. The vitality of
this motif in Sequenza II lies in the extent to which it is enmeshed in the musical
fabric, in its unusual character and in its evocative similitude to Berio’s ‘wind in
trees’ image.
For many harpists, however, it is a technical oddity. Conventional pedal harp

wisdom pronounces against the profuse repetition of notes, as returning fingers
immediately to already vibrating strings stifles the resonance and greatly increases
the likelihood of noisy buzzing. Such disapproval is, of course, based on the
assumption that the harp must necessarily always sound clean and clear, an
assumption surely open to negotiation in Sequenza II. The problem is not just
aesthetic, however, but physical. It is generally considered difficult to produce and
sustain tremolando-type passages with rapidity and volume on the modern pedal
harp due to the accepted hand position, the rotational movement of the wrist and
especially the finger action needed to produce good sound from high tension
strings.9 The problem is eliminated if the harpist is able to divide the work between
both hands, and divided trills or the enharmonic bisbigliando effect can sound
extremely convincing. As this shared labour is not possible in Sequenza II, the
lengthier of these sections, although often soft and spidery in dynamic, are
nonetheless physically demanding. With the addition of constant footwork as the
pedals shift continuously through their three positions, the labour is magnified
again. Discarding traditional images of the gracefully poised harpist, all four of the
performer’s limbs move simultaneously, such constant total–body activity
revealing to the viewer the innate yet typically hidden physicality of the
instrument. Here, Sequenza II veers away from the contained, prettified harpist
stereotype.
The second page is governed almost exclusively by the development of this
unsettled, whispering idea. The section begins by exploring simple preparatory
turning patterns of five to nine notes, rehearsing them in slow motion. Whereas
9
This is a modern pedal harp issue and not applicable to harps in general. For
example, Monteverdi’s famous harp cadenza in L’Orfeo features fast repetitive figurations
and double-handed trills. On the light, double or triple strung baroque harp, such techniques
were accepted aspects of the idiom. Meanwhile, the Latin American harp today frequently
uses a mandolin-style technique known as trino.
48 Kirsty Whatley
pitch gradually proliferates across the range of the harp in the first section, it is
here restricted to the upper register and leant stasis by its setting in more spacious
surroundings. What occurs is a brief interlude of peace between Sequenza II’s
introduction and its impending aggression; the quiet before the storm with a
dynamic level contained predominantly at pppp. The pause is brief, however. The
end of the third system erupts again into the restless textural material, here tripled
in length from its original appearance at the end of page one. Its whispering now
swells in volume through two separate extended passages, blustering up to a
fortissimo at its second appearance (Ex. 2.5).
The difficulty of the material is further compounded by the need to change note
clusters whilst perpetuating the continuity. These cluster shifts are required every
bar, pushing into and away from the fortissimo.
Despite the forebodings of conventional orchestration advice, it is intriguing to
note that trilling, perpetually moving techniques have some similarly ‘inadvisable’
precursors within the repertoire. One example that Berio may have known is On
Grace Notes and Trills, also labelled Inquietude, in Carlos Salzedo’s twentieth-
century harp manifesto, Modern Study of the Harp.10 Salzedo’s influence on
attitudes and composition for the harp in the mid-twentieth century was profound,
and Berio refers to him in Two Interviews as pivotal to the establishment of a
modern harp school.11 A friend to Varèse and part of the contemporary art scene in
1920s’ New York, Salzedo consciously set out to redefine his instrument as a
contemporary resource. His Modern Study was intended to awaken composers as
much as harpists to the untapped possibilities of the instrument and as such it is
divided in half, comprising an introduction and notational catalogue of techniques
and effects, followed by a collection of five demonstrative studies. Discussing trills
he states that the method of playing a single trill divided between the hands ‘is
undoubtedly the most efficacious’, before going on in his third study to thoroughly
flout his own advice in 23 consecutive bars of glistening virtuosity.12 Even if
Salzedo were playing a lighter strung harp than today’s models, this is difficult
music. Fast, frequently loud, lengthy trills are sustained without pause, mostly
10
Carlos Salzedo, Modern Study of the Harp (New York/Boston, 1921).
11
12
See Salzedo, p. 10 and pp. 40–45.
indivisible between the hands and incorporating rapid shifts in position. They are
counter-pointed throughout by other material, including effects and glissandi in a
manner not unlike that apparent, at times, in Sequenza II. Both pieces treat the harp
as a vessel of extreme simultaneity and colour.13 By employing such techniques
Salzedo, a harpist himself, sanctions them as playable, acceptable and idiomatic.
Transformed again, Berio’s rapid replacement technique is not a straightforward
trill but a metamorphosed bisbigliando of a darker character, effecting a transition
in Sequenza II from the relatively familiar colours of section 1 toward the frantic
and anarchic sound world that is the piece’s aim. This aim is finally realized
through the interweaving of two further, equally distinctive musical strands which,
plaited together in the centre of the work, create the vivid depiction described by
Sanguineti’s encapsulating stanza on the piece:
I have heard chains of colours, muscularly aggressive:

14
I have felt your rough and rigid noises.
In the centre of Sequenza II, sheer sound and simultaneity are the foremost
parameters, reversing the traditional hierarchy of pitch over colour. The section
contrasts a pair of musical ideas, one constituting pitch as an isolated, percussively
corrupted element, and the other proliferating it to such an extent that it becomes
meaningless through saturation. The first of these ideas protrudes briefly into the
bisbigliando texture of page two (system five, bars one to five), before vanishing
as quickly as it appeared. However, from the first bar of page three it gradually
asserts itself as the dominant voice. Buzzings, knockings, rattlings, suffocated
sounds, xylophonics, beaten strings and strong, accented dynamic markings
combine explosively so that one literally hears the rough, rigid noises that
Sanguineti describes (Ex. 2.6).
In Chemins I, this change of focus onto harder, edgier possibilities in the harp
sound is reinforced by a concertino group consisting of two additional harps, a
piano, celeste and harpsichord. The choice of these instruments allows their
potential homogeneities to be explored, pushing and collapsing malleable sonic
boundaries in a manner not dissimilar to Circles. Throughout Chemins I’s opening
sections, (pages one and two of the Sequenza score) the harp trio alone is heard, the
decisive sounds of the piano entering only as the percussive side of the harp really
asserts itself. Celeste and harpsichord join rank at Figure 16 of Chemins I, (page
four, system three, bar six of Sequenza II). Such orchestration extends and realizes
in full the multiplicity of sound and character fiercely compressed into the solo
13
For yet another example see Elliott Carter’s harp solo Bariolage (1992). Similarly
intimidating to play, Carter transcribes what was originally a violin technique to harp in a
profusion of trilling passages and enharmonic unison colourings. The word bariolage is
French and can be translated as ‘variety of colours’.
14
Edoardo Sanguineti in Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998)
CD liner notes, p. 11.
50 Kirsty Whatley
line. With the greater exposure implicit in the unaccompanied Sequenza, the harp is
laid bare as a mechanical object with a potentially violent disposition. The
variation in colour that marked section 1 is retained, but transformed from the
subtle to the strenuous.
For the harpist, Sanguineti’s stanza is an instruction: muscularity, aggression and

the literal feeling of roughness and rigidity under the fingers become a
performance reality. Slapping, snapping and beating at the instrument, the harpist
conveys vigour, speed, energy and a willingness to attack. The material is unkind
to both instrument and performer. As a visual phenomenon the sheer size of the
pedal harp, regardless of any ornamental excesses, can give it an impact on stage
that risks domination of the player rather than partnership. Simply placing the
instrument in a space makes a louder statement than that projected by smaller
instruments, and this is a factor in Sequenza II’s performance dialogue. Compared
to other instrumentalists, the harpist has a limited sphere of movement. Seemingly
pinned down, the player cannot pace or bend or gesture other than with the arms
and the angle of the head. Supporting the harp with the knees, the upper body is
relatively free and relaxed but remains fundamentally static to the viewer. If not
submerged, the harpist could be imagined as embracing the instrument. The heart
of Sequenza II develops a decidedly less fond relationship.
The second strand of combative material forming the work’s central climax
exploits the most definitive of all seductive harp devices: the glissando. Glissandi
appear at first in Sequenza II as short rumblings beneath other material, or
transformed as percussive elements. From the last few bars of page three they
begin to interject with greater frequency, breaking into the cycling bisbigliando
material as vigorous downward slashes. In the third system of page four (bar
seven), a dense extended passage begins in which glissandi constantly interrupt,
dissolving other material into seemingly chaotic abandon (Ex. 2.7). The score of
Chemins I shows further glissandi proliferating on two subsidiary harps and into
the bowed string section. Berio shows that the glissando can be as modern and
visceral in expression as it is sumptuous and romantic. Further than this, by
adopting such a loaded mascot of the romantic and impressionist harp to create its
antithesis, rather than using more obviously contrary devices, Berio turns the harp
on itself and the uninitiated in the audience, effecting not just the appearance of
another face but the voicing of a genuinely other persona. Sequenza II
demonstrates that the glissando itself is not moribund and that its restriction lies in
its symbolic aspect, not its inherent qualities as a technique. Through the last three
systems of page four, glissandi encompass the entire range of the instrument across
all dimensions, incorporating not just all strings, but all notes by the systematic
varying of the seven pedals through their three positions. Thus the Sequenza
reaches its furthest distance from the centred, unison control of the opening.
Example 2.7 Sequenza II: page 4, system 3, bar 7 to system 4, bar 4
After such an outburst, the fourth section should be a release. Density subsides and a
quietly running scalic figure sounds what seem slow reminders of the preceding
glissandi. Relaxation, however, is scarcely possible. Spasmodic fortissimo chords
constantly interject and from the end of page five (system five, bar eight), they
become the final subject of the piece. Again, they conflict with conventional
expectations. Salzedo defines the harp as different in principle from other
instruments in that one must actively play to create silence: the sound follows its own
rate of decay regardless of the player, unless one places the hands on the instrument.
This is opposite to most other instruments and Salzedo calls it the ‘peculiar
instrumental character of the Harp [sic]’.15 Resonance thus being perhaps the
fundamental characteristic of the harp sound, large harp chords are traditionally
rolled, maximizing and sustaining this element for effect. If you abide by Salzedo’s
definition, then the closing section of Sequenza II enacts the ultimate conceptual
opposite, asking the harpist to restrain the most fundamental tendency of the
instrument. Accented seven string chords, often played next to the soundboard for
emphatic edge, shoot out of the texture to be damped as soon as they appear
(Ex. 2.8).
15
Salzedo, p. 2.
52 Kirsty Whatley
This does not result in absolute silence after each chord, as it is very difficult to damp
the entire range of the harp in so short a time. Ghost notes thus linger in the
surrounding strings, but the result is of an extreme staccato. Of course, it is not that
no one ever wrote or played a staccato block chord on the harp before, but the
domination of this technique over the final four stanzas is arresting. Finally, a few
harmonics struggle to gesture at the opening of the piece before a downward
glissando trails away into silence.
Berio’s level of historical awareness as a composer frequently emerges in the

Sequenza series as a fascination for using such issues as subject matter, creating
pieces that enable the performer to convey themselves and their instrument as
possessing and delighting in self-awareness. This level is particularly strong in
Sequenza II, where it can be a re-education for both harpist and audience. Through
concerted exploration and critique, addressing the performer as much as the listener,
Sequenza II has the potential to effect real evolution, not just the depiction or illusion
of alternative voices. Image and iconography persist in being the harp’s strongest and
weakest aspect. The repertoire is in need of such provocative statements, the potency
of its romantic and impressionist history meaning the pedal harp’s common
associations remain those of fairytales and angelic maidens strumming flowing
glissandi. While reform and development on a technical and even on a musically
conceptual level can be clearly defined, observed and to some extent catalogued as
concrete elements visible on the printed page, ‘image’ inhabits a more abstract realm.
romanticism irrefutably expresses an important aspect of the harp’s character, but it
should be recognized as representative of just one musical voice in many. In the final
analysis, the most consistently identifiable feature of the harp is its flexibility and
capacity for change, the ability to adapt and survive within an enormous range of
societies and musical traditions. Image is an exceedingly powerful force and only
when understood specifically in terms of its nature as an idea, and not as an accurate
reflection of the whole truth, can the romantic aspect of the harp be built
constructively into a more complete conception of the instrument. Only through such
a realization can the image finally be controlled and manipulated freely to serve any
purpose or expression. Sequenza II realizes this possibility, turning image into
subject matter and stereotype into strength.
Chapter 3
Phantom Rhythms, Hidden Harmonies:

The Use of the Sostenuto Pedal in
Berio’s Sequenza IV for Piano,
Leaf and Sonata
Zoe Browder Doll
Introduction
Of those composers whose works are widely known today, few have written piano
music that calls for extensive use of the sostenuto (middle) pedal.1 Luciano Berio,
as is evident from his Sequenza IV (1965–66), Leaf (1990) and Sonata (2001), is an
exception to this trend. While originally the sostenuto pedal was used primarily to
sustain bass notes underneath material that featured clashing harmonies (and that
could not be sustained using the damper pedal), Berio’s three pieces employ the
middle pedal in order to manipulate the listener’s perception of rhythm and
harmony. By obscuring attack points and revealing hidden contrasting harmonies
within one another, the sostenuto pedal, in Berio’s hands, becomes a kind of
acoustic envelope generator, lengthening the release time of chords while
simultaneously creating ‘phantom’ attacks. In this essay, I explore how the use of
the sostenuto pedal affects the listener’s perception in these three works; graphic
notational methods one might use in an analysis in order to account for the pedal’s
sophisticated effects on attack and decay times; and how Berio’s use of the pedal
varies between the three pieces. Before proceeding to the analysis of its use in these
works, however, a short explanation of the sostenuto pedal’s mechanics is necessary.
The mechanics of the sostenuto pedal
The sostenuto pedal was first shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1844 by the
1
The author wishes to thank Christopher Doll and Judith Lochhead for their
invaluable suggestions and encouragement in the development of this essay. All musical
examples were transcribed by Christopher Doll from the UE scores.
54 Zoe Browder Doll
Marseilles firm of Boisselot and Sons, but was not patented in the United States
until 1874 by Albert Steinway of the American Steinway firm.2 Soon most
American Steinway uprights and all of their grands came with the new pedal, and
many other American piano builders added the middle pedal to their instruments.
European builders, however, were not as enthusiastic about the device, and even
today many Hamburg Steinway and Japanese-manufactured Yamaha grands do not
have the middle pedal. On most upright pianos, the middle pedal only allows notes
below middle C to be sustained. On a grand piano, the pedal allows any specific
tone (or group of tones) to be sustained while maintaining the ability to employ any
desired articulation and dynamic over the rest of the keyboard; even the damper
pedal may be used. When other notes are struck, the sustained tones will ring
sympathetically. If one loudly plays other notes in proximity to the sustained notes
– or other notes related to the sustained notes as partials – then the sustained tones
will ring more clearly and produce a delicate haze of ambient vibrations. Most
importantly, if a note being held by the sostenuto pedal is struck while the pedal is
still engaged, it will sound again and continue to be sustained, creating what will
hereafter be referred to as a ‘sostenuto tone’.
The sostenuto pedal has traditionally been used to sustain bass notes while
playing other material over the rest of the keyboard, as in the finale of the Copland
Piano Variations (1930), where the pedal sustains a low C while the pianist shifts
both hands to the upper register of the keyboard for the final measures of the piece.
This use of the pedal enables the pianist to play passages that, because of span or
register, would not be possible without it. George Crumb has also used the
sostenuto pedal to create striking textures, as in his two large-scale works for solo
amplified piano, Makrokosmos I (1972) and Makrokosmos II (1973). In ‘Music of
Shadows (for Aeolian Harp)’ from Makrokosmos I, a group of silently depressed
pitches is first sustained with the middle pedal, then strummed loudly on the strings
and strummed again periodically throughout the piece to create a sinister pedal-
point effect. Although the effect is quite dazzling, the use of the middle pedal here
is quite traditional: that is, it is being used to prolong an accompanimental figure.
Berio’s use of the sostenuto pedal in Sequenza IV, Leaf and Sonata moves far
beyond any of the traditional uses discussed above. Berio employs three main
techniques using this pedal. The first and most prevalent technique is found in
those passages where the pedal is engaged and sostenuto tones are present – that is,
notes from the sustained chord are played again. A different effect is achieved in
passages where the sostenuto pedal is engaged but no sostenuto tones are present,
which results in an ‘ambient haze’ of sympathetic background reverberations.
Finally, the sostenuto pedal can also be used in combination with the technique of
‘flooring’ the damper pedal to catch the reverberations left after an articulated
chord.3 These techniques create and sustain a variety of complex chords, creating
2
Joseph Banowetz, The Pianist’s Guide to Pedaling (Bloomington, 1985), p. 4.
3
This technique preserves the echolike after-effects of the chord but not the actual
pitches of the chord.
Sequenza IV for Piano 55
several different layers of perceptual activity. The staccato notes that are not held
by the sostenuto pedal die away quickly after their attack, leaving sympathetic
vibrations of the chord; the sustained sostenuto tones form harmonies different
from the initial chord from which they arose; a ‘phantom rhythm’ created by the
sostenuto tones’ decay greatly outlasts that of the unsustained notes, and the
sostenuto tones’ attacks are obscured by the staccato chord attacks in which they
are contained. As I will show, graphic notation provides a clear way to articulate
these perceptual effects visually.
Sequenza IV for piano (1965–66)
Berio’s Sequenza IV features the often-overlooked sostenuto pedal, establishing

new sonic possibilities by creating complex layers of rhythmic and harmonic
activity. It was commissioned for Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
The year of its composition is in question: the score indicates that it was written in
1965, but other sources, including pianist David Burge, who gave the New York
premiere of the piece, insist that it was composed in 1966. Several different
editions of the work exist:4 for all of my analyses, I have referred exclusively to the
1993 edition (UE 30137). This edition does not include bar numbers and, in my
numbering, I have counted only complete bars, while partial bars divided by a
dotted line have not been counted as individual measures. In this study I refer to
two excellent, commercially available recordings of Sequenza IV: the first by
pianist Steffen Schliermacher, of Ensemble Avantgarde5 and the second by Florent
Boffard, of Ensemble Intercontemporain.6
Berio’s notation for the sostenuto pedal is clear: generally, he indicates that the
pedal be depressed while a chord is being held by the fingers (as in bars 109–10,
Ex. 3.1). One exception can be found in bar 50, where a chord is silently depressed
and then caught with the sostenuto pedal, a technique common to the music of
George Crumb. Once a chord has been sustained with the sostenuto pedal, Berio
gives a visual reminder of what the sustained chord is, in the form of small notes at
the beginning of each bar through which the chord is sustained. These reminder
notes are very helpful in practice, as the pianist can readily see which notes are
being sustained at any given time. Berio’s use of the sostenuto pedal at the end of
bar eight through the downbeat of bar nine is an example of the pianist quickly
depressing the sostenuto pedal before moving to another chord (see Ex. 3.2). Fast
4
For a more thorough discussion of the various editions of the work and the date of
its composition, see Richard Hermann, ‘Theories of Chordal Shape, Aspects of Linguistics,
and their Roles in Structuring Berio’s Sequenza IV for Piano’, in Elizabeth West Marvin and
Richard Hermann (eds), Concert Music, Rock and Jazz since 1945: Essays and Analytic
Studies (Rochester, 1995), pp. 365–67.
5
Luciano Berio, Chamber Music (Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm, 1998).
6
Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998).
56 Zoe Browder Doll
transitions such as this require the pianist to be careful that all of the notes to be
sustained are firmly depressed to the bottom of the key bed, in order to ensure that
all of the sustained pitches will ‘catch’. Uneven pressure in the hand could result in
the loss of one of the sustained pitches. This type of ‘deep’ attack is opposite to the
pianist’s natural tendency to move quickly out of the key bed in fast transitions and
illustrates how Berio’s piano music is technically demanding beyond the scope of
the traditional repertoire.
Example 3.1 Sequenza IV: bars 109–16
The most prevalent sostenuto technique used in Sequenza IV is that involving the
use of sostenuto tones. The passage beginning at bar 105 is an example of this
technique (Ex. 3.3); it features sostenuto tones and ‘hidden’ harmonies emerging
after the attack chords. Fig. 3.1 represents the decay process of the sostenuto tones’
and, at first glance, could easily be mistaken for the graphic score of an electronic
composition. Each vertical stack of blocks represents a chord; the filled-in blocks
with lines extending from them are the sostenuto tones. These lines show
approximate decay time, as well as vibration strength – the sympathetic vibrations

are stronger immediately following the attack. The single blocks with a dot in the
middle represent the non-sostenuto tones, which quickly fade away after the
attack.7 The tall rectangular blocks represent cluster chords, which may also
contain sostenuto tones (as at the beginning of bar 106 on the top system); the
slanted rectangular blocks represent directional cluster chords (which I will discuss
later). The graph does not show specific pitches and only approximates rhythms;
however, the graph is successful in presenting a sonic picture of the attacks and
decays of the chords, which are not obvious from the printed score. Bar 105
contains many sostenuto tones; the second event of that bar is a chord containing
six notes, three of which are sostenuto tones (A, F and C) and thus will continue to
sound after the release of the chord. This illustrates the ‘hidden’ harmonies that
emerge after the initial attack and release of a chord: rather than hearing all six of
the pitches from the original chord, the listener hears the three sostenuto tones,
which in this case spell a chord of F major.
The rhythmic results of the sostenuto tones are also complex: the decay of the
initial attack chord creates a phantom articulation of the sostenuto tones, while the
decay of the sostenuto tones outlasts that of the non-sostenuto tones. At the
moment of the attack the ear does not yet know which, if any, of the notes will be
7
These may be notes that are marked staccato or may merely achieve a ‘perceptual
staccato’ owing to the speed of a particular passage.
58 Zoe Browder Doll
sustained; it is not until the release of the initial chord that the hidden sostenuto
tones become apparent to the ear and, from that moment, begin to decay. It is in
this way the sostenuto pedal serves as a kind of acoustic envelope generator,
adding decay time to the already released chords.
Fig. 3.1 Attack points and decay times in Sequenza IV, bars 105–6
This plays a perceptual trick on the listener, by leaving the ear with a different
sonority from that of the attack chord, again working more like an acoustic
envelope generator than a traditional sostenuto pedal. The next three-note chord in
bar 105 is composed exclusively of sostenuto tones (E#, G and B) and is followed
by a single non-sostenuto tone (F). The frequency of sostenuto tones produces a
great build-up of background reverberations by the end of the measure. Bar 106
contains few sostenuto tones, but the dramatic fortissimo cluster chords help the
background reverberations grow stronger. In bar 109, a new chord is sustained on
the third beat (see Ex. 3.1). Two events, which contain no sostenuto tones,
perpetuate the reverberations in bar 110: the grace-note cluster at the end of bar
109 which leads to the accented A on the first beat of bar 110; and the accented
fortissimo C on the second beat of bar 110. More rearticulations occur in bar 111;
the first accented C (at the end of the first beat) is especially prominent and is
repeated in the rolled gesture near the middle of the measure. The six notes of the
grace-note gesture preceding bar 112 are held with the fingers and then sustained
by the middle pedal, providing a new harmonic background. The forte gesture on
the first beat of bar 113 rearticulates the entire sustained chord with the exception
of right hand’s D – the shape of the cluster chord in bar 113 only allows the
pianist to play the designated start pitch of D# with the thumb, which forces the D
to be omitted – and is followed by two beats of rhythmic ‘silence’ (during which
the background reverberations continue) before the next gesture. The three
accented non-sostenuto tones in bar 114 excite many reverberations, as do the
accented gestures in the following bar, which lead to the climactic accented B# at
the downbeat of bar 116. Here Berio indicates a six-second pause; the damper
pedal overlaps with the sostenuto pedal, catching the build-up of reverberations
from the previous bar before the sostenuto pedal is released. This arrival is an
example of how Berio emphasizes background reverberations by exploiting
perceptual space, allowing time (here, an exact duration of time) for the listener to
hear the effects of the sostenuto pedal. Berio uses exact-duration pauses throughout
Sequenza IV to emphasize the pedal’s effects.
Other factors can cause the sostenuto effects to be more audible, including loud
dynamic levels and the use of cluster chords (as in bar 106), both of which excite
many sympathetic vibrations when the sostenuto pedal is engaged. Loud gestures
tend to cover up the background reverberations while they are happening, but once
completed leave behind a much thicker ‘fog’ of sound. Conversely, softer gestures
allow the listener to hear more of the delicate counterpoint between non-sostenuto
tones, sostenuto tones and the background reverberations, as is also the case with
the majority of Leaf.
Berio also uses palm cluster chords extensively in Sequenza IV, notating them
with specific top and bottom pitches. He gives some of the clusters an assigned
direction, so that the pianist must shift the weight of the hand across the palm in
the appropriate direction to achieve the desired effect. The ‘normal’ clusters are
connected by a vertical line and thus sound simultaneously, such as at the
downbeat of bar 113. A diagonal line connects the directional clusters, which either
sound from bottom to top, such as the first cluster of bar 114 (D#5 to B#5) or top to
60 Zoe Browder Doll
bottom, such as the second cluster of the same bar (E3 to B2). This non-
simultaneous sounding of pitches can alter the listener’s perception of the
sostenuto tones by making their attacks audible when nestled in the middle of a
directional cluster. Some of the directional clusters also have an accented goal
note, such as the third beat of bar 115, where the right hand has a directional
cluster that spans from F5 to G6 (the G6 is accented) and a directional cluster that
spans from C4 to B4 (B4 is accented). Berio uses these directional clusters, accented
goal notes and sostenuto tones to create new layers of harmonic and rhythmic
activity.
The first beat of bar eight (Ex. 3.2) illustrates an important damper-pedal
technique not found in Leaf or Sonata: that of fully depressing (‘flooring’) the
damper pedal immediately after an articulated chord, thus catching the end of the
decay of the chord and preserving an interesting array of somewhat unpredictable
pitches. Berio notes in the score that ‘[t]he attack sffz must always be as loud as
possible. The pedal, when used immediately after this type of attack, should collect
only random noises and resonances’. This technique can be employed even while
the sostenuto pedal is depressed, provided that the pianist uses the left foot to hold
the middle pedal.8 The technique of using the two normally right-foot pedals
together allows a greater range of dynamic intensity for the sympathetic vibrations:
the addition of the damper pedal magnifies the background reverberations so that
they are more audible. That Berio does not use this flooring technique in Leaf is
significant. As will be discussed, the fabric of Leaf is woven of constant, intricate
surface rhythms combined with sub-rhythms created by sostenuto tones; the
dramatic flooring technique would be out of place in Leaf’s delicate environment.
It is used in Sequenza IV only at moments when perceptual space has been
accounted for in order to hear the decay of the random reverberations caught by the
floored damper pedal.
One can hear subtle differences in the execution of bar eight by comparing the
two recordings. Boffard’s floored pedal goes down soon after the sffz chord of the
first beat, catching pitches as well as reverberations, resulting in a rather loud haze
of sound. Schliermacher’s floored pedal is slightly delayed, so that all that is
preserved are the reverberations, which is perhaps a closer interpretation of the
composer’s intent. However, the pianist is not necessarily to blame for the success
or otherwise of the outcome: this effect is more successful on some pianos than
others, depending on a multitude of factors beyond the pianist’s control, such as
the humidity level, the regulation of the piano’s action and the condition of the
piano’s dampers.
One example from Sequenza IV where the sostenuto pedal is engaged but no
sostenuto tones are heard can be found at the beginning of the piece, from the end
of bar eight to bar thirteen (Ex. 3.2). This technique appears throughout the piece
8
In these situations of more complex pedalling the pianist must also ensure that the
foot controlling the sostenuto pedal does not allow changes in pressure, as the slightest
twitch can cause other notes to be sustained erroneously.
and facilitates an ambient haze to arise from the staccato chord attacks. The choice
of using no sostenuto tones focuses the listener’s attention on the dynamics and
articulations of the staccato chords and the delicate background reverberations,
rather than on the decay of sostenuto tones. The delicate background reverberations
in this section can clearly be heard in both recordings, particularly in
Schliermacher’s (bar eight begins 21 seconds into the piece in both performances).
Boffard appears to strike a wrong chord at the end of bar ten: certainly, it produces
a slightly different set of reverberations than the chord heard in Schliermacher’s
performance. This is an excellent example of how slight alterations in non-
sostenuto tones can produce different perceptual effects with the same sustained
chord. By bar 12 the amount of rhythmic activity and the dynamic level have risen
greatly, producing even more reverberations, leading up to the sforzando chord
following the second beat of bar 13. However, the background haze is erased soon
after the sforzando chord, as the sustained chord changes at the end of the bar,
along with the change in dynamic level to ppp.
There are performance-related dangers in sections such as this, as in all
passages involving the middle pedal: the pianist may accidentally strike a note
from the sustained chord, causing an erroneous sostenuto tone or, more frequently,
the instrument’s sostenuto pedal may not have been regulated properly and thus
unwanted sostenuto tones may occur, particularly if the pedal remains engaged for
longer periods of time.9 A malfunctioning sostenuto pedal can cause the performer
an array of problems. Perhaps the most common example is when the sostenuto
catches extra notes in addition to the desired tones. This has to do with the
alignment of the dampers inside the piano and requires a talented piano technician
to fix. The fact that few composers have written extensively for this pedal
unfortunately also means that few technicians have had a great deal of experience
in repairing it. A faulty sostenuto pedal may sustain the correct pitches initially but
later allow additional pitches to ‘slip’ and become sustained. This seems to be most
likely to happen in loud passages and generally the notes that slip are located in
proximity to the correct sustained pitches. A particularly risky section begins at bar
31, where a D# is held by the sostenuto pedal for the next 31 bars. In my own
experience of playing the piece, I find that the sostenuto pedal rarely works for the
duration of this section. The longer the pedal stays down, the greater the chance of
extra notes becoming sustained. An excellent example of the pedal working
properly throughout this section can be heard in the recordings (from 1:16–2:22).
Here, one can clearly hear the D# ringing in the background until bar 50, when the
sustained chord changes.
9
Joseph Banowetz writes that ‘Unfortunately, on many instruments, even in concert
halls, the middle pedal is not properly regulated.’ Banowetz, p. 92.
62 Zoe Browder Doll
Leaf (1990) and Sonata for solo piano (2001)
Although Leaf was composed 24 years after Sequenza IV, the two pieces bear
resemblances to each other, not only in sostenuto technique but also in harmonic
vocabulary and rhythmic gesture. Leaf was written in 1990 for a special memorial
concert mourning the death of Michael Vyner, artistic director of the London
Sinfonietta from 1972 to 1989. It is part of a set of short pieces, Six Encores for
piano, which also includes Brin (1990), Wasserklavier (1965), Erdenklavier
(1969), Luftklavier (1985) and Feuerklavier (1989). One unusual characteristic of
Leaf is that the sostenuto pedal holds the first chord throughout the whole piece.10
The majority of the piece is restricted to the middle region of the keyboard, as are
the sustained notes, and the result is that there are many sostenuto tones of the
initial chord. As in Sequenza IV, the suspension of the chord creates several
different layers of activity, which can be understood by looking at the right hand’s
chord in bar two (see Ex. 3.4 and Fig. 3.2). There are four notes in this chord (C5–
E5–F5–A5), including two ‘hidden’ sostenuto tones. Including the sustained pitches,
it forms an F major7 chord. The hidden, rearticulated pitches that remain from that
chord are F and C: interpreted diatonically, these create a perfect fourth, which
could allude to a type of tonal centre around F. However, when one considers the
demisemiquaver note preceding that chord, a sustained F4, two perceptible effects
are altered: first, the resultant ringing harmony now contains a dissonance created
by the F and F; and second, a ‘phantom rhythm’ is established by the sustained F
leading to the sustained F and C. Thus, the different sostenuto tones when
combined create yet another layer of harmonic activity.The occurrence of a dyad of
F and C sostenuto tones sounding simultaneously appears throughout the piece in
three different guises. The first finds them nested inside the chord described above,
which reappears in bars 6, 21, 19, 31 and 33. The chord’s appearance in bar six is
interesting in that, as in bar two, it is preceded by an F, except in bar six the F –
now F3 – is not a sostenuto tone, altering the perceptual effect significantly. The
other two chords that the dyad appears in have very different sonorities. One is a
cluster chord (B–C–E–F) and is found in bars 21 and 24; and the other is an F
minor7 chord (C–E–F–A#) and is found in bar 37. Thus, sostenuto tones may come
from a number of different source chords, each producing a different perceptual
harmony. Like the F and C of bar two, the sostenuto tones in bar three also present
a quasi-tonal harmony, this time an incomplete G7 chord (G–D–F).
The entire piece contains only 21 different combinations of sostenuto tones,
each appearing in several different source chords, with the exception of the
sostenuto tone of a single D5, which appears eight times but always in the same
chord. The first appearance of this chord can be seen in bar five (B4–D5–E5–G5
cluster). Logically, the groups of sostenuto tones that occur most frequently are those
10
The first chord does not actually sound throughout the whole piece, but rather is
engaged by the middle pedal.
Example 3.4 Leaf: bars 1–10
Fig. 3.2 Attack points and decay times in Leaf, bars 1–10
64 Zoe Browder Doll
that contain fewer notes, as they can be inserted into a number of different chords.
The most frequent sostenuto tone, a single G4, occurs 15 times in 10 different
chords, the first of which appears in bar three. This collection of sostenuto tones
creates an endless variety of chordal combinations, of different harmonic events
coexisting. Leaf can be viewed as a distillation of the sostenuto techniques
presented in Sequenza IV: although it bears many similarities to the former, it is
undeniably a miniature by comparison.
Berio’s last composition for solo piano was the Sonata (2001). It contains many
of the same sostenuto pedal techniques as Sequenza IV and Leaf, as well as
similarities in chord shapes and rhythmic gestures. The Sonata begins with a nine-
note, silently depressed chord, which is then held by the sostenuto pedal before the
pianist strikes the first note of the piece, a B#4 that is repeated throughout the first
section of the single movement. Repeated pitches figure prominently in the
language of the Sonata, as one can see by turning to almost any page (see Exx.
3.5–7). Berio’s treatment of these repeated pitches in combination with the
sostenuto pedal creates an interesting palette of textures, as illustrated in the
opening bars of the piece, where the repeated B#4, marked pppp, is also a sostenuto
tone.
Example 3.5 Sonata: bar 47

A significant difference between the Sonata and Sequenza IV is in Berio’s notation

of directional palm clusters. Rather than using diagonal lines to indicate the
direction in which the cluster is to move (as in Sequenza IV), he adds a grace note
before a palm cluster (such as bar 47, Ex. 3.5), here indicating a quick bottom-to-
top rotation of the hand. His other way of notating this effect, as is illustrated on
the third beat of bar 39, is to use a traditional arrow to indicate that the palm cluster
should be rolled upward (Ex. 3.6). This creates an identical effect to that of the
older notation found in Sequenza IV.
Sonata also employs clusters as the sustained chord, such as in the passage
beginning at bar 39. The sostenuto pedal holds both hands’ palm clusters until the
middle of bar 46. This allows a certain degree of chance in terms of which notes
will be sustained: depending on the size of the pianist’s hand and physical
variances from performance to performance – on the part of the piano as well as
the performer – slightly different sostenuto tones will result. A palm cluster is also
sustained at the end of bar 53, a passage musically similar to bar 39 (see Ex. 3.7).
The actual suspension of this chord is interesting in that both hands are used to
sustain it: the left hand sustains a small cluster, from G4 to B#4, while the right hand
sustains a cluster from B4 to F5. Here, several different possibilities of note
suspensions are possible. For the right hand’s cluster, the pianist could sustain five
notes, B–C–D–E–F. With a lowering of the wrist, the pianist could also sustain the
F, for a total of six notes; however, the pianist could also choose to include black
keys in the middle of the cluster, creating even more possibilities. Obviously, a
pianist with a particularly large hand, or with wide fingers, will be able to sustain
more notes than a pianist with a small hand. Berio has refined his notation of
directional clusters in the Sonata from that used in Sequenza IV to better achieve
the desired effect for a particular section.

66 Zoe Browder Doll
Conclusion
Berio has, in these three pieces, helped to expand the vocabulary of the piano by
employing the sostenuto pedal in order to create complex rhythmic and harmonic
layers, and by graphically representing attack points and decay times, the effects of
the sostenuto pedal on the perception of the music can be revealed. The sostenuto
techniques established in Sequenza IV opened new dimensions of sonic
possibilities for the piano, enabling the pianist and the composer to achieve the
same effects with the piano as with an electronic envelope generator. Berio’s uses
of the sostenuto pedal in Leaf and the Sonata complement and add to those
previously established in Sequenza IV, and indicate a relatively unexplored sonic
potential for contemporary and future composers.
Chapter 4
A Dress or a Straightjacket?
Facing the Problems of Structure and
Periodicity Posed by the Notation of
Berio’s Sequenza VII for Oboe
Patricia Alessandrini
The issue of notation comes out, at least in my own musical perspective, when there is a
dilemma, when there is a problem to be solved. And that pushes me to find solutions
that maybe I was never pushed to find before. That happens, of course, mostly when
there is a certain amount of indeterminacy that is needed in order to gain a certain result
... the larger issue, the scope of the work, the reason, if you want, both the technical and
expressive reason of the work, that justifies the local situation. That must be seen in
perspective.1
In 1996, the American oboist Jacqueline Leclair drafted a metred version of

Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VII for oboe (1969). She showed her ‘renotation’ to
Berio and obtained his permission to have her metred version published as a
supplementary edition.2 This development in the life of this work prompts me to
reflect upon the function of the original notation and investigate the temporal
results of its durational plan in performance. The three sections of this study deal
with different aspects of the structure and proportions of the work: how the musical
materials of the piece relate to the temporal grid; how Leclair’s renotation is
intended to articulate the proportions essential to the structure as she interprets it,
1
From an interview with Luciano Berio conducted by Benedict Weisser, April 24,
1997. Transcribed in Benedict Weisser, Notational Practice in Contemporary Music: A
Critique of Three Compositional Models (Luciano Berio, John Cage and Brian
Ferneyhough) (PhD dissertation, City University of New York, 1998), Appendix A.
2
Published by Universal Edition (Vienna, 2001), as Sequenza VIIa per oboe (1969,
rev. 2000), with the original unmeasured notation printed on the back of the supplementary
edition. This edition includes a short commentary by Leclair on Holliger’s performance
notes (warning that they ‘have varying degrees of applicability’), as well as some minor
notational changes in the score, such as the use of microtones in the ‘chords’ (i.e.
multiphonics).
68 Patricia Alessandrini
with comparisons to Berio’s renotation of his Sequenza I for solo flute; and how
two performers, Heinz Holliger and Laszlò Hadady, deal with these same
proportions in their respective interpretations of Sequenza VII.
The structural functions of the grid notation
…very often what happens, there is a temporal grid, maybe static, but the other
[temporal organizations] are moving in a constantly mobile way. Sometimes the
temporal grid is completely abstract, indifferent ... There are always different phases that
are important.3
The most original aspect of the notation of Sequenza VII is its grid structure:
thirteen lines of music are intersected by thirteen vertical dotted lines dividing each
line into the same set of subsections with very specific second durations (2.7
seconds, 1.3 seconds, etc.). The notes between these subdivisions are in a freely
mixed combination of spatial and ‘rhythmic’ (i.e. notes with specified rhythmic
values) notation; the use of rhythmic material increases over the course of the
piece. The durations of the unmeasured notes are determined either spatially, in
relation to the indicated seconds, or by articulation: there is a vertical line through
some of the notes indicating that they are to be as short as possible. Although
having the same set of second durations for each line would seem to indicate that
each line should have the same duration (22.6 seconds, the total of the thirteen
subdivisions), this is not the case, as there are fermatas within many of the
subdivisions that have their own additional durations indicated in seconds (Table
4.1). The score is therefore not proportionally notated in the sense of space
consistently representing time, as it does in Sequenza I. If the lines are not equal,
what is gained by arranging them symmetrically? Or in other words, what
information does the grid format provide to the performer? Would this visual
organization be more informative if it reflected the overall temporal proportions,
including the fermatas? In attempting to answer these questions, I will first look at
how the grid relates to the pitch material.
The performance notes of Sequenza VII indicate that the pitch B4 must be
played throughout the piece by an invisible source, such as ‘an oscillator, a
clarinet, [or] a pre-taped oboe’.4 The soloist often repeats this externally sustained
B4, which serves as a ‘tonic’5 and contributes to the virtual polyphony of the work.
This pitch is constantly recontextualized, as it passes through various harmonic
fields.6 The most structurally important harmonic fields are the first, [B#3, D4, B4,
3
Berio, quoted in Weisser, Appendix A.
4
Berio, Sequenza VII for oboe, performance notes.
5
Berio in Ivanka Stoïanova, Luciano Berio: Chemins en Musique (Paris, 1985), p. 433.
6
Berio discusses the idea of polyphony in the Sequenzas, and the importance of
harmonic fields in their composition in Luciano Berio, Two Interviews with Rosanna
Dalmonte and Bálint András Varga, trans. and ed. David Osmond-Smith (New
Sequenza VII for Oboe 69
A5, C6] and the last, [B4, B#5, C6, C6, E#6], the latter consisting of the same pitch-
class set as the first, but transposed upwards by a semitone (T1) so that there are
three common tones between them (see Fig. 4.1).7
Table 4.1 Line durations in seconds
Line Duration in seconds

1 22.6
2 28.6 (6)
3 22.6
4 28.6 (6)
5 22.6
6 26.6 (4)
7 22.6
8 32.6 (5*,5)
9 22.6
10 27.6 (5*)
11 39.6 (5,4,3,5)
12 50.6 (3,3,2,5,4,5,6)
13 67.6 (4,3,2,3,4,2,3,5,2,4,2,5,6)
Note: the number of seconds of each fermata appears in parenthesis. All fermatas prolong a
played note except for the two marked by an asterisk, which prolong rests.
Fig. 4.1 First and last pitch-fields in normal form8
T1
There are a few obvious ways in which the grid illuminates these harmonic fields
(Table 4.2). The first line consists entirely of B4, coloured by various dynamics,
articulations and alternative fingerings. Two of the other pitches of the first
harmonic field, B#3 and C6, appear for the first time in the first subdivision of the
second line. The last pitch set begins in the first subdivision of the eleventh line,
where the B4 and C6 of the harmonic field are established. The penultimate
harmonic field, dominated by the climactic pitch G6 – which, when it appears for
the first time in line nine, completes the chromatic aggregate and achieves the
York/London, 1985), pp. 97–9. In this study, the term ‘harmonic field’ is used to refer to a
structural collection of pitches, with each pitch placed in a specific register. The pitches of
the harmonic field are not necessarily the only pitches occurring in a given section.
7
It is important to note that the pitch material is register specific, so that the pitch-
classes of each set are not reproduced in more than one octave within the same harmonic
field. The pitch-class B, for instance, never occurs in the octave above or below B4.
8
In set-class theory, ‘normal’ form arranges pitch-classes so that the interval between
the first and last note, and the first and second note, is the smallest possible.
upper boundary of the registral limits of the oboe9 – occurs discretely in the tenth
line: there are 22 articulations of G6 in the tenth line, and only four other
occurrences of it elsewhere: one in the ninth line, two in the twelfth, and one in line
thirteen . The complete absence of G6 in line eleven, despite the fact that it occurs
once in each of the last three subdivisions of line ten, clarifies the beginning of the
last set (which does not contain G6). The other pitch sets are, however, not so
clearly articulated by the grid, usually beginning and ending somewhere in the
interior of the lines, perhaps in keeping with Berio’s philosophy of varying phases.
Table 4.2 List of harmonic fields and their relation to the grid
Harmonic field Lines Measures Total measures

B4 1 1–13 13
B#3, D4, B4, A5, C6* 2 1–13 23
3 1–10
F5 3 11–13 4
4 1
B#3, (D4), B4, (F5, G5), C6 4 2–7.5 6.5
D4, E4, B4, F5, F5, G5, C6, D#6 4 8.5–13 8.5
5 1–3
D4, (E#4), B4, F5, (F5), B#5 5 4–13 12
6 1–2
D4, (E4), E#4, B4, F5, F5, C6, D#6 6 2–11 10
(E#4), E4, (B4, F5, F5, C6, D#6) 6 12–13 8
7 1–6
B4, A5, B#5, C6, (D#6) 7 7–13 12
8 1–6
(B4), F5 9 3–6 4
B#3, C4, B4, (F5), A5, C6, G6 10 1–13 13
B4, B#5, C6, C6, E#6** 11 1–13 39
12 1–13
13 1–13
Note: * indicates pitch-field [A, B#, B, C, D]; ** indicates pitch-field [B#, B,C, C, E#].
Pitches in parenthesis are considered less important structurally.
9
The standard range of the oboe is B#3–G6. Both of these boundary pitches have
structural importance in this piece.
The question arises as to whether these harmonic fields might have fit more
precisely onto a grid that allowed for the fermatas, thereby exactly representing
spatially the durations of the piece. A thirteen-line grid with the same total duration
as the original (6 minutes and 54.8 seconds, the total of the indicated second
durations plus the durations of the fermatas ) would have to have approximately 32
(31.9) seconds in each line in order for all of them to be equal. An analysis of the
durations of each harmonic field including both the indicated seconds and the
durations of the fermatas shows that this hypothetical line length is not as relevant
to the harmonic fields as the original line lengths; nor does it show any other
consistent patterns in terms of seconds (see Table 4.3). Perhaps the performer is
meant, therefore, to think of the fermatas as ‘stopped time’, pauses whose time is
not part of the directionality of the piece, but rather moments during which time is
frozen until the player continues to the next note. This seems to suggest that the
given length of each fermata is not vital to the structure of the work, and thus
might be interpreted somewhat freely by the performer. I will presently show,
however, that these durations play an important role in the interpretation of the
formal proportions of the work.
Table 4.3 Harmonic fields and their durations
Harmonic fields Duration in seconds

B4 22.6
B#3, D4, B4, A5, C6 48.2
F5 5
B#3, (D4), B4, (F5, G5), C6 12.5
D4, E4, B4, F5, F5, G5, C6, D#6 14
D4, (E#4), B4, F5, (F5), B#5 20.6
D4, (E4), E#4, B4, F5, F5, C6, D#6 23.6
(E#4), E4, (B4, F5, F5, C6, D#6) 15.7
B4, A5, B#5, C6, (D#6) 30.8
(B4), F5 8
B#3, C4, B4, (F5), A5, C6, G6 27.6
B4, B#5, C6, C6, E#6 157.8
The grid notation also frames the formal proportions. The climax of the piece – the
aforementioned G6, flutter-tongued and fortissimo – occurs in the sixth subsection
of the tenth line. In terms of the grid, this climax occurs approximately three-
quarters of the way into the piece, in subdivision 123 of the 169 subdivisions of the
piece, 73 per cent of the way through the grid. In terms of seconds, however, it
actually occurs at a point less than three-fifths of the way through, 246.6 seconds
into the 414.8 indicated seconds of the piece, which is just after 59 per cent of its
total indicated duration. The grid therefore encourages a traditional interpretation

of the form as related to the western classical construct of having a single climax
located at approximately the three-quarter point or further into the work (or a
discrete section of it). Taking a broader view of the climax, the persistent
reiterations of G6 – including the aforementioned climactic flutter-tongued note –
occur in the tenth line, therefore 77 per cent of the way through the 13 lines of the
grid. The three following lines are the longest in terms of total seconds (as shown
in Table 4.1), constituting 38 per cent of the overall time of the piece, a large
percentage considering that they make up only 23 per cent of the score visually.
The fact that this much musical time is condensed into a relatively small space, and
the fact that this stretching of musical time is the result of a continually increasing
number of fermatas (see Table 4.1), encourages an interpretation of the section
after the climax as being in a slower tempo than the preceding music and having a
ritardando that winds down toward the end of the piece. Within this interpretation,
the long duration of the last pitch-field (139 seconds) could be viewed as static
harmony creating a discrete ending section, something like a coda
A formal analysis based principally on the second durations favours an
interpretation of the climax and the section surrounding it as articulating the golden
section of the work: if the climax divides the work into two parts, the closing
section following the climax, taking up 38 per cent of the total duration, has
approximately the same proportion to the first 62 per cent of the work as this larger
portion has to the whole.10 Ivanka Stoʀanova prefers this interpretation of the
climax, placing the climactic G6 in what she calls ‘la partie la plus virtuose’ [the
most virtuosic section] in the “zone” of the golden section.11 Leclair comes to
similar conclusions in her own analysis of the work, finding the domain of seconds
more pertinent to the form than the grid format.12
It is nonetheless clear that some important events of the piece – such as the first
occurrence of pitches other than B4 in the first subdivision of the first line, and the
repetition of G6 in the tenth – are linked to the grid. It is thus possible to interpret
events in the piece in relation to the visual space on the page, whether or not that
space corresponds proportionally to time. This possibility is reflected in the
following description of Berio’s compositional methods by his former musical
assistant, Nicholas Hopkins:
Berio often composes today [in 1997] by drawing bar-lines on every measure of the
page, such that each beat within a measure is equivalent in size. He will take a ruler,
measure the length of a staff on the paper, divide it in such a way as to produce a
number of beats equidistant in size, and then fill in the music. Rhythmic material is
10
The proportions, rounded to two decimal points, are 1:1.63 and 1:1.61 respectively.
11
Stoïanova, p. 436.
12
Leclair’s analysis of Sequenza VII, provided by personal communication (January
1999). Much of this work has since been made available by Leclair at the website Berio
Oboe Sequenza VIIa. Available at http://www.beriooboesequenza.com.
defined as to how it fits into the grid Berio lays out on each sheet of paper. By doing
13
this, he can jump from page to page, line to line, and fill in the content as he wishes.
More interesting, perhaps, than speculating on Berio’s compositional techniques in

relation to the grid is to look at the information it gives the performer, and how the
notation may affect their performance of the piece.
Renotation: Leclair’s supplementary edition and Berio’s renotation of Sequenza I
Virtuosity often arises out of a conflict, a tension between the musical idea and the
instrument, between concept and musical substance … virtuosity can come to the fore
when a concern for technique and stereotyped instrumental gestures get the better of the
idea ... Another instance where tension arises is when the novelty and complexity of
musical thought – with its equally complex and diverse expressive dimensions –
imposes changes in the relationship with the instrument, often necessitating a novel
technical solution ... where the interpreter is required to perform at an extremely high
14
level of technical and intellectual virtuosity.
The renotation of Sequenza VII by Leclair began as her own personal method of
interpreting the notation in order to execute the indicated durations as accurately as
possible. Her renotation is, therefore, not an exact calculation of rhythms made by
measuring the spaces between notes in the unmeasured subsections, but rather a
representation of her own rhythmic interpretation of these events as a performer,
set in a new thirteen-line grid that accurately replicates the second durations in
metred form. In her tempo of MM 60, (there is of course no tempo marking in the
original), the first subdivision of 3 seconds becomes a 3/4 measure, the second
subdivision of 2.7 seconds becomes 11/16, and so on. It is her contention that the
overall form of the piece takes place in the domain of total second durations
(including the fermatas), rather than in the visual domain of the grid or in an
interpretation of the fermatas as ‘stopped time’. The performer must therefore
execute all of the second durations as accurately as possible in order to articulate
the overall form. Leclair divides the piece into an arch form of three sections: two
outer sections of 176 and 172 seconds respectively, with an inner section of 60
seconds set off from the outer sections by the two 5-second silences of the piece,
rests with a 5-second fermata occurring respectively in the first subdivision of the
eighth line and the fourth subdivision of the tenth line (see Table 4.1). There are
several compositional details which support this interpretation: the first section
ends climactically, with a flutter-tongued C6 (one of the most structurally important
pitches of the piece, along with B4 and G6); the middle section begins with
repetitions of the B4, as in the very opening of the piece, and ends with another
13
Weisser, p. 11.
14
Luciano Berio, Two Interviews, pp. 90–91.
flutter-tongued C6 followed by a fortissimo B4; and the climactic flutter-tongued G6

occurs a few seconds into the last section. Like Stoʀanova, Leclair sees the climax
as articulating the golden section, delineating a two-part form complementary to
the symmetry of the arch form.15
Part of Leclair’s justification for not attempting a systematic determination of
the rhythmic interpretation of the spatial notation is that the notation itself does not
precisely relate space to the second durations, in that the vertical lines indicating
the regions of seconds are only approximately proportional. For instance, the 1-
second regions are not equal in size, and the 1.3-second region is almost the same
size as one of these 1-second regions, rather than being a third larger. More
importantly, Leclair feels that articulating the overall structure of the piece by
adhering to the second durations as closely as possible is a greater imperative than
preserving the spatial–temporal relationships between the individual notes.
Because her choice of rhythms serves only as the means towards the goal of
accurately executing the durations, she suggests that the performer use her
renotation as a guide for study, and perform from the original.16
This technique of transcribing spatial rhythms into new measured relationships
– which are not necessarily exact interpretations of the spaces between each note
but nonetheless keep the overall proportions of the piece intact – is similar to the
process used by Berio in producing a rhythmic version of his Sequenza I in 1992.17
It is interesting to note that Berio began Sequenza I as a measured work, as
Nicholas Hopkins relates:
He originally wrote it in exceptionally fine detail (almost like Ferneyhough in the

original form), but Gazzelloni [for whom it was written] could not handle it, so Berio
18
decided to use spatial notation.
Ten years before he began his renotation of Sequenza I, Berio explained that in
order to deal with the technical difficulties of this piece, he ‘adopted a notation that
was very precise, but allowed a margin of flexibility in order that the player might
have the freedom – psychological rather than musical – to adapt the piece here and
there to his technical stature’. He was not, however, satisfied with all of the
interpretations:
But instead, this notation has allowed many players ... to perpetrate adaptations that
were little short of piratical. In fact, I hope to rewrite Sequenza I in rhythmic notation:
19
maybe it will be less “open” and more authoritarian, but at least it will be reliable.
15
Jacqueline Leclair, personal communication, January 1999–March 2000.
16
Ibid.
17
Benedict Weisser’s study of the 1992 version shows that it does not attempt to
convert the spatial relationships into exactly equivalent rhythmic proportions.
18
Weisser, p. 2.
19
In the sense of preferring a performance that has more accurate timings overall at
the possible cost of the freer – and thus perhaps more varied and abstract – rhythms
produced by spatial notation, Berio’s viewpoint in the 1980s seems similar to that
of Leclair. His idea of the function of his metric version of Sequenza I is also
similar to her performance idea, in its intention to minimize the loss of rhythmic
freedom: ‘...what’s happening is that they are continuing to perform [Sequenza I],
if they don’t learn it by heart, from the older spatial notation, and they use the
rhythmical [1992 version] as a reference’.20
When Leclair sent her renotation of Sequenza VII to Heinz Holliger in 1997
(before Berio had approved its publication), Holliger responded that although it is
an ‘accurate work’, he didn’t ‘see really the reason for it’, because he considered
the oboe part of Chemins IV to be Berio’s own measured version.21 The solo part
from Chemins IV does not, however, function in the same way as Leclair’s
renotation for three reasons: it does not attempt to preserve the overall duration of
the original; it does not retain the same subdivisions as the original but instead
introduces new metric divisions; and it does not retain the grid structure of the
original. Holliger went on to praise the original notation of Sequenza VII:
I like very much Berio’s clever notation: mixing normal and space [spatial] notation. It
gives the right balance between precision and spontaneity. It is very precise where it
needs to be and leaves some freedom where it has to ... [it is] very appropriate and
imaginative notation, which is a very exact image of the isometric structure of the
22
piece.
Interpretations: analyses of recordings by Heinz Holliger and Laszlò Hadady
… ce qui m’intéresse ce n’est pas la virtuosité extérieure de la performance, c’est la

23
virtuosité dans le contrôle des gestes instrumentaux – ce qui est tout à fait différent …
Holliger clearly feels that he is able to articulate the structure of the piece when he
performs from the original score. The line-by-line analysis of his 1976 recording of
Sequenza VII below measures his accuracy in executing the specified durations of
each line (Table 4.4); an interpretation of this data demonstrates the degree to
which he is successful in articulating the overall structure. 24
20
Weisser, Appendix A.
21
Heinz Holliger, letter to Jacqueline Leclair, 3 October 1997.
22
Ibid.
23
‘I’m not interested in virtuosity outside of performance, but rather virtuosity in the
control of instrumental gestures – which is completely different’. Luciano Berio, quoted in
Stoʀanova, p. 393.
24
I have used the 1976 recording available on Luciano Berio, ‘Points on the Curve to
find…’, Folksongs, Sequenza VII, Laborintus II, (Ermitage, 1995) rather than the 1969
Philips recording on Luciano Berio, Sequenza II & VII, Différences, Due Pezzi, Chamber
Table 4.4 Line durations in Holliger’s 1976 recording
Lines of the Holliger’s Indicated Differential Percentage

score durations durations
1 15.5 22.6 -7.1 -31.4 %
2 26 28.6 -2.6 -9.1 %
3 21.1 22.6 -1.5 -6.6 %
4 28 28.6 -.6 -2.1 %
5 25.4 22.6 +2.8 +12.4 %
6 29.3 26.6 +2.7 +10.2 %
7 29.2 22.6 +6.6 +29.2 %
8 38.7 32.6 +6.1 +18.7 %
9 21.6 22.6 -1 -4.4 %
10 31.2 27.6 +3.6 +13 %
11 39.3 39.6 -.3 (negligible)
12 48.5 50.6 -2.1 -4.2 %
13 65.1 67.6 -2.5 -3.7 %
Table 4.4 shows a wide range of accuracy, from within a second of the specified
durations in line 11 to nearly one-third less in lines 1 and 7. Are there differences
in the notation or in the musical materials constituting these lines that might
account for these variations? In particular, does the presence of a greater
proportion of rhythmically notated material in a line result in a more accurate
execution? In fact, the two most inaccurate lines contain the least amount of
traditional rhythmic notation in comparison to the other lines of the score: the first
line consists entirely of spatial notation (other than two quaver rests and a
semiquaver rest), while the seventh line contains only one rhythmically notated
figure, a 32-note quintuplet in the sixth subdivision. The relative accuracy of the
last three lines – the first, fourth and third most accurate respectively, with an
average differential of 2.6 per cent – further strengthens this argument, as more
than half of the subdivisions in this section are rhythmically notated. The fourth
line, however, is also executed with a relatively small time differential, making it
the second most proportionally accurate line, despite the fact that it contains almost
no rhythmically notated material: rhythmic notation appears only in the first
subdivision. One cannot, therefore, make the absolute conclusion that rhythmic
notation resulted in greater accuracy in this performance. The relative weight of
Music (Philips, 1990) for this study because it is more accurate in terms of the temporal
indications of the score: the Philips recording has an overall duration more than a minute
longer than the Ermitage recording.
other factors will be discussed below as Holliger’s performance is compared to that

of Laszlò Hadady.
If Holliger’s accuracy in executing the second durations within each line is
somewhat inconsistent, how well is he able to articulate the overall form? More
striking than the sometimes considerable inaccuracies reflected by the line-by-line
breakdown is the fact that the total duration of Holliger’s performance is only 4.1
seconds longer than indicated by the score: it takes 6 minutes and 58.9 seconds, as
compared to the 6 minutes and 54.8 seconds of the specified second durations and
fermatas. Within this time frame, Holliger quite accurately articulates the
symmetrical proportions of the piece as they are delineated in Leclair’s analysis.
According to this, the first formal section consists of the first seven lines plus
approximately 2 seconds – less than one subdivision – of the eighth line, ending
before the first 5-second silence. This first section equals 174.2 specified seconds
in the score, and is played by Holliger in 174.5 seconds. The last section of the
score consists of 172.7 seconds, and takes up 171.4 seconds in the Holliger
recording.
Considering the frequent inaccuracies of the timings of the individual lines,
these numbers suggest that as well as formal divisions similar to Leclair’s, implied
by his reference to the isometric structure of the piece, Holliger took into account
the overall indicated duration of the piece in this recording. If this is in fact the
case, the specific analytical efforts made by these two performers, Holliger and
Leclair, to perform this piece accurately is completely untraditional, not for the fact
that the performer has made an analysis, but in the manner that it is made and
carried out, a development in the role of the performer in keeping with Berio’s idea
of a new virtuosity. Furthermore, the way in which Holliger achieves a formally
accurate performance is in a sense contradictory to the way in which the piece is
notated, because he does not adhere as closely to the indicated durations of the
individual subdivisions or the comparative guide of the lines as he does to the
overall timing and formal divisions of the piece, which are nowhere indicated on
the score but are most likely the result of his own analysis. It could be read as a
failure of the piece, specifically of its notation, that it compels performers to make
these analyses and renotations in order to give an accurate interpretation. However,
to Holliger, the ‘isometric’ structure is clear enough in the notation, in fact
optimally so. To Leclair, it seems to be unreasonable, discouraging, perhaps even
prohibitive, that every performer should have to repeat a process similar to her
analysis and renotation of the score in order to give the best possible performance:
this is the problem her supplementary edition is meant to remedy. As she explained
to Holliger in 1997:
I believe that the oboist will have greater confidence and focus working from this
version, a result of his improved rhythmic orientation; and moreover, he will execute
ALL aspects of the work (dynamics, articulation, and phrasing) with better artistry and
virtuosity, since these elements are all intimately tied with the musician’s rhythmic
25
concept.
Examining Laszlò Hadady’s 1995 recording26 in terms of line durations and

structural proportions allows some larger conclusions to be drawn about the
challenges the performer faces in trying to respect the temporal notation (see Table
4.5 below). First of all, looking at the line durations, one finds that, like Holliger,
Hadady plays the first line in significantly less time, making it 22.6 per cent shorter
than indicated. This makes the first line the most proportionally inaccurate among
the thirteen lines of the score in both cases. They also share the second most
inaccurate line, line seven, this time too long in relation to the grid by 4.7 seconds
in the case of Hadady, and by 6.6 seconds in Holliger’s recording.
Table 4.5 Line durations in the Hadady recording
Lines of the Hadady’s Indicated Differential Percentage

score durations durations
1 17.5 22.6 -5.1 -22.6
2 23.8 28.6 -4.8 -16.8
3 24.6 22.6 +2 +8.8
4 27.7 28.6 -.9 -3.2
5 22.6 22.6 0 0
6 27.2 26.6 +.6 +2.3
7 27.3 22.6 +4.7 +20.8
8 32.5 32.6 -0.1 (negligible)
9 25.4 22.6 +2.8 +12.4
10 31.3 27.6 +3.7 +13.4
11 37.6 39.6 -2 -5.1
12 47.4 50.6 -3.2 -6.3
13 65.5 67.6 -2.1 -3.1
Thus, the two lines with the least amount of rhythmically notated material are once
again the most proportionally inaccurate. The third most inaccurate line in
Hadady’s version (short by 16.8 per cent) is the second line, which is also
relatively poor in measured material, containing only one subdivision of non-
spatial rhythms. This line is also fairly inaccurate in Holliger’s recording, although
not exceptionally so (short by 9.1 per cent, thus slightly under the average
25
Jacqueline Leclair, letter to Heinz Holliger, 20 August1997.
26
Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998).
deviation of the 13 lines, which is 11.1 per cent). However, the relation between
the amount of rhythmically notated material and accuracy in timing still cannot be
taken as a general rule: like Holliger, Hadady is within 1 second of the indicated
duration for line 4, which contains less than one subdivision of non-spatial
notation.
Other notational factors might be responsible for the various contractions and
expansions of the lines. The first two lines, considerably shortened in both
recordings (see Table 4.4 and 4.5 above), are distinguished by the extensive use of
the spatial notation of a note ‘as short as possible’ in the repetitions of the opening
B4, separated by spaces meant to be interpreted as silences. When the ‘as short as
possible’ notational device appears later in the score, it produces rapid repetitions
or dense figures (in the tenth subdivision of the fifth line or the seventh subdivision
of the seventh line, for example). In these later occurrences, rather than leaving
sufficient space in between the notes as in the relatively sparse repetitions of lines
1 and 2, the performer must play many notes over a short time span while
respecting the relative velocity – how quickly to proceed from one note to the next
– suggested by the spatial notation. This challenge is apparent in lines 7 and 10: the
fifth subdivision of line 10, for instance, contains seventeen notes in the space of 2
seconds (not all of them as short as possible), while in the seventh subdivision of
line seven, fifteen notes should be articulated in 1.8 seconds. Hadady singles out
this latter subdivision in particular as being very difficult, because of the fact that it
should be played quickly but somewhat irregularly, and staccato.27 The presence of
particularly dense spatial notation may thus account for the relative inaccuracy of
lines 7 and 10, too long in both interpretations. It is interesting to note that
relatively dense rhythmically notated materials do not necessarily produce the
same result: lines 11 and 12 are fairly accurate and consistently under the specified
durations, while the accuracy of lines 8 and 9 varies widely between the two
interpretations. The mixture of relatively sparse and denser spatial materials in line
4 may account for its accuracy (within 1 second of the total notated duration in
both recordings) despite the almost complete lack of rhythmic notation, as the two
types of spatial material counterbalance one another.
Overall, one sees that the deviations in line durations in Hadady’s interpretation
serve the same complementary function as in the Holliger recording, allowing
Hadady as well to preserve the structural proportions of the work (Table 4.6).
Hadady achieves a delicate balance, reproducing the structure at times with less
than a second’s difference, even within a tenth of a second. This was not achieved
by recording and timing himself, he insists. When he made his recording in 1995,
he had been playing the work for fifteen years, starting with his preparation for the
audition that marked his entry into the Ensemble InterContemporain (EIC) in 1980.
He worked with Berio on three occasions: in 1983, during a pedagogical festival
dedicated to the Sequenzas featuring the EIC in Aix-en-Provence; in 1988, when
27
This information and the following citations from Laszlò Hadady are taken from an
interview with the author conducted on 12 October 2004.
he recorded Chemins IV for Sony-CBS under Berio’s supervision; and on the

occasion of the recording of Sequenza VII itself in 1995, once again supervised by
Berio.
Table 4.6 Comparison of timings in the three sections as given in the score
and in the two recordings
Lines of the score Score Hadady Holliger

1–7 174.2 170.7 174.5
8–103 67.9 67.8 73.0
104–13 172.7 171.8 171.4
1–13 414.8 410.428 418.9
Note: All timings are given in seconds. Superscript figures indicate subdivisions of the line
(e.g. 103 indicates line 10, subdivision 3)
Apart from some technical suggestions29, Berio encouraged Hadady to take less
time in the ‘coda’. The result is that Hadady consistently short-changes the last
three lines and is thus able to render the last structural section in a total of 171.8
seconds, slightly under the indicated 172.7 seconds. Berio may therefore have
consciously chosen to recommend some sacrifice of local accuracy in order to
preserve the overall structural proportions of the work.
Hadady does not, however, think one necessarily needs to have worked with
Berio, or someone who has worked with him, or to study a recording of someone
who has worked with him, in order to perform Sequenza VII:
This piece contains an enormous number of indications, but it is always within the limits
of possibility; always a lot, but never too much. It is very complicated, but absolutely
30
playable, absolutely correct in the way it is written.
In his own teaching experience, Hadady finds that students have difficultly in
respecting the indicated durations, tending to expand the work drastically, and
could thus see the utility of the metric equivalents employed by Leclair in her
28
There appears to be a slight discrepancy if one considers the total of the three
sections as written in the chart, which would be 410.3; this is due to the rounding off of each
total to one decimal point. Although the data was calculated in milliseconds, the tables show
an approximation relevant to the scale of seconds used in the score.
29
These mostly concerned the over-blowing technique. Berio suggested a different
fingering for the eighth and ninth subdivisions of the third line in order to produce a more
brilliant colour, and critiqued Hadady’s interpretation of the first subdivision of the twelfth
line, which he played practically as a series of mulitphonics, saying that this technique
created ‘false parallelisms’.
30
‘Cette pièce comporte énormément d’indications, mais ça reste toujours dans la
limite de possibilité; toujours beaucoup, mais jamais trop. Elle est très compliquée, mais
absolument jouable, absolument correcte comme écriture.’
supplementary edition. He remains, nonetheless, generally sceptical of her

renotation, in particular preferring certain rhythmic choices made by Berio in the
solo part of Chemins IV.31 It is quite possible that for Hadady, performing and
recording Chemins IV had some influence on his recording of Sequenza VII, in
which case he would have been aided in his temporal accuracy by reference to an
existing metric version.
Conclusion
It would be interesting to hear performances from the [two] notations side by side: I
32
think one would hear the difference.
The publication of Leclair’s supplementary edition necessitates new analyses. As

future performances and recordings of Sequenza VII may be informed by the
supplementary edition, it would be interesting to analyse the temporal accuracy of
these interpretations in the manner of the above analysis of the Hadady recording.
Leclair clearly believes that it will give the oboist ‘greater confidence’, improve
the sense of ‘rhythmic orientation’ and lead to a more virtuosic – and by
implication, accurate – execution of the work.33 By making transcriptions of
recordings, one could investigate the rhythms produced by the study of the metric
notation, and observe what wider influence the renotation may have on the style of
playing, whether the clarity of an underlying metric structure produces a
performance which is both more secure and more relaxed, or whether the fluidity
and variety of the interpretation of the original notation is undermined by the
metric divisions. It remains to be seen whether a new generation of performers,
aided by the supplementary edition, realize Berio’s wish to ‘wear the music as a
dress, not as a straightjacket’.34
31
It is important to note that when Berio met with Leclair in order to approve the
publication of her renotation, he made some rhythmic suggestions that varied with the solo
part of Chemins IV, in particular concerning the opening repeated B, one of the details of
which Hadady is critical.
32
David Osmond-Smith on Sequenza I, in Weisser, p. 14.
33
Cf. note 25 above.
34
Luciano Berio, quoted in Theo Muller, ‘“Music is not a solitary act”: Conversation
with Luciano Berio’, Tempo, 199 (1997), p. 19.
Chapter 5
Shadow Boxing: Sequenza X for Trumpet

and Piano Resonance
Jonathan Impett
Transformation and the overcoming of idiomatic aspects of instruments are often

intrinsic to my earlier Sequenzas. In Sequenza X, however, for trumpet in C and
piano resonance, there are neither transformations nor ‘cosmetics’. The trumpet is
used in a way that is natural and direct. Perhaps it is exactly this ‘nudity’ which
makes Sequenza X the most ambitious of all the Sequenzas.
Luciano Berio
The mirror of continuity
Each of the Sequenzas has a structuring device which adds a dimension to the
behaviour and personality of the instrument.1 Together they constitute a hall of
mirrors, each one ground to reflect properties of its subject which we could not
have hitherto known. Whether by means of virtuosic rates of change, of the
overlaying of patterns of fingering, bowing or breathing, or of devices such as the
sounded inhalation of Sequenza V or the oscillator of Sequenza VII, Berio
generates a remarkably continuous musical surface, a body constantly in motion,
onto which this shadow-play can be projected. The work is the emergent product of
difference, the trace of a dynamics of friction between the behaviour of its subject
– the instrument/ instrumentalist – and the virtual structuring constraints which
constitute its environment. The behaviour of the subject illuminates and maps out
the compositional space; conversely, it is the precision with which these structuring
dimensions are conceived that allows the subjectivity of the central character to be
revealed. Aesthetic truth emerges from the most classic of philosophical devices,
the dialogue between present subject (instrument, gesture, surface material) and
containing environment (precompositional world, gestural repertoire, melodic
‘language’).
1
The author wishes to thank the dedicatee of the work, Thomas Stevens, and Gabriele
Cassone for their kind assistance.
84 Jonathan Impett
In terms of both physical characteristics and conventional usage, the trumpet is

not accustomed (or perhaps suited) to long-windedness. Continuous sustained
passages of several minutes are highly unusual even in the most virtuosic of
repertoire. In extreme works from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (1721) to
B.A. Zimmermann’s Nobody knows de trouble I see (1954), the physical rhythm is
that of sporadic sprint rather than relentless marathon: Sequenza X (1984),
meanwhile, lasts some 14 minutes in performance.2
Berio’s central compositional challenge, therefore, is to combine realizable
phrase patterns of trumpet virtuosity with continuous trumpet-initiated sound, and
he chooses to do so entirely by acoustic means. This he achieves by the simple
expedient of having the trumpet play next to an open piano. With a combination of
sustaining pedal, silently depressed notes and use of the middle pedal, the mute
pianist thus provides a halo of resonance which is sustained almost throughout the
work. The exceptions – a 15-note phrase at the centre of the piece and its final few
isolated notes – therefore become clear moments of sonic architectonic structure,
marking the mid- and end-points of a single span. Certain notes are to be played
directly into the open piano, resonating more strongly and specifically, affording
the composer an additional compositional dimension and enhancing the gestural
quality of the work. The necessary sideways movement focuses the listener’s
attention on the intentionality of the physical aspect of the performance, the
relationship between subject and structure.
Time, gesture and resonance are structured by a system of 5- and 8-second
pauses. Silent pauses, through which only the piano resonance is heard, articulate
the trumpet line into a series of 26 variable-length segments ranging from phrases
of a few notes to complex stanzas of sustained development. A dialectical tension
is thus established between the physical gestures of the trumpeter – ultimately
unsustainable, however extended – and the continuous sound of the piece as a
whole. In this essay, places in the score will be referred to by segment number,
where the segments are separated by pauses through which the trumpet is silent.3
2
The underestimate by some 30 per cent in the printed score is presumably an artefact
of post-première revisions rather than an over-ambitious inner ear. Berio estimates the
duration at 10 minutes.
3
The segments begin as follows, numbered by page and system in the full (piano)
score: 1 (2.1), 2 (2.2), 3 (2.2) 4 (2.3), 5 (2.4), 6 (3.1), 7 (4.1), 8 (4.5), 9 (5.5), 10 (7.1), 11
(8.3), 12 (8.3), 13 (9.3), 14 (10.1), 15 (11.1), 16 (11.2), 17 (11.3), 18 (12.3), 19 (13.4), 20
(14.3), 21 (14.4), 22 (15.1), 23 (15.1), 24 (15.2), 25 (15.3), 26 (15.4). This numbering
system is entirely for the purposes of reference and has no structural or authorial
significance.
Sequenza X for Trumpet 85
The naked trumpet
While defining a new language, each Sequenza makes reference to the established
rhetoric of its subject: ‘[a] musical instrument is itself a piece of musical
language’.4 Berio consciously takes account of the virtuoso’s knowledge and
competence in this language, which is in a constant state of evolution in the short
term, within a performance, as well as over musical–historical time: ‘[h]e also sees
his own instrument as a means of research, not just of pleasure, and is able to
contribute to musical thought without displaying the false modesty of the virtuoso
who claims to “serve” music’.5
From its earliest roles in Western art music the trumpet has brought with it a
clearly circumscribed set of gestures and associations. The exceptions – the
commentaries on the relationship between man, God, power and nature in the
obbligato arias of Bach, the deflating satires in Purcell – are made possible by the
rule. Until late in the eighteenth century the rules of the guild of Hoftrompeter
within the Holy Roman Empire restricted the non-military use of the trumpet to
aristocratic and religious contexts. The triadic nature of the natural trumpet comes
to symbolize immutability, whether of the Trinity or of nature. In a Europe
regularly scarred by passing military campaigns, the sound of the trumpet may also
have had the same impact as that of the recorded siren in Varèse’s Poème
Électronique (1958) on an audience in post-war Europe. Through the nineteenth
century the technique of the valved cornet developed rapidly as it was adopted as
the representative of popular culture in the factory brass bands of Britain, the
kiosque bands of France or the spectacular American wind bands. The trumpet
maintained its independent character but assimilated this virtuosity by the end of
the century, reinventing its iconic role with reference to the nobility of the human
spirit – in Mahler or Scriabin, for example.
In a sense, the rhetorical stance of the trumpet was reversed in jazz. Instead of a
distanced, symbolic role – identification with formalized powers or abstract ideas –
it is now fully subjectivized. ‘Jazzness’ in the trumpet is not perceived so much
through the sound itself: it is not a semantic token in the same way as that of a
saxophone, drum kit or electric guitar. Nor is it perceived through particular
melodic or rhythmic successions, although a repertoire of reified tropes has, of
course, developed, culminating in the self-referential neo-con jazz of recent
decades. The defining characteristics lie rather in the areas of articulation, note-
and phrase-shape, gesture and accent: we may think of the exuberant harmonic
virtuosity of Dizzy Gillespie, the fully articulated contrapuntal invention of
Clifford Brown, the complex intimacy of Miles Davis or even the anti-trumpet of
Axel Dörner. The instrument becomes a megaphone amplifying the embodied
action of the imagination, mediated by the slightest movement of tongue or
4
Luciano Berio in Enzo Restagno (ed.), Berio (Torino, 1995), p. 187.
5
Berio in Restagno, p. 187.
86 Jonathan Impett
instability of breath, the most violent shouts or (literally) strong-arm whole-body

flexion.
The contemporary trumpet as approached by Berio in the early 1980s was
characterized, therefore, not by reference to repertoire or behaviour but by this
inside–outside duality. The instrument was naked in another respect: unlike most
wind instruments it had not undergone an encyclopaedic exploration of extended
techniques, reinvented itself as a sound source or developed a repertoire of
conventionalized special effects. The existing works of the repertoire at that point
were distinguished by their virtuosity – for example, Maxwell-Davies’s Sonata
(1955), Hans-Werner Henze’s Sonatina (1974) – sometimes extended by reference
to jazz performance, such as Zimmermann’s Nobody knows and the works by
Stockhausen for his son Markus beginning with Sirius (1975-77). In the latter
cases, such writing tends to be a matter of palette extension or explicit reference
rather than a component of the structural relationship of instrument with
composition. Scelsi’s Quattro Pezzi per Tromba Sola (1956), with their relentlessly
sustained melos of obsessive microtonal elaborations and octave switching, would
not be heard by the composer until 1985.
A further level of nakedness concerns the work’s first performer, Thomas
Stevens, then the principal trumpet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
Unusually, Sequenza X was not the product of an acquaintance with a performer’s
technique, style or repertoire: in fact by the first performance Berio had still not
met Stevens. The work was commissioned as a result of the close friendship
between Berio and the Philharmonic’s General Director, Ernest Fleischmann.
Thomas Stevens had been seeking support for such a commission, a costly exercise
by this stage in Berio’s career. The International Trumpet Guild, a frequent
commissioner of new works, had declined ‘because they didn’t want a piece that
only Stevens could play’.6 Stevens was informed of the commission in August
1983, the work to be premiered the following April. In fact, no music was
forthcoming and Stevens assumed that the project had been abandoned, until two
weeks before the scheduled first performance when the first page arrived by fax.7
There was no consultation whatsoever between composer and performer.
As befits the person agreed by common consent to be the finest exponent of the
contemporary repertoire described above, Stevens’s reputation rested on his
virtuosic precision and flexibility of technique and style, a willingness to subjugate
this extraordinary musicianship to the needs of composer and work. He had
premiered works by composers such as Hans Werner Henze, Henri Lazarof, Iain
6
Personal communication with Thomas Stevens. As Stevens himself points out, there
is a certain irony in this given the piece’s subsequent status as a benchmark conservatory
work.
7
Ibid. ‘I had a very busy schedule of orchestra concerts, including five Mahler
rehearsals and four concerts with Kurt Sanderling during the week preceding the
performance, the last of which being scheduled for the Sunday afternoon preceding the
scheduled Monday Berio premier. I was not pleased’ (Stevens).
Hamilton and William Kraft; in an interview for the Los Angeles Times Stevens
was characteristically direct about the role of trumpeters in the poverty of their
own repertoire.8 He recalls that in another interview for the same newspaper, Berio
stated that he had been informed simply that Stevens could play anything that was
put before him. Berio was therefore working on the blankest of slates, a space
unconstrained by style, technique, precedent or musical relationship.
Gesture and time
The periodic turns to the side necessary to play isolated pitches into the open piano
merely serve to remind performer and listener that the entire work communicates
itself as a sequence of physical gestures, whether these are the exertion of
sustaining long complex passages covering registral and dynamic extremes or the
focused risk of placing single, almost inaudible staccatissimo attacks. The
rhythmic properties of the work are thus the product of the interaction of many
layers of physical action, of their pacing and of the friction generated by the
composition’s interference with their natural properties: extension in time,
preparation, recovery and repeat rate. These are of course vital components of any
performance; in Sequenza X they become structural to the composition itself.
On the finest scale, Berio constructs a continuum of articulation, of types of
tongue movement. The two extremes are represented by the opening and close of
the piece – an unbroken, slurred phrase at the beginning balanced by staccatissimo
pianissimo attacks at the end. The latter is particularly deceptive on paper: it leaves
the player at their most naked, putting to the test the immediacy of note-production
after the physical exertion of the work. As soon as the notes are supported by the
breath, they are too long. If not supported, the attention of the listener has been
focused so intently in these few last pitches that the finest change in intonation –
the slight reduction in sounding length of air column – is excruciatingly audible.
Between these extremes lies the soft double articulation known as ‘doodle’
tonguing. In fact, it has a venerable history: flute methods in the eighteenth century
proposed d–dl as an alternative for English speakers who found the Italian t–r too
challenging. It finds its way into Sequenza X via a different route: the articulation
used by jazz trumpet players had been demonstrated to Berio by Clark Terry, once
a soloist in Duke Ellington’s band. The doodle tongue is the technique that gives
such definition to the invention of players such as Clifford Brown; it works most
fluently in the context of closely woven lines rather than wide leaps. The
diminished scales used by Berio therefore inevitably afford a reference in the mind
of the player if not the listener, which the composer may well have not intended.
There are three other gestures imported from the same world. The valve
8
‘The 19th Century? Zip. But the worst part is that we've lost the 20th Century … In
this century, there have been few triple-digit-IQ players.’ Stevens quoted in Marc Shugold
‘A trumpeter in search of his music’, Los Angeles Times, 17 December 1985.
88 Jonathan Impett
tremolo – a tremolo achieved by alternating different fingerings for the same pitch
– is also a Clifford Brown signature. Here its use is transformed: it becomes a way
of rhythmicizing and destabilizing a sustained pitch from which the line leaps to
pick out harmonic fields in other registers. The instability of this tremolo – a
contained nervous energy that gives the listener no clue as to where or when the
line will move next, only the certainty that it must – is what allows the player to
prepare for the registral leaps with which Berio constructs his polyphony. The
shake – a trill between two notes using the same fingering – is perhaps more
difficult for both performer and listener to remap from its jazz context, retaining its
role of emphatic assertion at a moment of climax. The use of the hand in front of
the bell – in essence a manual wa-wa low-pass filtering effect – reinforces this
association. In combination with the sustained valve tremolo and wide staccato
leaps, by contrast, it introduces an entirely new sound-gesture to the language of
the instrument, anticipated only perhaps by the ‘ghost electronics’ trumpet
processing of Morton Subotnick’s After the Butterfly (1979).
Although not in contact with Stevens, Berio had presumably some
communication with other trumpet players, most likely orchestral musicians with
whom he was working at the time. If this was not a period of expansion of the
sonic palette in the way that had been done with some other instruments, the 1970s
and 80s were a time of vast increase in the understanding of the nature of trumpet
technique, with the rapid spread of ideas developed in America over the previous
decades. From California, the great teacher and session player James Stamp was
giving regular workshops in Europe, as was Stevens himself.9 A common element
of this new approach to technique was the use of ‘pedal tones’, notes below the
conventional range of the trumpet, often extending the F3 lower limit down by
three octaves or more. Pedal tones are virtually unknown in the conventional
repertoire and rare in contemporary music due to their instability and timbral
difference.10 At the climax of this piece (segment nine), Berio balances the highest
note of the work – a repeated high D – with a pair of likewise loud and sustained
pedal Cs. The expanded technique which makes this moment possible can thus be
traced to a particular cultural circumstance, New World, perhaps, rather than
postmodern: the ability of LA studio players to apply their extraordinary technique
across stylistic boundaries. This is directly related to their situation in a film- and
TV-related environment, free from the genre obsession of ‘pure’ music production.
As an instrumental tradition, this line of development is rooted as much in the
9
James Stamp, Warm-ups and Studies (Bulle, 1997). This line of teaching can be
traced back to other studio players and teachers such as Claude Gordon (1916–96), as in his
Systematic Approach to Daily Practice (New York, 1965).
10
In acoustical terms, the trumpet is a closed tube and should therefore only produce
alternate harmonics. The presence of conical sections at either end (bell and mouthpiece)
compresses this series such that the instrument behaves almost as if it had a full harmonic
series; only the fundamental remains out of place.
soundtracks to I Love Lucy or Tom and Jerry as in old-world conservatoires or

high-art jazz.
Pitch structure
Sequenza X falls quite simply into two halves. In the first, Berio describes the
evolution of a single harmonic field rich with affordances, ambiguities and
instabilities, symmetries and quasi-motivic transpositions. This section, which lasts
until the central four-note phrase at segment 11 – the shortest of the work –
includes the registral and dynamic climax of the piece and its immediate
resolution. The opening minor third of the trumpet, D–F, is immediately joined and
disambiguated by a piano resonance of D minor.7 In segment two, a C completes
the initial cell of the trumpet. The A of the accompanying resonance is missing, the
sense of which becomes clear in segment three: a chromatic shift of the C and F to
C and F leads logically to a sustained upper E. We now have two cells, the first,
D–F–C, inverted in the second, F–C–E (see Ex. 5.1). The missing A from the
resonance would logically figure in both. The combined pitch-set, semitone
alteration, minor third and major–minor seventh ambiguity provide the essential
melodic material for the remainder of the work. Two instabilities inherent in this
interlocking structure are explored as it is laid out linearly over the first four
segments: F/F and C/C. This ambiguity affords the possibility of remapping
resultant intervals: in segment five, by analogy with the F–C tritone, a new B
follows F, and G the low D. This principle established, segment five ends with the
lowest D–F/F shape applied to the uppermost element E, adding a G/G area
(Ex. 5.2).
Example 5.1 Sequenza X: segments 1–3
Example 5.2 Sequenza X: pitch set outlined in segments 1–4

90 Jonathan Impett
Certain semitone ambiguities are temporarily stabilized by octave shift: in segment

six the central B shifts upwards, with its own twin, B#, and the middle C both an
octave lower. Bands of instability are thus established, each with one or more
shifting attractors, separated by significant gaps in pitch space outlined by the
occasional scalar gestures. In particular, the A implied since the opening and its
tritone companion E# are missing. Rather than a sequence of harmonic fields, there
is therefore a single dynamical source of possibilities, different bands coalescing to
varying degrees at different moments. Segment six is a good example: apart from
two scales involving octave duplications, everything contributes to a polyphony of
instabilities in six different bands (Ex. 5.3, p. 92). Where they are contiguous, the
melodic writing makes clear how they are constituted and to which band a
particular note belongs (Ex. 5.4). Berio has in mind the polyphony of a listener’s
understanding of a musical narrative.11 As in a Bach violin partita, the polyphonies
are both local and architectural, their coherence reinforced by longer term melodic
memory: here, the G with which the passage opens resolves a semitone lower at
its end, pre-echoing the C–C movement of the following segment. As in other
Sequenzas, Berio’s trajectory through the polyphony is driven by overlapping
waves of intensity of pitch movement, rhythm and dynamics, and by patterns of
articulation.
Example 5.4 Sequenza X: pitch bands in segment 6
Other ambiguities stabilize for the duration of an episode. The C centre of the first
part of segment seven, around which untransposed echoes of the opening material
proliferate, is pulled down to C by the surrounding harmonic attractors. The
harmonic tension released, this voice returns to C at the end of the segment and
remains stable through segment eight. Only the most violent of melodic gestures at
the opening of segment nine is able to restore disequilibrium and re-open the space
for exploration. At the climax in segment nine, the pivotal D–C is exploded
symmetrically by two octaves in opposite directions – high D and pedal C – after
which the missing E# (already introduced melodically in segment eight) becomes a
new attractor companion to E (Ex. 5.5). The first section finds repose at the end of
segment 11 in the much implied but hitherto absent A.
11
Berio in Restagno, p. 187.
Example 5.5 Sequenza X: pitch reduction of segments 9–11
Through the remainder of the work, this field of pitch, gesture and rhythm in which
almost everything is possible focuses and stabilizes around an altered, stretched
version of its original form, a process of distillation as extraneous pitches
evaporate away (Ex. 5.6). The most recently added pitches are the first to be
removed from the bands of potential. Alternative attractors lose energy as the few
remaining pitches draw all activity into their orbit. The components of this
eventual field solidify at different rates: low D has been present from the outset;
the central C has become so stable by segment eight that it remains dominant in its
zone; high C is presented for the first time at the end of segment 17, following the
F with which it maintains a stable relationship. In retrospect, we can hear it as
prepared in the now-anticipated semitone relationship by the isolated high Bs in
segments 9 and 13 and their echo in segment 15. Through its initial appearances,
played into the piano and insistently interrupting passagework in other registers,
high C becomes the centre of a new B–C–C instability, now spread across two
octaves. A sense of anticipated ‘resolution’ can be heard in the accompanying
piano resonance: the first appearance in segment 17 is against D octaves, the
remainder through segments 18 and 19 resonating predominantly with Cs. For the
first time in the piece, the uppermost voice becomes the fixed point for the
undulating harmonic fabric. The harmonic skeleton to the end of the piece is now
complete, comprising precisely the six notes of the opening, segments one to five,
with C transposed an octave higher and each component surrounded by residual
semitone sidebands. The lowest conventional range of the instrument has been
avoided entirely until the arrival of the low G in segment 24. The remnant trace of
instability attracts it upwards by a semitone on its first four statements, taking the
place of the F’s pull from F, which had expired in segment 20 (Ex. 5.7).
Example 5.7 Sequenza X: pitch range in segments 20–26
The semitone alterations and major–minor seventh uncertainty recall another

aspect of jazz. On the trumpet, blurred notes or nuanced pitch require more
intentionality than might at first seem to be the case. Miles Davis often constructs
minutes of solo around a two-note major–minor ambiguity: the iconic tune of his
late period, Jean-Pierre, is little else. A generation earlier, the bebop language of
Example 5.3 Sequenza X: segment 6
Example 5.6 Sequenza X: segments 22–26
94 Jonathan Impett
Dizzy Gillespie could be understood as an order of contrapuntal elaboration based
on such substitution.
Resonance is the manifestation of acoustic memory, structured in this instance
to shape compositional space. By holding in resonance pitches which are not yet or
not now being played by the trumpet, they are introduced into the spectral complex
of the whole, excited less in proportion to those sounded directly but nonetheless
present in the colour. This constitutes a sort of precognition, an acoustic
premonition, preparing pitches to come such that their salience is reinforced when
they eventually appear. There are therefore three layers of pitch hierarchy
presented simultaneously: that inherent in the trumpet line (reflecting parameters of
salience including dynamics, duration and registral extreme), that of the notes
played into the piano and that of the piano resonance.
Performance
It begins with the virtuosity of the instrument, but then depends most upon the player’s
ability to detach themselves to a certain extent, and resist becoming prisoner to what has
gone before in the instrument’s rich history.12
Beside the technical and musical–intellectual challenges presented by Sequenza X,

there are two parameters along which the performer must situate themselves, two
important relationships to be negotiated: neither leaps from the page as an issue.
First, the performer must be aware of the extent to which references to jazz are
permitted to become explicit. Once such a percept arises for the listener it
inevitably colours understanding of the rest of the piece. Berio suggested that the
‘shake’ and D–F trill with wa-wa hand effect should sound like jazz gestures.13
They therefore stand at one end of a continuum of degrees of reference. Second,
the player also has to decide on the degree and nature of the presence of the
amplified piano resonance. Berio suggested that that the sound should seem to
appear from the piano itself; a non-trivial challenge for the sound engineer is to
capture sufficient of the resonance without also amplifying the trumpet attacks
which generate it. In practice, performers tend to encourage the solution of this
problem to allow a more prominent role for the piano resonance. This is a critical
interpretative decision. In terms of the listener’s attention, the level of the
harmonic–textural–timbral piano resonance is not continuous: it switches between
being an almost subliminally understood sonic environment for the trumpet line
and a slower-moving partner on the same perceptual plane. It is important that the
12
Luciano Berio in Gillian Moore and Shân MacLennan, ‘Interview with Luciano
Berio’, London Sinfonietta (2003), accessed 31 May 2007 at
http://www.londonsinfonietta.org.uk
13
Personal communication from Gabriele Cassone, who recorded Sequenza X under
Berio’s direction.
amplification should afford the performer the possibility to play the whole as an
extended instrument with its own dynamical harmonic behaviour.
Conclusion
The combination of harmonic structure and surrounding resonance, both evolving

according to their own rules as the trumpet explores their space, constitutes a
redefinition of the instrument’s own acoustic properties. This process recalls
certain French compositions of the eighties, Gérard Grisey’s Prologue for solo
viola (1976), for instance. The spectral manipulation takes place on two levels.
First, the map of notes available to the instrument seems to shift constantly from
the default set of the harmonic series and its chromatic transpositions. In this, Berio
acknowledges that the trumpet does not have the continuous variability of pitch
available to an Ur-instrument such as the trombone, for example, but retains the
characteristics of the nineteenth-century contraption it clearly is, fundamentally
tied to its semitone grid. Second, the surrounding resonance transforms the very
timbre of the trumpet. From this point of view, the ‘naked’ trumpet of Sequenza X
is a single, extended instrument.
Despite the performer-centred nature of much of Berio’s work, the
incorporation of popular material and his ability to project other styles through the
prism of his own language, there are few references to jazz in his music apart from
the mimetic depiction in Laborintus II (1965). A fine judge of cultural distance,
jazz was perhaps too closely bound up with the vernacular of his own generation.
In Sequenza X, however, Berio approaches jazz from the inside. The relationship
formed in the ear of performer and listener derives from the detail of articulation
and gestural shape. Any apparent melodic references – the prominent minor thirds,
the doodle-articulated octatonic scales – are a product of the superimposition of
this detail onto Berio’s harmonic framework and the interference thus generated.
Paradoxically, the condition of the musical surface as an emergent product of
the relationship between foreground activity and harmonic field recalls the most
classical of structural functions of the trumpet. In the later symphonies of Mozart
and those of Beethoven, the immovable tonal base of the trumpets and timpani is
used to provide a timbral harmonic horizon. A bi-directional relationship is thus
established. As developing thematic material approaches key areas which the
available notes of the natural instruments can accommodate, their incorporation
into the discourse marks the degree of harmonic stability or closeness to the home
key. This is not merely a matter of presence but also detail of melody and voicing:
there is no third available in the dominant, only the fifth in the subdominant, for
example. In addition, they can be used as indicators of harmonic trajectory or
distance. In the last movement of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, a figure repeated
every seven minims against the underlying melodic development – almost
irrespective of its harmonic state in that moment, and in contradiction to its own
metrical framework – provides a grid, the aphasic nature of which allows the
96 Jonathan Impett
complexity of that development to be better understood. In the Eroica and
elsewhere, Beethoven often selects the nearest available notes at crucial moments,
producing a grammatically inexplicable chord, the shape of which gives a glimpse
of the current point in harmonic space. The trumpets and their bass, the timpani,
provide a dynamic map of the wider harmonic and rhythmic development. In
Sequenza X, both elements have become plastic: grounded in the same harmonic
and melodic framework, they can respond to each other.
The individual segments are energy bursts of varying intensity, grain and
texture by means of which the performer both explores and shapes a structural,
linguistic and referential space which is itself remoulded as it absorbs this input.
The musical surface consists of interference patterns produced by wave systems
with different energy inputs, physical responses and timescales. In the pauses, we
explore the changing space differently, by its echo, like bats analysing a shadow-
space that responds to probing but cannot be known in its entirety. Sequenza X is
thus a real-time map of the creative process, of the dynamic coexistence of subject
and object for listener, performer and composer. To paraphrase Perniola, the
performed piece is an exploration of the nature of the work in the abstract by a play
of shadow boxing.14
14
Mario Perniola, L’Arte e la Sua Ombra (Torino, 2000).
PART 2
Berio’s Compositional Process
and Aesthetics
Chapter 6
Provoking Acts:
The Theatre of Berio’s Sequenzas
Janet K. Halfyard
Berio’s Sequenzas are recognized as one of the most innovative and influential
achievements of any composer of the late twentieth century. Most of the
scholarship surrounding the series concentrates, unsurprisingly, on musical
elements: issues in composition, performance and musical analysis. This essay
looks beyond the purely musical aspects of the Sequenzas to investigate the extent
to which they may also be considered works of theatre.
Theatre was an important medium for Berio, and he wrote many works
specifically for theatrical performance, from Passaggio (1961–62) and works such
as Laborintus II (1965) and Opera (1969–70) to the large-scale theatrical works of
the late 1970s onwards, principally La vera storia (1977–81), Un Re in Ascolto
(1979–84), Outis (1995–96) and Cronaca del Luogo (1999). However, ideas of
theatricality permeate other works as well. The tape work, Visage (1961), has a
strong sense of theatre in terms of narrative, character and implied action, as do
works such as A-Ronne (written originally for the radio in 1974 and revised as a
concert version in 1975) and the third movement of Sinfonia (1968). In discussing
the theatricality of the Sequenzas, the first part of this essay examines ideas of
theatre in the form of narrative, character and action, while the final section turns
to the idea of virtuosity as a specifically musical form of theatricality that connects
all fourteen pieces.
Narrative, character and action
One of the most obvious ways in which the Sequenzas are theatrical as opposed to
purely musical lies in the introduction of extra-musical elements into the
compositions and their performances. This generally occurs by three different
means: the use of some form of dramatic scenario or linear narrative; the symbolic
presence of specific individuals as ‘characters’ within the text of the composition;
and the inclusion of behaviours beyond the usual actions of playing an instrument.
These different modes of theatricality are often interlinked rather than discrete
100 Janet K. Halfyard
categories: the two most obviously theatrical pieces in the series, Sequenzas III and
V, explore all three of these modes. There are a number of parallels between these
two pieces. Both were written between 1965 and 1966 and both, unlike any other
pieces in the series, are unequivocally gender-specific in the way they are
composed. Sequenza III describes itself as being ‘for female voice’, while
Sequenza V requires the trombonist to sing pitches that are well out of range for
most women, as well as containing a specific allusion to the (male) clown, Grock.1
Sequenza V
The inspiration for the theatrical elements of Sequenza V appears to lie in the way
that Stuart Dempster’s comic antics reminded Berio of Grock, the clown who lived
close by when Berio was growing up. As Dempster recounts, ‘I would occasionally
goof around in rehearsals like I goof around generally … Berio said that I am like
Grock – he said that several times – and I think that was the inspiration for the
piece’.2
However, Sequenza V is problematic as a theatrical piece for several reasons.
One is that it is very much a game of two halves: an extrovert A section and then a
longer, introverted B section. The discontinuity between these two sections has
caused some speculation about the coherence of the piece, and how and for whom
it was actually written.
Much of the B section started life as an unpublished study entitled ‘Essay’ first
performed in Buffalo in April 1965 by Vinko Globokar.3 Berio had already
mentioned to Globokar in 1964 that he intended to write a Sequenza for trombone
for Dempster but, although they had discussed it in the early 1960s, Dempster did
not formally commission the piece until late in 1965. At this point Berio told him
1
Grock also had some manner of influence on Sequenza III. Istvan Anhalt and Stuart
Dempster both recall having read this in Berio’s sleeve note for one of the early recordings
of Sequenzas III and V, and Berio mentioned it in interview with Ivanka Stoʀanova (see
Luciano Berio: Chemins en Musique (Paris, 1985), p. 77). However, Berberian herself
expressed puzzlement at this attribution in interview with Anhalt (Istvan Anhalt, Alternative
Voices: Essays on Contemporary Vocal and Choral Composition (Toronto, 1984), pp. 271–
2) and Berio does not mention a connection between Grock and Sequenza III anywhere else:
in interview, when he discusses both pieces, he only mentions Grock in relation to Sequenza
V (see Luciano Berio, Two Interviews with Rosanna Dalmonte and Bálint András Varga,
trans. and ed. David Osmond-Smith (New York/London, 1985), p. 93.) The fact that he was
writing these two pieces at around the same time may mean that he was aware of a
connection between them, even though Grock is not clearly present in Sequenza III in the
way he is in Sequenza V.
2
Stuart Dempster, quoted in Buddy Baker ‘Why? How about Who, Where, What,
When? The Development of Berio’s Sequenza V’, ITA Journal, 22/2 (1994), pp. 30–31.
3
Baker, p. 32. All the information on this sequence of events is taken from the two
interviews conducted by Baker with Dempster in July 1988 and Globokar in March 1990
that can be found in this article.
Provoking Acts 101
that he had already been working on it, and Dempster then received a copy of
‘Essay’. This might suggest that Globokar was the person for whom this part of the
piece was actually written, but he is clear that although it was written in his
presence over the course of two days in 1965, he did not directly contribute to
‘Essay’ but was simply presented with it. Dempster, on the other hand, describes
how he and Berio discussed techniques and how Berio took suggestions from him
about things such as the use of the vowel sounds and the head turns indicated in the
score’s instructions. Whatever the sequence of events, ‘Essay’ appears always to
have been intended as part of a Sequenza for trombone written for Dempster, and
certainly the theatrical aspects can be traced to Dempster’s own personality,
although he comments that his difficulty with the second half of the piece is
something ‘that may tell us more about Globokar and me as a personalities than it
does about Berio’.4
However, if Grock is positioned more centrally than either Dempster or
Globokar as the personality inspiring the piece, then the sense of him as both a
private and public figure provides an explanation for the different characters of the
two sections. Berio’s memories of Grock are twofold: the virtuoso comic
performer who ‘during one of his complicated and eminently musical numbers …
fixed his audience with a disarming look, and asked “warum?” (why?)’; and the
apparently ordinary neighbour with the rather extraordinary home and gardens
from which Berio infamously stole oranges as a child.5 These two aspects are both
found in the piece, the public performer in the A section, up to the trombonist’s
question to the audience, ‘why?’; and the private man in the B section that follows
this. The performer is asked to stand and move in the A section, performing in a
overtly theatrical manner, but in the B section he is seated and playing from music
on a stand as if practising, oblivious to the audience’s presence. In this reading, the
connection between the two halves of the piece is the figure of Grock himself
rather than any differences between Dempster and Globokar, and so perhaps it
does, after all, tell us more about Berio than them.
The score’s directions regarding movement, the allusion to Grock and the
player’s directly spoken address at the end of section A are the most
conventionally theatrical aspects of any of the Sequenzas, but some additional
performing traditions have grown up around the piece that extend these beyond
anything Berio describes. The reasons for this are worth investigating in a musical
culture where the composer’s intentions are often regarded as sacrosanct. Why
should it seem acceptable to contravene the theatrical directions in a score in a way
that musicians would not considered contravening musical ones?
The main aspect in which performers deviate from the instructions is in the
matter of costume. The score indicates that the performer should wear white tie,
implying a tail coat rather than a dinner jacket, and this would be the expected
outfit for a soloist in a formal, classical concert, although perhaps less usual in
4
Ibid., pp. 31–3.
5
Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998), CD liner notes, p. 15.
contemporary music. This is possibly part of the allusion to Grock, who often wore
a clownish version of this, with askew wing collar and baggy tail coat. However,
the visual reference to formal concert attire creates an expectation about the
performer’s behaviour that this Sequenza immediately and intentionally
undermines when the trombonist enters at the start of the piece and, as the score
puts it, ‘strikes the poses of a variety showman about to sing an old favourite’.
As no other Sequenza specifies what the performer should wear, it is logical to
assume that such directions are given here for a reason in terms of how the piece
communicates its meaning. However, it is not uncommon for trombonists to use
makeup and clown costumes to add an explicit circus atmosphere not suggested by
the score’s instructions, precluding the specific juxtaposition of the conventional
and unconventional.6 This appears to stem from taking Berio’s comments too far –
although there are allusions to Grock in the way the piece is written, nowhere does
he suggest that the trombonist is an actor playing Grock. Nonetheless, the
trombonist is certainly acting: he is given specific directions about whether to sit or
stand, talks to the audience and has variously to sing into the instrument and
vocalize vowels, moving his head away and to the side to do this at times. In the
shift between the energetic first section and the more introverted, seated second
section, there is a sense of acting out two different scenarios, a change in the
emotions of the trombonist himself rather than only in the emotional meaning of
the music he is playing. Normally, a musician would expect to express the meaning
of a piece primarily in the way it is played; here he must also express it in his
physical behaviour and demeanour.
All of these things point to the idea that the trombonist is no longer simply a
trombonist but an actor with a trombone, and this raises the obvious question of
who he is supposed to represent. Searching for the character that the piece seems to
indicate the trombonist is playing, the logical choice is Grock. However, the
apparent rationalism of this choice disguises the fact that creating the character of
Grock may be psychologically more comfortable for musicians than effectively
being themselves whilst engaging in bizarre behaviour. Being Grock and dressing
as Grock rather than as himself in formal concert clothes, the trombonist creates a
distance between the behaviour and himself: this is not me, the trombonist
suggests, this is Grock.
Nonetheless, in the context of the score and its history, this strategy is probably
a significant misinterpretation of Berio’s intentions. When this piece is performed
the trombonist is largely operating within what Michael Kirby would describe as a
non-matrixed performance.7 The matrix is the set of conventions and fictions that
separates and delineates the spaces occupied by the characters in a play on one
6
Cason A. Duke, for example, observes that ‘clown make-up is not required, but
frequently used’ in A Performer’s Guide to Theatrical Elements in Selected Trombone
Literature (DMA dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2001), p. 24.
7
See Michael Kirby, ‘Happenings: An Introduction’, in Mariellen R. Sandford (ed.),
Happenings and Other Acts (London/New York, 1995), pp. 5–7.
Provoking Acts 103
hand, and the actors and audience in a theatre on the other. In a fully matrixed
performance, therefore, the actors in Chekov’s The Seagull may be in London in
2006, and two or three hours may go by. Meanwhile, the characters are in Russia in
the late nineteenth century, and two years go by. At the other end of the spectrum,
there are performances where the space occupied by the character and the
performer is identical and there is no separation – no fiction – allowing them to be
differentiated, although some form of performance is nonetheless taking place.
Examples Kirby gives of this are teachers, athletes, public speakers and priests,
people functioning as themselves in a performer–audience relationship with those
who attend to them; and instrumentalists performing in a normal manner also fit
well into this model of non-matrixed performances. Sequenza V is not quite at this
extreme end of the spectrum and herein lies its difficulty: it is a partially matrixed
performance, where the trombonist is acting without having been given a character
to portray, something that a concert singer is accustomed to but most
instrumentalists have never encountered.8 Inserting Grock into the performance
allows the player to complete the matrix, to separate and delineate the space he
occupies from that occupied by the character, which may well appeal to a musician
not used to being forced out from behind his instrument and made the centre of
attention in the way that the various physical and spoken acts require in this piece.
Grock becomes a prop or a mask behind which the trombonist can conceal himself
once more.
However, it is exactly that exposure that the piece demands, the extreme, funny
and potentially embarrassing movements called for in the first section, and then the
equally exposing demand that the trombonist then plays as if practising – as if there
is no audience – in the second. Dressing as a clown and ‘playing Grock’ allows the
trombonist to remain at a remove from the anxiety of the performance, but the
theatre of the piece lies in allowing precisely the exposure that the clown costume
and makeup conceal. The drama played out before us is not that of a mythic
trombone-playing clown, but of the musician himself, caught between the demands
of the very public virtuosity of performance in the first section and the more
private struggle with articulation and communication represented by the second.
Sequenza III
Humour and anxiety lie in equal measure at the heart of Sequenza V, as they do in
the later Melodrama (1970) for tenor. This pair of works for male performers is
balanced by a parallel pair of works for female performers, Sequenza III and
Recital I (for Cathy) (1972), and here again, both works are pervaded by a sense of
the performer’s own anxiety, although there is considerably less humour in the
latter pair of works, both of them written for Cathy Berberian. On one level, this is
8
Stockhausen’s Licht cycle is the obvious exception to this, where instrumentalists
have much more complete matrices constructed around them, such as the characters Eve,
Michael and Lucifer.
surprising given how funny Berberian could be in performance, and how funny she
liked to be – the gales of laughter on the live recording of her Edinburgh Festival
concert are effective witness to her abilities as she sends up the conventions of
recital singing and singers.9 However, with the exception of the transcriptions
Berio made for her of three Beatles’ songs (1967), his compositions for her, from
the early works in the 1950s to the final work he wrote specifically for her, Recital,
make only rare attempts to exploit her comic talents.
In part, he may have been reacting against the way other composers did write
for her ability to make people laugh: Cage’s Aria (1958) was inspired by her
‘domestic vocal clowning’10 and the way in which she would imitate the sound of a
cut and spliced tape track, shifting between vocal timbres and registers, effectively
spoofing the serious work that Berio and others were doing with her in the RAI
studio. More than any of the vocal pieces that Berio had written for Berberian at
that point, Cage’s Aria sparked off a sudden interest in what a voice could do in
live performance, making Berberian the vocalist of choice for the Darmstadt
composers who heard Aria at the summer school of 1959, its first performance
having been in Italy earlier that year.11
Sequenza III was Berio’s own, final response to Aria, and its lack of humour is
probably quite intentional. Cage’s piece is a delightful, apparently frivolous
(although actually rather difficult) musical joke. Sequenza III has never been
shifted from its position as the paradigm of the extended vocal repertoire, the piece
for solo voice to which Istvan Anhalt chose to devote a chapter in his book on
contemporary vocal composition, and probably the most written-about of any piece
of contemporary vocal music.12
It is almost impossible for any piece of solo vocal music not to be theatrical as
the performance almost always exists partially or wholly within a performance
matrix that separates the real performer from the character they are portraying.
Even when that character has no name or is not specifically positioned as a
character at all, when singers find themselves singing first-person narratives
recounting a history or a situation that is not, in fact, part of their own biography,
then the first person of the narrative is clearly not the same as the performer’s own
first-person identity and the piece has entered the realms of theatre. The matrix is
therefore formed by two things: the presence of a text which identifies the
character and describes their narrative; and the presence of the human performer
who concretely represents that character and, by giving voice to it, presents the
narrative as their own.
9
Cathy Berberian at the Edinburgh Festival (RCA, 1974), later released on CD as A
la Recherche de la Musique Perdue (Rtve Classics, 1999).
10
David Osmond-Smith, Berio (Oxford/New York, 1991), p. 60.
11
See David Osmond-Smith ‘The Tenth Oscillator: The Work of Cathy Berberian
1958–1966’, Tempo, 58/227: 2–13.
12
Anhalt, pp. 25–40. Anhalt devotes the first three chapters to individual works
exemplifying different areas of vocal repertoire: solo voice, small ensemble and choir.
Provoking Acts 105
The narrative of Sequenza III is embedded in its text and the way in which
Berio uses it. Markus Kutter’s modular poem, which forms the basis of the piece,
reads thus:
give me a few words for a woman

to sing a truth allowing us
to build a house without worrying before night comes
David Osmond-Smith says of these words that ‘Berio treats them simply as a
quarry for phonetic materials’.13 However, unpicking the way in which the words
are deconstructed and reconstructed allows a fairly specific narrative to be read
beneath the surface of the apparently random collections of phonemes that the
singer is asked to articulate. The most significant clue to the nature of the text
treatment and its narrative function is the phrase which is never used, either in full
or even by phoneme, namely ‘without worrying’ – significant because this is what
the performer fails not to do for the most part.14 With this phrase removed, the text
becomes:
give me a few words for a woman

to sing a truth allowing us
to build a house
In this context, the final phrase, ‘before night comes’ takes on a new meaning. In
these three words, a limit is set on the amount of time the woman has in which to
complete her task, to sing the few words which will ‘build the house’, the
protection and shelter from the impending night. Now, there is no suggestion that
this should be done without worrying, and so the singer must unravel the jumbled
phonemes of the text to reveal their message and deliver it in time.
Initially, the text is heard as phonemes – to, co, for, us, be. Gradually, words
and then complete phrases emerge. The first identifiable word is sing, closely
followed by to me, few and words, all in the first 30 seconds, which between them
describe the impetus of the narrative: the woman’s solitary and reflexive task of
singing the few, appropriate words. Complete phrases from the text emerge
principally in the sung passages and, in the course of the piece, the text is given in
the largely complete if disjointed sung form shown in Table 6.1.
13
Osmond-Smith, Berio, p. 65.
14
There is only one moment in the piece where there is even a syllable that can
unequivocally be traced back to this phrase, which is in the final system of the first page, in
the phrase ‘/tho/ we build’. /tho/ comes from ‘without’ (although Berberian pronounces it as
if it derives from the word ‘although’ which conceals its true origin) and so, arguably, must
‘we’ (‘wi’). Like ‘although’, this word does not occur in Kutter’s text, but is narratively
implied by ‘us’. All other syllables that might come from this phrase (i.e. wo., wor, ing, ut)
can be traced phonetically to other words from the text (e.g. woman, words, sing, a truth).
Table 6.1 Complete sung phrases in the score of Sequenza III
Score timing Sung phrase

0:60 a woman
1:50 give me a few words for a woman
3:50 to sing
4:20 a truth
6:10 to build a
6:20 a few words before
6:35 to sing before night
8:15 allowing before night comes
8:35 to sing15
The final phrase to emerge is the limiting factor, the coming of night represented
by the phrase ‘before night comes’ being also the point at which the piece must
logically end. Even more precisely, night apparently falls at the moment the word
comes is uttered for the first and only time at approximately 8:25. After this,
nothing remains but the slow fading out of the voice on the word sing.
Different interpreters have read different meanings into the narrative of
Sequenza III. Anhalt sees it as a portrait of different types of neurotic and
psychotic behaviour, placing the piece into his own wider reading of extended
vocal repertoire that tends to view its narratives as ones of distress, oppression and
victimization. Osmond-Smith, conversely, sees the text as ‘mawkish sentiment’
that Berio ‘subjected … to ferociously stylized dismemberment’, although he reads
no wider narrative into it, seeing it more as a vehicle for Berberian than as a piece
of theatre.
In my reading, the phrase ‘before night comes’ is the key to the interpretive
meaning of Sequenza III, the source of the panic which drives it forward to its
conclusion: on the final page of the score, the singer repeatedly sings the word
before with the directions ‘frantic’, ‘extremely intense’ and ‘increasingly
desperate’ as the piece reaches its climax. Although the complete phrase is the last
to be heard, the component phonemes be (from before) and co (from comes) are
the most frequently used after to (verb signifier and preposition, with associations,
therefore, of action and direction). The phrase ‘before night comes’ is continually
anticipated by the insistence on these phonemes, creating a field of resonance in
conjunction with to that can be compared with the pitch-fields that characterize
many of the other Sequenzas.16
15
The phrases ‘allowing us’ and ‘to build a house’ are both heard in their complete
forms in the spoken sections at circa 1:28 and 7:45 in the score.
16
For a more comprehensive discussion of narrative in Sequenza III see Janet K.
Halfyard, ‘Before Night Comes: Narrative and Gesture in Berio’s Sequenza III (1966)’,
National Arts Education Archive Occasional Papers in the Arts and Education, 8 (2000):
79–93.
Provoking Acts 107
In addition, it becomes apparent in the course of the piece that an important

aspect of the narrative lies in the differences and tensions between the singing
voice and the other types of articulation. These articulations focus on language and
on the desire to reach out and communicate in concrete linguistic terms, driven
forward by the need to complete the task, to build the house of words before night
comes. The singing voice, therefore, represents music, communication in more
abstract terms, and often seems more inward-looking and reflective, often
apparently far less concerned about the urgency of the task. Even more
specifically, the non-singing articulation appears to correspond much more with
the ideas of panic, inspired no doubt by the seemingly impossible task of making
sense out of the deconstructed phonemes, a pile of bricks with no cement; and the
singing voice corresponds more to ideas of calm, ironically finding it far easier to
communicate the complete words and phrases of the text as sung expressions than
the articulation manages in speech. The expressive directions of the piece are
famously numerous and fast-changing, drawing on the spliced tape effect of Aria
and pushing it to a greater extreme, but they can be reduced to roughly five
character types, where A and B are dominated by articulation-based figures and C,
D and E tend to be primarily sung, as shown in Table 6.2.
Table 6.2 Character types extrapolated from the expressive directions
A B C D E
tense bewildered witty distant noble
urgent whimpering giddy dreamy joyful
nervous whining ecstatic impassive Serene
intense anxious coy wistful tender
gasping excited languorous
Returning to the original text, it is significant that the instruction is for ‘a few
words for a woman to sing’: when she sings, she meets with far more success than
when she attempts to speak, perhaps reflecting a composer’s point of view that
music is a more profound means of communication than words are on their own. In
effect, Sequenza III presents two parallel and intertwined narratives: on the one hand,
the imperative to give voice to the text before night comes; and on the other, a battle
for predominance between the singing voice and the speech-based articulation.
Character
Sequenzas III and V have several theatrical elements in common but also some
profound differences. Both are pervaded by a sense of anxiety. Both require the
performer to portray some level of emotion in the way they ‘perform themselves’
as opposed to how they perform the music, with the shift from an extrovert to an
introverted demeanour for the trombonist, and an astonishing array of emotional
states demanded of the vocalist. Both draw on language, with vowels and a single
word in Sequenza V and a specific if mutilated text in Sequenza III; and both, as
stated at the outset, are gender-specific.17
The specificity of the pieces extends beyond the simple gender-identification,
however. Both of these pieces identify specific people and I would argue that it is
impossible to perform them without those personalities being invoked at some
level. With Sequenza V, the personality is clearly identified as Grock, although the
acknowledgment of this by Berio has to some extent masked the fact that the piece
is perhaps also about Stuart Dempster and Berio’s observation of him – Grock,
after all, performed primarily as a violinist rather than a trombonist.18
Sequenza III, on the other hand, has its own ghost haunting the edges of any
performance: Berio acknowledged that the piece was ‘not only written for Cathy
but is about Cathy’19 and the reason that Berio was disappointed with other singers’
attempts is no doubt because the piece was, in fact, not written for female voice but
quite explicitly for the voice of Berberian.20 In the precise physical contours of her
body, most specifically her head and chest, Berberian’s voice, like any other
singer’s, was unique in the nuances of its tone; and in her particular history as an
Armenian American living in Europe, the precise articulation of words, laughter,
sighs and exclamations was written into her in a way that can never be
authentically reproduced by another because they have not lived her life in her
body.21 Whilst it is not my suggestion that performances of Sequenza III should
attempt to impersonate Berberian’s definitive 1967 recording – which is quite
different from her own live performances22 – to perform Sequenza III without an
awareness of the extent to which Berberian inhabits the piece would be comparable
to performing Sequenza V as a straight concert piece without any of the movements
and gestures that evoke and allude to Grock. In fact, it would probably be
impossible for anyone familiar with the extended vocal repertoire to perform
17
The pieces are explicitly gender-specific in they way they were conceived and
composed, despite the fact that women have performed Sequenza V (e.g. Abbie Conant) and
Sequenza III is occasionally performed by male vocalists (e.g. Nicholas Isherwood).
18
Grock is reputed to have been able to play 24 instruments and all his routines
centred on music, with his miniature violin as one of his regular props.
19
20
Berio alludes to his disappointment in other Sequenza III performances in Two
Interviews, p. 96.
21
Joke Dame, to whose essay I am indebted, presents a more developed argument for
the extent to which Sequenza III is ‘about’ Berberian. See Joke Dame, ‘Voices within the
Voice: Geno-text and Pheno-text in Berio’s Sequenza III’, in Adam Krims (ed.), Music/
Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 233–46.
22
The 1967 studio recording on Luciano Berio, Circles, Sequenza I, Sequenza III,
Sequenza V (Wergo, 1991) delivers a very precise rendition of the timings indicated in the
score, lasting a total of 8:55. Even allowing for the fact that the first 10 seconds, masked by
audience applause, have been cut, the live recording from 1969 on Cathy Berberian: Nel
Labirinto della Voce (Aura, 1999), is still much faster at 7:03.
Provoking Acts 109
Sequenza III without an awareness of Berberian looking over her shoulder (so to
speak), given how much of the repertoire was written for her or influenced by
her.23
Almost all the Sequenzas were written for specific performers known to Berio
and so one might attempt to make this argument for the whole series, although it is
far more pronounced in terms of the individuality of a singer’s voice and specific
vocal characteristics such as how one laughs. However, one other Sequenza overtly
draws on the ‘essence’ of its original performer. Sequenza XIV (2002), the last in
the series, is another work which one could realistically say was not only written
for Rohan de Saram but about him.
Saram was, for 25 years, the cellist of the Arditti Quartet, well known for their
dedication to contemporary music. He has also pursued a solo career, and it was
following performances of Ritorno degli Snovidenia (1976–77), conducted by
Berio, that the composer first started talking to him about Sri Lankan music.
Although born in Sheffield, Saram is of Sri Lankan descent and also plays the
Kandyan drum, a cylindrical drum with skins at either end, each of which produces
two tones. Berio ‘was amused to note that of the two instruments I played, one has
four strings while the other has four percussion sounds’.24
This observation forms the musical basis of Sequenza XIV. Saram both taped
and transcribed the drum rhythms for Berio, who used a particular twelve-beat
rhythm throughout the composition in some form or other, although it is constantly
transformed, being reduced to eleven beats and augmented to thirteen at times. The
player is required to be both cellist and drummer, treating both the body and the
strings of the cello as a percussion instrument – in effect, it becomes a
metamorphosed version of a Kandyan drum, uniting Saram’s two instruments and
their playing techniques in one transformed instrument, playing the equally
transformed drum rhythm:
In the rhythmic section of the Sequenza, there are no two presentations of this rhythm
with identical pitch in the left-hand percussion on the strings of the cello. The bow is not
used in these sections, the right hand playing the rhythm on the belly of the cello, whilst
the left-hand fingers hit the strings in a percussive way.25
Although it is harder to identify a particular performer from the sound of a cello

being played compared to the sound of a voice, nonetheless Saram’s own history,
heritage and specific musical interests are written into the material and
performance technique of Sequenza XIV in a way that has no direct parallel
anywhere in the series other than in the Sequenzas inspired by Dempster’s
23
For example, George Aperghis’s Récitations (1977–78) was not written for
Berberian but it is hard to imagine that it would have been written at all had her repertoire
not been created by composers such as Berio, Cage, Pousseur and Bussotti.
24
Rohan de Saram, programme note for Sequenza XIV, translated by Karen Kopp. My
thanks to them both for making this material available to me.
25
Ibid.
clowning and Berberian’s particular vocality. Although not a narrative in a

theatrical sense, the symbolic presence of a particular musician within the
mechanics of the composition itself links the last Sequenza back to two of the
earliest.
Action
The way in which Sequenza XIV requires the performer to treat the cello as a drum
for much of the piece implicates it in the third aspect of theatre under discussion
here, namely a theatre of action, of unexpected physical gestures and behaviours
which serve to draw our attention to the performer in unusual ways, something that
can be traced across many of the pieces. This is the aspect of the Sequenzas that
most clearly illustrates the influence on Berio of Brecht’s approach to theatre,
particularly his ‘alienation effect’. In Berio’s theatre, it occurs in those moments of
discontinuity between the audience’s expectations of what is natural and normal in
performance, and unexpected and ‘alienating’ actions that therefore force the
nature of the performance to be re-evaluated.
Sequenza III has one specific instruction regarding movement, that the
performer walks on at the start of the piece already engaged in the first muttering
gesture.26 The effect of this is, on one hand, to play a trick on the audience, and on
the other, to reinforce the theatricality of the piece. Conventionally, a recital singer
walks onto the platform and the audience applauds; she smiles and bows, and only
then begins her performance. The process of walking on stage, the applause, and
the silence that then follows create a transitional space between the reality of the
concert hall and manifest presence of the singer, and the partial time–place–
character matrix that the singer then enters as she performs the piece concerned.
Sequenza III disrupts this expectation and removes the transitional space: the
singer enters already performing, and the audience hastily stops applauding as this
realization sinks in, although the effect is disconcerting. The space between singer
and character is collapsed: her lack of acknowledgement of the audience and her
general obliviousness to the conventions of a recital suggest that this might be real
rather than performance: perhaps the singer has gone mad.
Comparable situations arise with the instrumental Sequenzas. When we look at
the concert platform, we tend not to see a person holding a violin, for example, we
see a violinist. Built into that preconception of what a violinist is are various
assumptions and expectations about the gestural vocabulary of performance: how
the player stands, how the instrument is held, how the bow moves, and so on. As a
result of this, in the actions of performance, the body of the player and the body of
the instrument become, in effect, a single entity: the body of the performer
becomes subsumed into the action of performance. Any physical gesture which
26
She is also required to click her fingers later in the score, although this comes across
more as an allusion to popular music, where finger clicking – especially in the 1960s –
would not be such an unusual gesture.
Provoking Acts 111
contradicts our expectations regarding this gestural vocabulary is likely to draw

attention back to the performer as a person separate from the instrument, disrupting
the performance through the intrusion of physical actions that do not fit the model
of our expectations. When intentional, these gestures become theatrical, the
performer acting outside the conventional range of gestures and creating new ones
that draw the viewer’s attention to the action itself as meaningful, regardless of any
specifically musical meaning. These actions surprise us, taking on a life of their
own within the piece, and although they may have a musical origin or result, they
are nonetheless always also theatrical at some level. In turn, the expected gestural
vocabulary of an instrument extends to the level of its repertoire: the history of the
instrument and the music written for it create a paradigmatic model of both what
the instrument is and what its music sounds like before the performer begins to
play.
These dual aspects – the expectations of how the performer behaves and of how
the instrument sounds – are found in many of the Sequenzas, where they work
reciprocally to exploit and challenge our assumptions, unusual physical gestures
leading the instrument to sound strangely, unusual musical gestures causing the
performer to move in unanticipated ways. Physical theatricality is first found in
Sequenza II for harp (1963) where, as Kirsty Whatley describes, tremolando-style
passages are combined with rapid deployment of the harp’s pedal levers, resulting
in passages where all four of the harpist’s limbs are in motion.27 These highly
physical, somewhat ungainly actions directly contradict the romantic and
impressionistic image of the harp – and the harpist – as delicately dreamy, and
substitute the picture of a violent, physically aggressive player, beating at the
instrument with both hands and feet. This is comparable to the arresting aural and
visual drama of Sequenza VI (1967), where the viola player is required to chisel
away at the strings of the instrument to produce its blocks of chordal material for
10 minutes or more, a feat of physical stamina quite unprecedented in the viola
repertoire.28
Both these pieces, like Sequenzas III and V, were written in the 1960s, a period
that saw some extremely physical and provocative theatrical experimentation in the
work of practitioners such as Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski. Berio was familiar
with this kind of work, as demonstrated by Passaggio, Laborintus II and its
withdrawn predecessor ‘Esposizione’ (1962–63), and the Sequenzas of the 1960s
often represent a translation of the extreme demands and sense of danger of
physical theatre into an equally demanding and exigent instrumental theatre.
The Sequenzas of the 1970s and 1980s, however, focus more on purely musical
preoccupations, and the theatre is played down. An example of this is the calm and
27
See Chapter 2 in this volume.
28
The Universal Edition score gives the duration of Sequenza VI as 8 minutes, but its
recordings are generally rather longer: for example Sabrina Giuliani’s recording on
Berio/Boulez: Folks Songs, Sequenza VI, Dérive (Arts Red Line, 1997) is 10:33; Christophe
Desjardins’ on Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998) is 12:13.
studied way in which the performer of Sequenza X for trumpet (1984) is required to
turn and play into the body of the piano and, combined with the largely motionless
performance from the pianist, this is a far more understated gesture toward
theatrical ideas than seen in the 1960s’ work. In the earlier pieces, the performer’s
body is put under sometimes considerable stress and playing technique itself is
challenged. The movements of Sequenza X are the most obviously functional of
any movements in the Sequenza scores, creating an entirely musical effect (the
trumpet’s notes resonating in the piano’s strings) without the sense of theatre that
arises from the inherent danger of pushing a player beyond what is normally
required of them.
However, at the end of the series, the final two pieces again return to the
physical extremes of the early works, with the drumming (and other extended
techniques) of Sequenza XIV and the astonishing physical demands of Sequenza
XII for bassoon (1995). Sequenza XII was, in fact, the thirteenth Sequenza to be
completed, although the twelfth to be started: it took so long to write that in the
meantime, Berio wrote Sequenza XIII for accordion (1995). Superficially,
Sequenza XII appears to be written much in the manner of other later Sequenzas:
the polyphony that underlies the construction of all the Sequenzas is found in the
contrast of materials between which the music moves, with different types of
material interrupting each other. This would appear to be a work focused on
musical rather than theatrical concerns: attending a performance, the audience
would observe that the bassoonist does not move or gesture, does not speak, does
not appear to treat the instrument in any particularly unusual way other than the use
of multiphonics – which, by the 1990s, could not really be considered unusual at
all – until one notices that the bassoonist has not paused to take a breath. This is
not an overt theatre in the way of the 1960s’ pieces: there are no grand theatrical
gestures here, only the one simple fact that the bassoonist must sustain the sound
continuously for some 20 minutes, an act requiring such enormous physical
stamina on a double reed instrument and such a specific technique – double
circular breathing – that few players can even attempt the work. To appreciate the
piece fully, one must first know that the technique is being used; but the result is
comparable to watching a high-wire walker, marvelling at the skill but with a
frisson of danger arising from the knowledge that the slightest mistake could lead
to ruin. Not unlike Sequenzas II and VI, it is the sense that the physical capabilities
of the player are being pushed to such an extreme that there is a danger of the
performance ending in disaster which turns the musical event into a theatrical one.
In terms of narrative, character and action, the Sequenzas for harp, voice,
trombone, viola, trumpet, bassoon and cello, as discussed above, all display
elements that encourage us to experience them as theatrical on one or more levels.
The sense of narrative also extends into the way the music itself unfolds, and the
reiteration of a particular device across several Sequenzas enhances this
impression: five of the Sequenzas – those for harp, trombone, oboe, violin and
bassoon – start from a single note, repeated, nuanced and sustained in the opening
of each piece, which then gradually expands to reveal the pitch material of the
Provoking Acts 113
entire work. The Sequenzas for viola, trumpet and guitar enact comparable rituals,
starting out from similarly static and restricted material, a chord in the cases of
Sequenzas VI and XI, a dyad for Sequenza X. It is quite striking that the Sequenzas
with the clearest connections to theatrical ideas of narrative and action tend to be
those that use this musical narrative idea. This opening gesture, particularly when
heard in the context of the series as a whole, becomes the musical equivalent of ‘in
the beginning’ – in this beginning, however, is the note rather than the word, and it
is from the first note that all the others are then introduced and woven into Berio’s
musical narratives.
The theatre of virtuosity
Although so far I have focused on specific elements of particular pieces that can be
seen as theatrical, all the Sequenzas share a sense of theatre, certainly when
performed live, which is related to the idea of a theatre of action. The sheer
technical challenge and musical dangerousness of the Sequenzas leads to a final
idea of theatre which links all fourteen pieces, namely virtuosity, one of the three
ideas that Berio himself described as connecting the series.29 Moreover, not only
do they all rely on the idea of virtuosity as an essential part of how they are
realized, but they are important in the reinvention – the rehabilitation, even – of the
concept of virtuosity itself.
The theatrical nature of virtuosity lies in the way the audience’s attention is
fixed upon the performer and largely relies on acts of live performance, on the
visual appreciation of a musician’s skill, for it is ‘the exhibition of skill for its own
sake that brings the house down’.30 For example, Bach’s Toccata from the Toccata,
Adagio and Fugue BVW 564 contains one of the most famous solos for pedals in
the organ repertoire, but it is quite unusual for an organist to be visible when
playing in the normal context of a church or cathedral. The listener’s attention is
therefore focused purely on the sound of the music, while the act of performance is
hidden from view. Relocate the performance to a concert hall where the organ has
a console that can be placed on stage in full view of the audience and, speaking
from experience, watching an organist perform this long, intricate passage of pedal
work is an exhilarating event, musical act as theatrical spectacle.31 As Irving Pichel
observes, ‘audiences take delight in feats of dexterity and agility, quite apart from
[musical] meaning’.32 The visual aspects of music, absent from audio recordings,
29
These are virtuosity, idiomatic writing and polyphony. See Luciano Berio, Two
Interviews, pp. 90–99.
30
Irving Pichel, ‘In Defence of Virtuosity’, The Quarterly of Film, Radio and
Television, 6/3 (1952), p. 230.
31
The event referred to here is a recital given by the organist David Saint at Symphony
Hall, Birmingham (UK) on 15 November 2005.
32
Pichel, p. 229.
are an essential part of how virtuoso performers communicate their virtuosity to the
audience: the virtuosic moment is the point where the soloist’s actions become the
focus of the audience’s attention and, as such, there is always the possibility that in
these moments the music itself becomes subjugated to a display of the performer’s
abilities.
Consequently, virtuosity has occupied a sometimes problematic position in
music. The modern understanding of a virtuoso as a musician possessed of
extraordinary technical skill arose with the development of concert culture
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which positioned the musical
concert primarily as a form of entertainment, albeit a refined and potentially
educational one.33 In this context, virtuosi had high currency as thrilling performers
attracting their own audiences, but a conflict therefore arose between the centrality
of the virtuoso in the act of performance and the primacy of the composer as author
of the musical text.
By the early twentieth century, musical culture was divided between audiences
eager to see virtuoso playing and, most often, music critics who perceived
virtuosity as a vulgar display that appealed to an ignorant and easily pleased public
but did not serve the music well.34 The focus on technical skill not only detracted
from the art of music but potentially threatened its future by elevating the standards
of technique to pointlessly high levels:
It is … true that the satisfaction in technical mastery is legitimate in its place and degree.
But in the exaggeration of it, what a cruelly long and exacting stretch of endless practice
and toil this passing sparkle of mild pleasure represents! Even if you are willing to let
amusing triviality pass under the name of music, you should stop to consider the result
of sanctioning and setting up an unnecessarily high standard of technique, far above the
normal requirements of a sane and reasonable art. Difficulties are contrived actually for
the mere purpose of conquering them, so insuperably beyond the means of human
fingers that the merest handful of the world [sic] musicians can master them.35
The result is an impoverished art, where the performer is so exhausted by practice

– Burk suggests that the virtuoso must practice nine or ten hours a day – that they
become ‘narrow, unintelligent and unhuman (musically speaking at least) because,
whereas the art of music demands first of all breadth of mind and heart for its
realization and communication, the virtuoso is steeped in technicalities and choked
by them’.36
This portrait of the virtuoso is still present in Berio’s discussion of virtuosity in
the Sequenzas in the 1980s, when he says: ‘I hold a great respect for virtuosity
even if this word may provoke derisive smiles and even conjure up the picture of
33
See Marc Pincherle and Willis Wager, ‘Virtuosity’, The Musical Quarterly, 35/2
(1949): 226–43 for an account of the history of the term.
34
J.N. Burk, ‘The Fetish of Virtuosity’, The Musical Quarterly, 4/2 (1918) 282–92.
35
Ibid., p. 283.
36
Ibid., p. 284.
Provoking Acts 115
an elegant and rather diaphanous man with agile fingers and an empty head’.37
Rather than Burk’s narrow and unintelligent virtuoso, however, Berio’s ideal
interpreter is possessed of ‘a virtuosity of knowledge’ and Berio is acutely aware
of the potential conflict between composer and performer, the ‘tension between the
musical idea and the instrument, between concept and musical substance’.38
For Berio and his peers, especially those composers associated with the
Darmstadt School such as Boulez and Maderna, virtuosity must have seemed a
double-edged sword. On the one side, there was an apparent desire to retain near-
complete control of a composition, as seen in the application of serial systems to
pitch, dynamic, duration and attack in a piece such as Boulez’s Notations (1951),
or the intense level of detail in relation to these same areas in non-serial
compositions such as the Sequenzas. This could seem to be an attempt to create
‘virtuoso-proof music, the texture of which was so closely knit that no additions or
changes could be made’.39 On the other side, meanwhile, the complexity of the
resulting music demanded a musician possessed of extremely high levels of
technical skill – in other words, a virtuoso – in order to play it.
By acknowledging the virtuosity demanded by the Sequenzas, Berio reinstates
it as an acceptable and respectable concept in serious music, but he consciously
separates his idea of virtuosity from the historical image of the empty-headed
performer who ‘is apt to regard the written work as a mere vehicle for his own
art’.40 Berio’s new virtuoso is an altogether different creature, a performer with the
same technical abilities but without the suggested ego of their historical
counterpart, who will therefore primarily seek to serve the needs of the
composition rather than merely to thrill the audience with brilliant but, by
implication, superficial displays of technique. Virtuosity now becomes an integral
aspect of the composition itself, part of how it creates meaning rather than separate
from it. Clearly, Berio was not solely responsible for this move in music – Eric
Salzman, discussing works performed in New York in the early 1960s, was
intrigued by a new sense of virtuosity in the music he was hearing, where the solo
writing was ‘treated in a highly developed, virtuoso manner with carefully
elaborated rhythmic and melodic detail. And, most significantly, all these
characteristics tend to function as basic aspects of the musical thought, not as
merely decorative or coloristic treatment of more essential ideas’. 41
However, no composer other than Berio specifically pursued a programme of
writing for the virtuoso in a manner comparable to the Sequenzas. Here, the
performer is given centre stage: only the Sequenza for trumpet admits an additional
37
Luciano Berio, Two Interviews, p. 90.
38
Ibid., pp. 90–91.
39
Warren D. Allen, ‘Art and Virtuosity’, Bulletin of the American Musicological
Society, 11–13 (1948): 78.
40
Ibid.
41
Eric Salzman, ‘Report from New York: The New Virtuosity’, Perspectives of New
Music, 1/2 (1963), p. 174.
person to the platform, who must then endeavour to remain utterly silent, creating
no specific sounds and allowing the trumpet player, in effect, to play the piano,
activating its strings through trumpet blasts into the body of the instrument as the
‘pianist’ silently depresses keys.
By placing the soloist so centrally, writing such challenging music and making
so many demands on the technique, musicianship and stamina of the player, these
pieces invite the audience to marvel at the performer’s ability as part of the
appreciation of the composition rather than as a side effect of it; and
notwithstanding the usefulness of recordings, live performance is essential to a
complete understanding of what the Sequenzas mean. Although not speaking about
the Sequenzas themselves, Salzman’s observations on the kind of virtuosity
implicated in such demandingly written music are pertinent:
the physical setting of the performance – the act of intelligence directing a muscular
effort to set physical material vibrating in a controlled way – can be far more interesting
[than the more casual and uncontrolled structures of aleatoric and improvised music].
There is a physical tension between the will on the one hand and the mechanism and the
sound on the other that determines much of the physical effect of live performance.42
The Sequenzas represent Berio’s own reinvention and appropriation, as a

composer, of virtuosity. Rather than being a coathanger on which the performers
hang their skills for others to marvel at, part of the Sequenzas’ meaning lies in our
full recognition of their virtuosic demands, virtuosity becoming part of the
essential nature of the composition. The extent to which virtuosity can only truly
be communicated and appreciated in a live performance connects it firmly to the
idea of theatre, the music creating its meaning through physical action,
comprehended through our visual sense as much as through abstract musical
sound.
The Sequenzas’ reputation is based primarily on their musical significance,
both in terms of Berio’s compositional career and their contribution to instrumental
repertoires. Many of these pieces have become paradigms of the musical literature,
changing the way in which other composers have thought about an instrument and
what can be achieved with it. The increase in the technical and musical demands
made on performers in contemporary music does not owe everything to the
Sequenzas but, in many cases, it owes a great deal. Part of the enduring appeal of
these pieces to performers, audiences and musicologists lies in the experience of
seeing one performed rather than only listening to a recording, for only live
performances can truly express the specifically theatrical ideas of character, action
and narrative that permeate many of the Sequenzas, and bring to life the theatre of
virtuosity that is integral to them all.
42
Ibid., p. 175.
Chapter 7
The Chemins Series

Paul Roberts
No study of Berio’s Sequenzas would be complete without discussing the

complementary series of works that evolved alongside them, namely the ten works
that belong to the Chemins series and that represent an equally fascinating part of
Berio’s output. The attention, admiration and respect that these two groups of
works have aroused in the musical world are such that the words Sequenza and
Chemins have practically entered into modern language as definitions of musical
forms in their own right. The word Sequenza represents the idea of a highly
complex and virtuosic composition for a solo instrument, whereas the word
Chemins – inextricably linked to the solo Sequenzas – implies the transformation of
an existing Sequenza into a completely different instrumental work, a
transformation that treats the original solo material in a concerto-like manner,
resulting in a work for soloist and instrumental group or orchestra. It is precisely
this conceptual duality of solo and concerto that is fundamental to the existence of
the various Chemins.
The Chemins series is entirely dependent on the Sequenzas for its existence and,
despite some ideas to the contrary, in no instance was a Chemins composed before
its associated Sequenza. This additive process was an important compositional
technique for Berio and may be observed in many other works that do not form part
of the Sequenza or Chemins series. This method is the basis for almost all of
Berio’s concerto-like works over the course of his career, including ‘Points on the
curve to find …’ (1974), Voci (1984) and Solo (1999).
With respect to the Sequenzas, the Chemins series is neither exhaustive nor
entirely linear in its development. There is no corresponding Chemins for every
Sequenza and the two series were not always composed in parallel order. Berio
only produced a Chemins where there was material to be expanded upon. He also
confirmed that he never intended to compose a Chemins on the Sequenzas for flute,
trombone (which is too idiomatic and too closely bound with the instrument and the
voice of the player), nor for accordion.1
1
See interviews with Berio in ConSequenze: Muziekcahier 5 (Festival booklet),
(Rotterdam, 1995) and Francesco Degrada (ed.), Festival Luciano Berio (Festival booklet)
(Milan, 1996).
118 Paul Roberts
Other Sequenzas without a Chemins can be accounted for by looking further

afield. The difficulties caused by the extreme vocal virtuosity combined with the
implicitly polyphonic nature of Sequenza III (described by Berio as a ‘three-part
invention’)2 encouraged him to experiment once with a Chemins-like performance
using three vocal groups.3 However, a substitute Chemins-like work for Sequenza
III is A-Ronne (1974–75), the logical development of the vocal Sequenza and
described by the composer as a ‘super-Sequenza’.4 The piano was considered an
autonomous instrument such that Sequenza IV did not require a Chemins. However,
Sequenza IV forms part of the ballet Compass (1994) where it appears as the
movement ‘Dialogue’ clothed in orchestral material – rather like Part II, scene 7 of
La vera storia (1977–81) where Sequenza IX provides the musical structure of the
complete scene. Unlike the Chemins¸ however, neither of these two examples may
be performed as separate concert works.
Another explanation for the non-linearity of the Chemins series can be
attributed to the fact that the series was disrupted in the early 1980s when Berio
composed ‘Chemins V’ for clarinet and live electronics.5 Dissatisfied with it, he
promptly withdrew it, but for a time this remained a ‘work in progress’. In fact, the
working title, almost up to the performance, was ‘Sequenza IXb’, a title then
transferred to the version of Sequenza IX for alto saxophone. In other words, it was
already clear in his mind that the solo clarinet part constituted Sequenza IX,
effective proof that the clarinet Sequenza was not preceded by a Chemins as is
sometimes thought, and nor would it be logical to assume so in this case: the
conception and programming of live electronics necessarily requires that the
musical text exists first. In ‘Chemins V’, the live electronics were designed to
produce spontaneous events in response to what the soloist played and were
dependent, therefore, on what the Sequenza line produced in performance. Further
evidence for the compositional sequence can be found in the date on the score of
2
Luciano Berio, Two Interviews with Rosanna Dalmonte and Bálint András Varga,
trans. and ed. David Osmond-Smith (New York/London, 1985), p. 96.
3
See Theo Muller, ‘“Music is Not a Solitary Act”: Conversation with Luciano Berio’,
Tempo, 199 (1997), pp. 18–19.
4
Personal Communication. [Editor’s note: the author was Berio’s assistant for almost
fourteen years and in this essay draws on the numerous comments and observations made to
him by the composer during the course of their work together. Where report of Berio’s ideas
is not attributed to a specific source, it should be assumed to stem from this privileged
relationship.]
5
‘Chemins V’ may have left its mark elsewhere. Several interesting facts suggest
parallels with another work for clarinet and live electronics, namely Dialogue de l’ombre
double (1985) by Pierre Boulez, which is dedicated to Berio. Dialogue is also a virtuoso
Sequenza-like work – theatrical, too – and included among the technical requirements is the
amplified resonance of an off-stage piano (cf. Sequenza X of 1984). In addition, the title
reflects Berio’s description of the electronics in ‘Chemins V’ as the clarinet’s ‘vocalized
shadow’. Throughout this chapter, ‘Chemins V’ is used for the 1980 clarinet and electronics
work, to distinguish it from Chemins V (1992) for guitar and instruments.
The Chemins Series 119
the transcription for alto saxophone, April 1980: the world première of ‘Chemins
V’ was 26 April 1980. The only argument to support the idea that ‘Chemins V’
came first is in the fact that Sequenza IX necessarily eliminates certain small
elements that otherwise have no sense in a solo instrumental context, but the solo
line of the Sequenza was in no way reduced from a complex existing Chemins
situation.
The uncertainty surrounding ‘Chemins V’ shows that Berio was not entirely
convinced that the addition of live electronics was enough to merit the status of the
other Chemins. The idea of expanding the scope of a solo instrument in the
Sequenzas had already begun with Sequenza VII for oboe with the obligatory
electronic or instrumental drone. In Sequenza X, Berio uses the piano resonance as
an amplified echo chamber, comparable to real-time electronics. The resultant
piano resonance depends on the actions of the soloist, as did the live electronics in
‘Chemins V’. As it is, the first performance of ‘Chemins V’ is considered the world
première of Sequenza IX. Likewise, the original manuscript of ‘Chemins V’
doubles as that of Sequenza IX.
Corale (1980–81), written the following year, with the subtitle ‘su Sequenza
VIII’, is the Chemins for violin. It is possible (amid several reasons) that Berio
avoided the title ‘Chemins VI’ because of the problem with the then recent,
unsuccessful ‘Chemins V’. Twelve years passed before Berio resumed the Chemins
series, allotting the title Chemins V (1992) to the work for guitar. Finally, both
Chemins VI and Chemins VII (the last two in the series, both written in 1996), like
Corale, have poetic titles and the designation Chemins is demoted to the subtitle.
This not only confirms but also embraces the Chemins status of Corale. This shift
in attitude toward naming the pieces is also reflected in the fact that Sequenza XIII
(1995) for accordion has the subtitle Chanson. Indeed, the first version of Sequenza
XIV (2002) bore the subtitle ‘Dual’.
The metamorphosis of a Sequenza into a Chemins, as was Berio’s practice, has
no real precedent in the history of western music, at least not in such a systematic
way. Berio’s approach and elaborations may be considered in terms of
transcription, albeit in a highly original manner. The Sequenzas all stand alone as
independent solo pieces, just as the different Chemins coexist as separate works.
There is no question that a particular Chemins is merely an alternative version of its
corresponding Sequenza; nor are they simply orchestrations of the original solo
work.6 Instead, each of the Chemins is a distinctively new work that draws ‘on’ a
particular Sequenza as is specified in their subtitles – Chemins I (su Sequenza II),
for example. The Chemins change the temporal dimension of the Sequenzas used.
They were also Berio’s personal way of analysing his Sequenzas and close study of
the Chemins can in turn provide the key to an understanding of a particular
Sequenza on an analytical level. This is a reciprocal process because familiarity
with the Sequenzas ensures an immediate level of understanding of the Chemins.
6
Except in the Sequenza VI group, where Chemins III is an orchestration of Chemins
II and Chemins IIb orchestrates the original Sequenza VI material.
120 Paul Roberts
Chemins I (su Sequenza II) per arpa principale ed orchestra (1965)
That Berio had not planned the two series of works is shown by the fact that the
original title of Sequenza I for flute (1958) was simply Sequenza [Sequence].
Similarly, at first, the title of the work for harp and orchestra was just Chemins
[Paths]. The idea of writing the Sequenza for harp was Berio’s natural reaction
when commissioned for a concerto for harp and orchestra, and therefore before
beginning the large-scale work he proceeded to write the piece for solo harp. In this
particular Sequenza–Chemins pairing, the two companion works were therefore
written almost as a single project. Chemins I is responsible for Sequenza II (1963)
and, at the same time, the writing of the Sequenza was extremely fruitful in
suggesting ideas for Chemins I due to the limitations of the harp as a solo
instrument.
The title Sequenza II became the obvious choice for the solo work. However, it
would be wrong to assume that Berio wrote this Sequenza only as some sort of
preliminary exercise to explore harp technique and its possibilities. This he had
already thoroughly and brilliantly done several years earlier in Circles (1960)
where all of the unusual playing techniques and effects of the Sequenza are to be
found in abundance.
Following the example for flute, Berio wrote the music of the harp Sequenza in
a very carefully prepared proportional notation. To ensure precision, the music is
rigorously barred throughout in a regular fashion. The length of the bars never
changes because they correspond with a single imaginary metronome beat. Only the
speed changes and Berio preserves this in the related Chemins. Here, the music is
largely notated in proportional notation for the harps, in parallel with normal metric
notation for the orchestra. The visual effect is striking and may be compared with
the graphic notation of an electronic tape part synchronized with instrumental
music. Other different solutions that combine proportional and strict notation may
be observed in several other important works, such as Tempi Concertati (1958–59)
and Circles.
Of all the works in the Chemins series, Chemins I most lengthens the time
dimension of the original solo piece. The ‘chemins’ of Chemins I are, for the most
part, brief instrumental commentaries inserted into the progress of the Sequenza
material or superimposed when the solo line settles for a moment on a fast repeated
figure, as shown in Ex 7.1
In Chemins I Berio reveals hitherto almost unknown qualities of the harp, and
Berio’s use of the orchestra deserves special attention in the way that it is employed
almost exclusively for the manipulation of pure sound. The confrontation between
the harp and orchestra – a standard symphony orchestra in this piece – results in a
dialogue that at times is strongly reminiscent of musique concrète. The identity of
Example 7.1 Chemins I
the original Sequenza is completely transformed by the instrumental commentaries

which focus on and amplify sonic objects from the harp, developing as an interplay
of mostly vertical homophonic blocks that move between soloist and ensemble.
Apart from the two orchestral harps, the strings are the only forces employed for no
less than the first two thirds of the piece, and even their use is largely restricted to
pizzicato. This mode of playing acts as a timbral bridge between the harps and
strings and greatly enlarges the harmonic and dynamic potential of the harp. The
sound, at times, is reminiscent of Différences (1958–59) particularly where
fragments of the harp material are mirrored and transformed – even distorted – by
the orchestra. The string section is divided into equal groups of eight players, with
the violins divided into three groups, the third of these placed in a line at the back
of the platform behind the rest of the orchestra, along with the third harp, while the
second harp is positioned in the middle of the orchestra. This layout is essential for
moving the sound of these instruments around the orchestral space and this is fully
exploited during the first part of the piece. The two harps in the orchestra provide
additional depth – musically and spatially – to the solo harp, which they imitate
very closely. In due course, as the dynamic level gradually increases, the two
orchestral harps are joined by the piano, which is in turn joined by the celesta and
122 Paul Roberts
harpsichord. Together these three keyboard instruments form a tight unit

culminating in a scurrying, fragmented, independent unison line, anticipating a
similar effect to be found towards the end of the first movement of Sinfonia (1968).
The woodwind and brass are deployed in the first full orchestral tutti at the
structural climax of the work. The piercing orchestral clusters – like earlier material
– evoke the sound of electronic music, reaching the extremes of the opposing
densities of the piece.
Although Chemins I retains the original dynamics of the Sequenza, there are no
problems of balance with the orchestra. This is achieved by concentrating the
orchestral inserts on material dominated by hocketing techniques, so that attacks
rarely coincide with the harps. There is great dynamic contrast within the work
ranging from quasi senza suono to the full orchestral fortissimo. The harps are very
powerful in the pizzicato dialogues, where they have an unusually aggressive
character. The quietest moments of the original Sequenza are reserved for the harps
alone, including the introduction (not part of the Sequenza) and the coda, which is
unchanged from the original.
‘Musical unity’ – the different facets of Sequenza VI
As noted earlier, there are no Chemins for the three Sequenzas that separate those
for harp and viola. However, as if reflecting the irrepressible energy of the original
solo work, the Sequenza for viola (1967) gave birth to a group of no less than four
inter-related Chemins. In continuing the Chemins series, there is no question that
Berio had discovered some sort of formula. In fact, Chemins II (su Sequenza VI)
per viola e 9 strumenti (1967) could hardly be more different from its predecessor.7
The orchestra of Chemins I is replaced by a chamber ensemble, and the original
solo part is practically unaltered, save the occasional redistribution of certain
figurations. With the exception of a single instrumental insertion of seven bars, the
musical structure (and therefore the duration) of Chemins II remains the same as
Sequenza VI. The ‘chemins’ of Chemins II are the many new layers that constantly
evolve within the instrumental textures that unfold around the solo viola.
It is evident that the virtuosic tour de force of Sequenza VI, whilst exploiting to
the maximum all the different viola techniques employed, offers almost unlimited
possibilities for further development. Like Chemins I there is the potential for
timbral development, and on this occasion, because the Sequenza deliberately
concentrates on types of harmony exclusively connected to the viola – in its
positionings and calculated use of the open strings (Ex. 7.2) – Chemins II could
take the harmonic possibilities much further.
7
To be precise there are nine players in this piece, but there are ten instruments
including the tam-tam.
Example 7.2 Sequenza VI: idiosyncratic viola chord-types
Despite the technical complexities of Sequenza VI, the music is remarkably direct,
becoming even more so in Chemins II. The characteristic surface element of the
dense tremolandi is immediately projected into the ensemble and conditions all the
different means of sound production available, including the unpitched sound of the
tam-tam. In this way there is no difficulty in producing rapid reiterations of the
harmony exactly. The ensemble widens the scope for fast motivic repetitions by
way of different types of trills and flutter-tonguing. The highly agile instrumental
parts tend to be extremely fragmented in the constant passing around of
uninterrupted linear material. Considered as a whole, these fragments suggest
longer lines and dissolve the difference between the horizontal and vertical planes.
The ensemble intensifies the chromatic harmonic processes of the Sequenza, but
Berio does not act out harmonic ideas that are in any way absent from the solo
work; rather, he analyses afresh the finished Sequenza in its totality. The harmony
of the original acquires new perspectives, and inner life is given to the original
tremolando chords. Where the viola maintains chords of three or four pitches, the
ensemble emphasizes the changing intervals of the voice-leading and throws new
light onto the intervallic content of the chords with tremolandi between single
notes. Fortuitous or not, the very first chord is a formation of an all-interval
tetrachord. This lays the ground for a rich exploitation of trills, tremolandi and
repetitive cells which articulate all possible intervals, as in Ex. 7.3, something that
was later developed systematically in ‘Points on the curve to find …’ .
The level of activity is so intense in Chemins II that the ensemble gives the
illusion of being larger than it really is, and Berio immediately seized on the
experience of Chemins II to take the process a stage further. Chemins II, like
Sequenza VI before, became the basis of a new version: Chemins III (su Chemins
II) per viola e orchestra (1968). In order to understand how Berio transformed
Chemins II into Chemins III, it is useful to mention a later example of an apparently
very similar process for the sake of comparison. In the very Chemins-like piano
concerto, Concerto II (echoing curves) (1988–89), ‘Points on the curve to find …’
is re-used as the basis of the central portion of the work. The content of the original
is preserved intact, and the instrumental group appears like an enlarged concertino
within the layout of the full orchestra. The rest of the orchestra surrounds this group
and adds new layers of material onto that of ‘Points on the curve to find …’ without
ever altering it.
124 Paul Roberts
Example 7.3 Chemins II: two bars after D (extract)
The original subtitle of Chemins III – ‘for viola, nine instruments and orchestra’ –
was perhaps misleading because it implied the use of the nine instruments as a
separate group, as found in Concerto II. Instead, the single instruments have no
privileged role and enter into the normal orchestral formation. Chemins III employs
the largest orchestra of the Chemins series and, like Chemins I, is concerned with
‘composing and opposing extreme densities’8 ranging from the chamber qualities of
Chemins II to an important episode using the violent impact of the full orchestra.
Chemins III is a true orchestral transcription of Chemins II. The difference is
immediately felt in the size of the full string section that includes double basses.
The extra strings call for a second harp, and the percussion is doubled to four
players, each with their own tam-tam.
In general the orchestra does not add further layers to those of Chemins II
(which would then become too dense) nor does it provide new instrumental
commentaries. Instead, it provides greater resonance to the original instrumental
layers of Chemins II redistributed among the larger number of instruments and
across the orchestral space without ever covering the soloist. The harmonic core of
Chemins II is fully retained – the synthesizer part which supported the solo viola is
identical – but the harmony is enriched and coloured by the greater orchestral
means available. Structurally, Chemins III remains the same as Chemins II, though
the single short instrumental insert at the structural climax is replaced with a much
more important episode, characterized by pauses, where the full orchestra becomes
the protagonist. By contrast, the coda reinstates the chamber scoring underlining
the unexpectedly melodic ending of the original.
The experience of transcribing Chemins II for orchestra led Berio to write
Chemins IIb (1970) for orchestra. The size of the orchestra is halfway between
Chemins II and Chemins III. However, the instrumental content is radically
8
Luciano Berio, programme note for Concerto for two pianos (1972–73).
different and one is struck by the appearance of new instruments. The smaller
woodwind section now has an oboe and two saxophones, and an electric guitar and
piano replace the harps and celesta, while the strings are reduced to six violas, four
cellos and three double basses, with a solo violin rather than a viola. Removing the
viola solo common to Chemins II and III necessitates some modifications to the
overall structure. The point of departure is now Chemins II rather than Sequenza
VI, and the modifications can be summarized as two new insertions of material and,
since there is no soloist, two substantial cuts and a shortened ending that remove
otherwise redundant material. In addition, the tempi are completely changed and
renewed in order to adapt to the different orchestral situation.
It was in relation to this group of Chemins that Berio coined the onion metaphor
in order to explain their close relationship with one another.9 In relation to
Sequenza VI, Chemins II and Chemins III, Chemins IIb is ‘a transformation of
everything’. Although the viola solo as the foreground element disappears, Berio
does not simply abandon the instrumental torso. However hidden, the solo
Sequenza is always present and generates much of the solo violin part, with many
fragments distributed among other instruments. The orchestra of Chemins IIb
completely transforms the reworked orchestral material of Chemins III and in the
process alters the harmony too, although the strongest link with Chemins II is to be
found in the original harmonic backbone of the synthesizer, which remains
identical. Just as the audible traces of Sequenza VI are almost imperceptible, so are
the two new instrumental inserts, due to the entirely new perspective when viewing
a familiar landscape from a completely different angle.
Chemins IIb soon generated Chemins IIc (1972) where a spectacular solo part
for bass clarinet is superimposed onto the existing orchestral Chemins IIb. In
Berio’s eyes, Chemins IIc is ‘a kind of cousin’ of the other works. There is no need
for a separate score for Chemins IIc, since the bass clarinet part is the only
difference in the notation of the two pieces. The bass clarinet part is exclusive to
this piece and has no life as a separate solo work. To remove it as a new solo piece
would be equivalent to taking out the solo piano part of ‘Points on the curve to find
…’, though this additive procedure of Chemins IIc is the closest that Berio came to
writing a Chemins before its associated Sequenza.
Chemins IV (su Sequenza VII) per oboe e 11 archi (1975)
In Sequenza VII for oboe (1969), Berio reintroduced proportional notation for the
last time in the Sequenza series. Most of the earlier Sequenzas employed various
types of proportional notation, though the Sequenza for viola effectively became a
9
‘These three Chemins relate to each other something like the layers of an onion.
Each layer creates a new, though related, surface and each older layer assumes a new
function as soon as it is covered.’ From Berio’s programme note for the world première of
Chemins IIc, Rotterdam, 22 June 1972.
126 Paul Roberts
model for the remaining Sequenzas where the music is notated essentially with
standard rhythmic values, though unbarred. In reality, Berio was dissatisfied with
performances from the proportionally notated scores, and this was the prime
motivation for reprinting Sequenza I, for example. In fact, this was not difficult to
renotate since it was originally composed in standard notation.
Another problem of proportionally notated music that arises when transforming
a Sequenza into a Chemins involves the notational relationship and synchronization
of soloist and orchestra. The solution adopted for Chemins I stems from the fact
that the Sequenza for harp was first sketched in standard notation, small traces of
which can be seen in Chemins I.10 It was obvious that the highly elaborate scheme
for Sequenza VII could not be transferred to the ensemble context of a Chemins and
therefore, not surprisingly, the score of Chemins IV is written in standard notation,
as was the original unpublished version of this Sequenza too.
Quite different from the preceding Chemins, Chemins IV – the shortest in the
series – is the first that uses a monodic instrument as soloist. It is also the only
Chemins to use a completely homogenous ensemble which is limited to eleven solo
strings, a return to the chamber dimensions of Chemins II.
In Sequenza VII the note B – invisibly sustained either electronically or by any
suitable instrument as a neutral sound – serves to focus the listener on the subtle
variations in the oboe timbre produced by the different fingerings written in the
score for that note.11 The B automatically assumes a harmonic role in its
combination with all the other pitches sounded by the oboe, particularly since the
oboe is an instrument that by itself can only minimally suggest harmony. In this
Sequenza, the note B acts like a pedal throughout the piece and, as the determinant
pitch, all but one of the oboe subsections in the first part start from and return to it.
In the final section, the pitches are more or less fixed in register and the music
remains mostly in the upper register of the oboe. From this point, the B is quite
exposed in the harmonic texture, and acts almost as a root, whereas up to this point
it was an axis at the centre of the harmony.
The original character of the sustained B changes almost from the beginning of
Chemins IV. During the opening section, where the oboe is limited to this one note,
the gradual entrance of the strings reflects and complements the oboist’s use of
different fingerings in the many different overlapping timbral shadings used to
produce this pitch – the opposite of the sustained B drone of the Sequenza which
can only vary in its loudness. In Chemins IV, the B is afforded a much greater
significance: all the instruments participate in its articulation at some stage. As in
the Sequenza, it is fixed in the same register and is never doubled, except
deliberately during the final instrumental commentaries. It continues after the oboe
stops, re-emerging into the foreground whilst the rest of the surrounding harmony
10
Berio intended to renotate Sequenza II in standard notation, though never found
time.
11
This use of a ‘drone’ for the duration of an entire piece appears again in Agnus
(1971), There is no tune (1993) and Altra Voce (1999).
vanishes. The B therefore penetrates and conditions the entire harmonic framework
of the ensemble, where the degree of complexity is always related to that of the
oboe. However, as the unbroken flow of the music progresses, other pitches – when
fixed in register or little used by the oboe – are also sustained over long periods.
This creates background accumulations of harmonic material of varying densities
where the B recedes into a less dominant position within an enlarged harmonic
environment.
The formal substructures of the Sequenza can readily be traced in the Chemins,
where they are delineated by instrumental transitions when the oboe is silent. For
example, the first of these, based on the preceding explosive proliferation of the
harmony by the oboe (replacing the first pause in the Sequenza), marks the end of
the first section. Small ritornello-like elements, as shown in Ex. 7.4, and other
recognizable figures circulate in the ensemble, providing further orientation and
direction to the implicit underlying stasis common to both works.
Example 7.4 Chemins IV: two bars after A (extract)
Corale (su Sequenza VIII) per violino, due corni e archi (1981)
Corale interrupts and separates the Chemins series into two groups. The first group
of six, up to Chemins IV, actually draws on just three different Sequenzas. The last
group, after Corale, similarly draws on just three further Sequenzas. This was
certainly not planned as such by Berio although, as discussed earlier, there are
plausible reasons for the absence of the word Chemins in the title of Corale.
Sequenza VIII (1976–77) belongs to the same period as Chemins IV and Coro
(1975). It is therefore not surprising to find some similarities between these pieces
and Corale. The choice of ensemble enlarges on Chemins IV and consists of a
small string section with the addition of two horns. The harmonic obsession with
the note B of Chemins IV is undeniably recalled by the prominence of the adjacent
A and B (in the same register) that dominate long sections of Sequenza VIII and
128 Paul Roberts
Corale. The opening sequence, beginning with a single pitch, again recalls the
opening of Sequenza VII and Chemins IV, although the opening out of the
harmony, by contrast, begins with bold clusters in the solo violin – chords
originating from the very first entry of the violin in Serenata I (1957) – that restrict
the appearance of new notes to the narrowest possible range. The structural
function of this focal dyad, with its roots in the fourth movement of Sinfonia where
a D#–E# dyad is sustained for the entire movement, is very different from the B in
Chemins IV. This is partly because Sequenza VIII pays homage to the violin in a
wide historical perspective that includes Bach and Paganini. Berio has described
Corale as ‘quasi una passacaglia’, where the stability of the notes A and B acts in
a way analogous to a ground bass or ‘a kind of compass on a very diversified and
carefully planned journey’.12 This overt baroque reference influences the
instrumental ensemble, which derives from typical baroque or early classical
orchestral formations. Likewise, the title Corale evokes the baroque world, at the
same time as demonstrating the links this work has with Coro.
The solo violin has a strong identity, supported by the variegated material which
covers a wide range of expressive and technical qualities associated with the
instrument, ‘a chorus of different techniques’.13 These are composed into the
discourse and help determine the formal logic of the solo Sequenza. Their potential
is then reflected and magnified into new areas by the orchestra in Corale. The
melodic development of folk elements in Coro – as opposed to direct quotation –
also permeates the melodic construction and two-part polyphony of much of
Sequenza VIII, as shown in Ex. 7.5.
Chords of triple and quadruple-stopping, like those in Sequenza VI, do exist but
only in relation to local contexts. The virtual polyphony implicit in previous
Sequenzas is here made explicit in the extensive use of real two-part polyphony,
which is quite natural for the violin. The importance of the two-part polyphony is
reflected and elevated by the two horns, especially in the articulation of the A–B
dyad. The use of the horns, particularly this underlining of dyads at significant
moments, can be traced back to ‘Points on the curve to find …’ (see Ex. 7.6).
Example 7.5 Melodic development of folk elements
a) Sequenza VIII: Page 5, first line
12
Luciano Berio, Requies, Voci, Corale (RCA, 1990), CD liner notes.
13
Luciano Berio, Coro (Deutsche Grammophon, 1980/2002), sleeve notes.
Example 7.5 (cont.)
b) Coro: Extract from XIX
Example 7.6 Two-part polyphony
a) Corale: Eighth bar of Q
b) ‘Points on the curve to find …’: Three bars before figure 7.
As with other Chemins, the elaboration of Sequenza VIII into Corale necessitated a
fuller interpretation of certain details for the purpose of ensemble and coordination,
details which in Sequenza VIII were written in shorthand: whole sections toward
the end of this score are notated only by suggested fingering patterns, dispensing
entirely with conventional noteheads. Notable in Corale is the fast cadenza-like
section: in the Sequenza the soloist must decide how to interpret this section, but it
becomes fixed in Corale, further tangible testimony of Berio’s self-analysis. A
slight degree of tolerance is allowed only in the coordination of the soloist with the
ensemble.
The greater diversity in the musical material – which, in the solo part, remains
faithful to the identity of a Sequenza – undoubtedly also contributes to the change
130 Paul Roberts
of title where the word chemins is perhaps not enough, quite the opposite from the
original ‘Chemins V’ where Chemins designation was probably too much.
Chemins V (su Sequenza XI) per chitarra sola e strumenti (1992)
In the decade following Corale, Berio’s compositional career concentrated on areas

not directly linked to the Chemins series. Major works included Voci, Formazioni
(1985–87), Concerto II, Ofanìm (1988–97) and Continuo (1989–91), but this
period also produced Sequenza X for trumpet (1984) and – the longest in the series
up to that point – Sequenza XI for guitar (1988).
Berio chose to continue the Chemins series with the transformation of Sequenza
XI into a substantial concerto-work for guitar, which now claimed the designation
Chemins V. The size of the instrumental ensemble (42 players) is somewhat larger
than the title modestly implies, and is larger than the orchestra of Chemins IIb/c.
Capable of producing a big sound, the orchestra is principally designed to be used
in a chamber-like context that avoids problems of balance with the soloist. Chemins
V adds a generous amount of new orchestral music to the existing guitar Sequenza,
making it the longest Chemins of the series.
As with all the other Chemins, the harmonic sound-world of Chemins V is very
particular and is perhaps more directly bound to the solo instrument than any other
of the pieces in the series. This is due to the mixture of two opposing types of
harmony developed for Sequenza XI. The innate sense of tonality that emanates
from the resonance of the guitar’s open strings – and which has therefore always
conditioned its use – was seen by Berio as the ‘damnation’ of the instrument.
Naturally viewed in a positive way, this was a feature to be exploited. Thus Berio
devised a harmonic scheme that draws on tonal references inherent in the
instrument, together with a more complex, distant harmony, using a dodecaphonic
series consisting of six tritones used in conjunction with each of the open strings.
This creates a very rich harmonic sound-world, manifested in many different chord
types that employ up to all the six strings available. The duality of the harmony
(tonal–non-tonal) is reflected in the application of a contrasting series of playing
techniques, derived from flamenco and classical guitar techniques. These range
from violent rasguado (strumming) to subtle percussive tambora (drumming)
effects. Characteristic guitar strumming, with the fast repetition of complex chords,
recalls the Sequenza VI for viola, but the result here is quite different because of the
nature of the harmony and the frequent arrival at moments of harmonic and
rhythmic stasis.
The explosive opening of Chemins V momentarily evokes the sound of Chemins
II, but any degree of similarity immediately evaporates as the full orchestra reduces
the dense harmony inwards onto a central E, the top string of the guitar. In general
terms, the role of the orchestra in Chemins V is twofold. On the one hand, the full
orchestra expands the pauses of the original Sequenza with material of varying
lengths, while on the other it accompanies the soloist in ever-changing chamber
combinations. This enables the guitar to remain in the foreground, where the
orchestra provides greater harmonic depth and resonance while enlarging the
guitar’s timbral range.
The orchestral passages follow their own logic in a way quite unlike any of the
preceding Chemins. In line with several aspects of Chemins V, there is intentional
duality in the character of these inserts. The orchestral transitions essentially
alternate between two types of material that also occasionally appear in
combination. The first type, clearly derived from the rasguado strumming, is loud
and direct and usually very brief. The other type, on the contrary, is very calm and
more developed where recognizable motifs recur as shown in Ex. 7.7. This second
type is also characterized by static harmonies, during which a solo violin and the
accordion often assume concertino roles.
Example 7.7 Development of motifs in Chemins V

132 Paul Roberts
Chemins V constantly shifts between the complex and the simple, a process that
finally resolves on a tritone dyad (E–B#) that sums up the harmonic differences: the
widest possible interval anchored to the dominant pitch of the guitar’s open strings.
Kol Od (Chemins VI) per tromba sola e gruppo strumentale (1996)
From a certain point of view, Kol Od is perhaps the most experimental work in the
Chemins series. In general, the Chemins cannot be considered as orchestrations of
the Sequenzas because the solo parts are not in themselves actually orchestrated.
The proliferation of orchestral material in the Chemins stems from Berio’s own
analyses of the Sequenzas, often with the development of new and unforeseen
elements. However, in Sequenza X, Berio had already sown the seed for a Chemins
in the use of the piano resonance. Unlike all the other Sequenzas (with the potential
exception of Sequenza VII), Sequenza X requires two performers in order to
achieve the desired trumpet resonance. The resonance, which is variable, is
controlled and ‘performed’ by the different quantity of notes and types of chords
silently sustained by changing combinations of the piano’s two sustaining pedals.
The short, accented notes on the trumpet played into the piano trigger the
resonance. The virtual chords in the piano ‘accompaniment’ are not intended to be
heard as they appear on the page – quite the opposite from Sequenza IV (1965–66)
where the use of the sostenuto pedal traces a secondary harmonic discourse. Thus
in Sequenza X, latent features are not confined to the trumpet but are extended to
the piano resonance. The orchestral transformation of this piano resonance lies at
the heart of Kol Od.
The title of Chemins VI illuminates a hitherto hidden reference in the Sequenza
that provides a key to the understanding of this Chemins: Berio, the dedicatee of
Region Four of Stockhausen’s Hymnen (1969), incorporated a brief quote of the
Israeli national anthem into Sequenza X (Ex. 7.8).14 The title, Kol Od,
acknowledges this reference, being the first two words of the anthem. The literal
meaning of these words is ‘more voice’, which sums up perfectly the relationship
between Chemins VI and the resonances of Sequenza X.15 In fact, much of the
harmonic construction of the solo trumpet part is conditioned by small elements
found in the anthem. One finds the insistent use of a minor third on D–F (a typical
cadential figure in the anthem) fixed in the same register, a constant that has the
gravitational effect of a tonal centre. The piano resonance, which cannot isolate
particularly dissonant resonances, tends to confirm this. Other features include the
frequent use of rising scalic figures that distantly reflect (and give resonance to)
those of the anthem.
14
Hymnen uses some 152 national anthems, though curiously only two references
appear in the Fourth Region.
15
This vocal reference parallels the choice of the word corale in the relationship
between Corale and Sequenza VIII.
Example 7.8 Sequenza X: page 4, last line
When introducing Sequenza X, Berio emphasized the deliberately direct and natural
use of the trumpet, in keeping with his use of brass instruments in general. Several
earlier examples include the separate banda in La vera storia (1981), the four brass
bands that constitute Accordo (1981) and, later on, the brass quintet Call (1985).
This aspect of Sequenza X remains true to Kol Od, whereas the use of the orchestra
is quite unlike anything else to be found in Berio’s output. Kol Od follows the basic
existing structure of Sequenza X extremely thoroughly in order to bring to life with
instrumental colour what was represented by the piano in the Sequenza, leaving no
possibility for an orchestral introduction or coda. All the original pauses acquire
exact durations, and those few which delineate larger formal subdivisions offer
space for short orchestral transitions, including one with a solo clarinet melody of
distinctly Jewish flavour at the moment of the Hatikvah quote, eight bars after
rehearsal figure 12.
Berio, a master orchestrator, creates a mysterious, evanescent sound-world in
the orchestra – an orchestra which is more accurately thought of as a group of
thirty-one soloists including celesta and accordion. Only a composer with a
profound knowledge and experience of instrumental timbre is capable of writing for
an orchestra in such an original way. The unusual and delicate orchestral sound of
this Chemins is achieved by the rigorous attention to dynamics and timbre,
combined with the frequent use of carefully scored multiphonics in the woodwind
instruments, amid passive, constantly overlapping, nebulous harmonic formations.
The overall result gives an almost trompe l’œil (or better, oreille) impression of an
effusive supporting resonance behind the trumpet solo, an aspect that very strongly
characterizes this Chemins. The refined harmonic technique of the orchestra
employs many octave doublings, but rather like mixture stops on an organ and the
octaves in an overtone series, they serve to colour the sound in a very particular
way without ever being perceived as simple doublings.
134 Paul Roberts
Récit (Chemins VII) per saxofono alto e orchestra (1996)
Récit (composed the same year as Kol Od) completes the Chemins series and, with
its reworking of Sequenza IXb for alto saxophone, replaces definitively the aborted
‘Chemins V’ of 1980. Although Sequenza IX exists for both clarinet and alto
saxophone, Récit is conceived only for the saxophone and may not be performed by
a clarinet. Récit is the only Chemins to have been influenced by a virtuoso musician
independent of the Sequenza. Directly related to this is the extremely successful
alternative version of Sequenza VII for soprano saxophone.16 With respect to the
oboe, the saxophone provides extra clarity and tone, especially to all the subtle
timbral details of this piece, including the multiphonics. This version not only
convinced Berio to re-publish Chemins IV with the soprano saxophone as an
alternative soloist, but also persuaded him to construct this Chemins on the existing
Sequenza IXb.
Récit, like Corale, employs the only other Sequenza whose musical material
issues from an existing non-Sequenza work, in this case La vera storia. However,
the relationship of Sequenza IX with other works is much more extensive. Sequenza
IX is generated from the same basic harmonic pitch material of La vera storia,
which Berio composed between 1977 and 1981. A slightly shortened and modified
version provides the substance of Part II, scene 7 of the opera, where it is
distributed as a dialogue between clarinet and alto saxophone in a Chemins-like
context although, like ‘Dialogue’ in Compass, there are no orchestral
commentaries, a fundamental characteristic exclusive to all of the true Chemins.
Sequenza IX develops a long melodic line in a very systematic and particular
way. Like the later Sequenza XI for guitar, the harmonic material is based on two
distinct types of harmony. Here, Berio does not use a dodecaphonic series, but (as
shown in Ex. 7.9) divides the twelve notes available into two separate groups. The
principal group, using seven of the eight pitches from the material of La vera
storia, forms a harmonic field that is fixed in register for most of the time and, like
the note B in Sequenza VII and the A–B dyad in Sequenza VIII, represents the
harmonic core of the piece. By contrast, the complementary group, heard in the first
five notes of the piece, is highly mobile. The interaction of these two groups results
in an extended meditative melodic discourse where each group alternately
dominates the other in an ingenious permutation and rotation of the pitch material.
The line constantly refers back to itself as it gradually unfolds toward the structural
climax on the A# – not unlike, though on a different scale, the arrival on the high G
in Sequenza VII. In common with the other Chemins, Récit reveals clearly the
formal segmentation of the original Sequenza. Chemins V constantly shifts between
the complex and the simple, a process that finally resolves on a tritone dyad (E–B#)
16
This version was created by Claude Delangle with Berio’s full approval in 1993.
Delangle subsequently worked with Vincent David on a version of Récit for saxophone
ensemble.
that sums up the harmonic differences: the widest possible interval anchored to the
dominant pitch of the guitar’s open strings.
The original predominantly narrative quality of Sequenza IX is maintained in
Chemins VII, and is expressed in the title Récit, meaning ‘story’ or ‘narration’, a
title that, like Corale and Kol Od, has a clear vocal reference since a tale requires a
voice in order to be told. In fact, the original ‘Chemins V’ was concerned (amongst
other things) with ‘vocal’ transformations in real time of the solo clarinet.17 The
title also echoes that of its parent work, La vera storia.
Example 7.9 Sequenza IX pitch groups
The simplicity with which the orchestra (of normal size) is used in Récit is
markedly different from all the other Chemins. In Récit, the orchestra does not
expand the solo part, but elaborates a different discourse, moving by itself. This
does not imply any contrast between the soloist and orchestra, but rather a
coexistence of two entities side by side. The orchestra does not observe the original
harmonic scheme and is quite indifferent toward the two harmonic areas of the solo
part. Instead, the orchestra sustains larger blocks of harmonic material that are
related to complete phrases of the solo line. Outwardly Récit resembles Kol Od
with its large number of sustaining pitches, though the resulting effects have little in
common. Unlike the saxophone line, the harmonic rhythm of the orchestra is very
static and this stasis is only interrupted by the moments for orchestra alone. Like
the electronics in ‘Chemins V’, the orchestra of Récit acts like a shadow of the
saxophone in a largely accompanying role and, apart from the insertions, it only
rarely steps outside of the register of the soloist.
17
‘Cette œuvre qui utilise aussi, à certains moments, les techniques de
l’enregistrement digital est le premier volet d’un vaste projet de recherche sur
l’interchangeabilité des modèles sonores conventionnels et familiers (instrumentaux et
vocaux).’ [This work, which also uses, at certain points, digital recording techniques, is the
first phase of a vast research project on the interchangeability of conventional and familiar
sound models (instrumental and vocal).] From the programme note for the world première,
Paris, 26 April 1980.
136 Paul Roberts
Conclusion
Berio’s desire to compose the Chemins was not a phenomenon exclusively linked
to the Sequenzas, but is rooted in a common preoccupation of an artist who holds
‘the belief that nothing done is, of itself, ever finished’.18 Berio goes on to explain
that the original material of the Sequenzas functions somewhat like a ‘question that
provokes not only an answer but also a comment to another question and another
answer’. The Chemins develop those elements which cannot be developed by the
solo instrument. The very word Chemins encapsulates the idea of new paths and
ideas that proliferate and move on from the original project, which can often be
surprising and quite independent from the solo material. A real strength of the
Chemins series may readily be observed in how each individual work is
characterized with its own identity, and this also highlights the differences that exist
between each of the original Sequenzas. Although the Chemins must not be
considered as a progressive series of works for the reasons outlined above, together
with the fourteen Sequenzas they do, however, represent and illustrate many of the
most important compositional techniques and preoccupations of Luciano Berio.
18
Luciano Berio, programme note for world première of Chemins IV, London, 17
October 1975.
Chapter 8
The Compass of Communications in

Sequenza VIII for Violin
Eugene Montague
Listening to Berio, reading Eco
Berio’s Sequenza VIII for violin (1976–77) opens with the forceful and insistent
repetition of a single pitch, notable for its dynamic strength – marked fff in the
score – and rhythmic regularity. Over the next minute, this music develops into a
restless oscillation around a pair of pitches, unrelenting in both pulse and intensity.
This music communicates simultaneously a sense of urgency and a strange
immobility, and its two central notes become an inescapable focus for the listener.
These sounds form a perfect rhyme to the image portrayed at the beginning of
Foucault’s Pendulum (originally published in 1988), a novel by Berio’s close
friend and sometime collaborator, Umberto Eco. At the opening of Eco’s book, the
pendulum of the title, suspended from the ‘only stable place in the cosmos’, sways
‘back and forth with isochronal majesty’. Like the opening music of the Sequenza,
it promises to ‘oscillate for eternity’.1
The pendulum supplies not only the title of Eco’s novel, but also its central
metaphor: its thread signifies the single secret strand that runs through and explains
all history and that drives the narrative of the book. Likewise, the opening dyad of
the Sequenza becomes the cornerstone for the piece. According to its composer,
speaking in 1979, ‘Sequenza VIII is constructed around two notes (A–B) which, as
in a chaconne, form the compass in the quite varied path of the piece’.2 The pitches
A4 and B4 are the compass to which Berio refers. His choice of words, inspired
perhaps by his love of the sea and ships, suggests a further resonance with
Foucault’s Pendulum, for the metaphor of a compass implies a tool and a
1
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum, trans. William Weaver (New York, 1989), pp.
3–6.
2
‘Sequenza VIII est construite autour de deux notes (la–si) qui, comme dans une
chaconne, constituent la boussole dans le parcours assez différencié de la pièce.’ Ivanka
Stoïanova, Luciano Berio: Chemins en Musique (Paris, 1985), p. 419.
138 Eugene Montague
reference, but not a point of arrival or a goal.3 A compass, after all, points away
from itself, indicating an external attraction rather than an internal sufficiency.
Correspondingly, much of the music in the Sequenza is quite different from the
opening in both structure and meaning. In Eco’s novel, too, the object of desire is
not the pendulum itself, but the thread of meaning it represents. Thus, both Berio’s
compass and Eco’s pendulum function as vital threads through the course of their
respective works, but do so by pointing beyond themselves, drawing the listener or
reader to other sounds and ideas that take up much of the actual course of the work.
That these two twentieth-century Italian works should have a close relationship
is hardly a coincidence. As David Osmond-Smith, Berio’s foremost biographer,
has written, the late composer took ‘unusual delight in using the intellectual
adventures of his contemporaries’.4 Berio was not only a friend of Eco, but also an
intellectual companion who collaborated with the writer on several projects. Both
men came of age during the 1950s and shared interests in language and
structuralism that they developed throughout their careers. Cross-fertilization
between music and literature affected both men’s work, as Berio introduced Eco to
Saussure, while Eco’s love of Joyce led to Berio’s composition of Thema
(Omaggio a Joyce) in 1958.5 In addition, many of Berio’s foremost works,
including Circles (1960), Sinfonia (1968) and Un re in ascolto (1979–84), take
inspiration from contemporary structuralism and related theories of language,
while Eco’s A Theory of Semiotics (1976), written in collaboration with Osmond-
Smith, is one of the few treatises on general semiotics that gives serious
consideration to music as a system of signs. To point to the resemblance between
the opening of Sequenza VIII and Foucault’s Pendulum is thus to indicate just one
sign among many of the close connections between these two Italian artists.
This essay will explore these connections further by listening to Sequenza VIII
in the context of both Eco’s novel and his theory of semiotics. Heard in this way,
the piece takes a place in the intellectual life of Berio and his contemporaries as a
work that presents a central sign, the dyad A4–B4, as a meaningful element of
communication. This dyad – forceful, insistent and cold – becomes the perfect foil
for the virtuosic and emotional music later in the piece. In serving as this foil,
however, the original meaning of the dyad alters in the course of the Sequenza, and
by the end it has come to be full of nostalgia, warmth and remembrance. Over the
course of the piece, therefore, the compass undergoes a fundamental change. In
itself, this change provides a superb demonstration of Berio’s dictum that ‘music
3
For the importance of the sea in Berio’s life, see David Osmond-Smith, Berio
(Oxford/New York, 1991), pp. 1–3.
4
David Osmond-Smith, ‘Berio, Luciano’, in L. Macy (ed.), Grove Music Online,
accessed 6 April 2006 at http://www.grovemusic.com.
5
Sequenza VIII for Violin 139
… is not an object, but a process’ than this change.6 It might equally well serve as
an example of Eco’s musing on the mutability of communication: ‘a sign is not a
fixed semiotic entity’.7 In this light, Berio’s piece becomes a meditation on the
subject of signs, not only an anticipation of the themes of Foucault’s Pendulum,
but also a genuine contribution to semiotic thought of an equal importance to Eco’s
fiction.8
Compass and communication
In the opening of the Sequenza, the emergence of the dyad as a central focus is a
subtle process that belies the apparent coarseness of the music. By the end of the
first page of the score, the compass exists as a complex musical element for a
listener, defined through pitch, but also through rhythm, dynamic, texture and
affective connotation.
As already noted, the most obvious feature of the beginning is the incessant
repetition of A4. This repetition establishes the pitch as a central focus, yet it does
not become a stable tonic. This is, in a rough hearing, because the regular crotchet
rhythm does not let up. More subtly, however, this absence of stability is due to the
particular lengths to which Berio goes to avoid any sense of closure becoming
associated with A4.
Ex. 8.1 gives a metric analysis of the opening, adding time-signatures and bar-
lines to the score in order to show the potential for phrase structures to emerge
from this music.9 Despite the obvious regularity in terms of pitch, duration,
dynamic and bowing, the irregular changes in articulation, fingering and position
subvert any metrical or phrase formation until the entrance of B4. In Ex. 8.1, this
absence of metrical structure is shown by the parentheses surrounding the time
signature at the opening: this is a calculated rather than a felt metre. In contrast, the
time signatures without parentheses are shaped by the musical sound.
The entrance of B4, heard together with the G4 two crotchets later, suggests a
regular 3 + 2 metrical organization. Through this suggestion, the third A4 in the
second system becomes a downbeat and thus has potential to close a phrase.
However, the entry of B#4, heard in a new triadic cluster with A4 and G4, rudely
interrupts this metre. This interruption is exacerbated by the quaver duration of the
6
7
Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington, 1976), p. 49.
8
In linking Sequenza VIII to Foucault’s Pendulum, I should make it clear that I am
not suggesting the second draws explicitly on the first, but rather that both share similar
themes and concerns.
9
In treating phrase and metre as fundamentally connected phenomena, I am adopting
a projective approach to rhythm, as discussed in Christopher Hasty, Meter as Rhythm (New
York/Oxford, 1997). However, to avoid the introduction of numerous symbols, I am not
utilizing Hasty’s graphic devices in these figures.
140 Eugene Montague
next single A4 in the third system. This A4, followed by a crotchet B4, destroys the
possibility of a regular metre in crotchets by strongly suggesting itself as an
upbeat, leading to the new A4–B4 sonority immediately following. With this shift
in phrase, the music moves its emphasis from the opening A4 to the A4–B4 dyad,
completing the compass. The structural potential of this dyad is confirmed as the
next phrase creates an end-rhyme through the repetition of the quaver–crotchet
rhythm. Now a listener is drawn into this music as these phrases allow the dyad to
be heard as a referential point for the music.
Example 8.1 Phrase structure in the opening of Sequenza VIII
These musical details are particularly important from the perspective of a listener.
In this opening music, this dyad attracts attention as a guide for the music. A
listener, lost in the absence of phrase in the opening of the piece, locates the
compass pitches, first A4 and then A4–B4, as elements that are able to create
phrases in the piece. Literally, the compass attracts a listener because it becomes
something that can be followed and that makes temporal sense of the music. Thus,
Berio lures a listener into following the compass from the start of the Sequenza.
In a similar way, the pendulum of Foucault’s Pendulum becomes a lure for a
reader. At the start of Eco’s novel, the pendulum exerts a two-fold attraction, for in
both in narrative and printed spaces it appears in the context of mysterious intrigue.
First, in the narrative the pendulum is set together with an incongruous jumble of
old artifacts, including a replica train and submarine periscope. These entice a
reader with the appeal of a dusty attic, promising many hidden treasures with the
pendulum as the first. Second, on the printed page the chapter describing the
pendulum opens with a symbol from the Sefirot and a quotation in Hebrew,
together implying a world of arcane knowledge. Peter Bondanella has argued
convincingly that these hermetic references tempt a reader into ‘an overarching
interpretation of the entire novel’.10 Such an interpretation is founded on the allure
of these intriguing symbols and the consequent desire on the part of the reader to
connect the mysterious and disparate objects into a whole.
Both compass and pendulum, then, function in their respective works as
attractive objects for listener and reader. This similarity illustrates a common
theme in Eco and Berio’s approaches to writing, whether of words or music. Both
novelist and composer seek to affect reader and listener directly; thus, both are
fundamentally concerned with communication. Theoretically, this interest is
expressed and codified in the pages of Eco’s Theory of Semiotics, written in the
same year as Sequenza VIII. A brief detour into this work will therefore help to
provide a background for further discussion, as well as substantiating the link
between Berio and Eco’s thoughts.
Eco’s Theory of Semiotics understands the basis of meaning as communication
using signs.11 An important consequence of this emphasis on communication is the
fundamental distinction between ‘signal’ and ‘sign’, a distinction that sets Eco’s
theory apart from the strict binary structures associated with Saussure’s
structuralism. To be sure, Eco considers communication to depend on the
establishment of codes, and codes are defined through binary opposition: any
element of a code must have at least two states, such as ‘on’ and ‘off’, in order to
signal anything. However, when these binary states exist on a single plane, which
Eco calls the ‘expression plane’, this merely creates the conditions for a signal to
emerge, through what is termed an s-code, which, roughly speaking, is a system
that is capable of communicating, but does not (yet) do so: ‘a signal can be a
stimulus that does not mean anything but causes or elicits something’.12 In order
for real communication to occur and signs to be created, however, the binary states
of this expression plane must be correlated to differences on a second plane: ‘a
10
Peter Bondanella, ‘Interpretation, Overinterpretation, Paranoid Interpretation, and
Foucault's Pendulum’, in Rocco Capozzi (ed.), Reading Eco: An Anthology (Bloomington,
1997), pp. 285–99.
11
This forms a distinct contrast with the semiotic theory of Jean-Jacques Nattiez.
Because Eco is primarily concerned with human communication as a given, Eco is not
interested in systems that do not involve communication. In turn, Nattiez’s concern for the
systemization of meaning leads him to dismiss Eco’s assumption of communication as naïve
and unworkable in the context of a musical semiotics. See Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Music and
Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music, trans. Carolyn Abbate (Princeton, 1990).
12
Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, p. 48.
142 Eugene Montague
sign is always an element of an expression plane conventionally correlated to one

(or several) elements of a content plane’.13 In other words, the initial binary
opposition that creates the signal is a structure that makes communication possible.
However, communication cannot actually occur until this signal is interpreted by a
human being who brings another system of oppositions – another code – into play,
thus creating signs.
Eco’s theoretical distinction is useful in illuminating the meanings of the
compass in Sequenza VIII. For example, it is clear that the dyadic compass of the
Sequenza establishes itself on an expression plane through simple contrast with the
pitches outside the dyad. Here, the binary opposition is between pitches that are
A4–B4 and pitches that are not. This initial signal takes on communicative
significance when a listener hears these pitches as phrase endings at the opening:
interpreting these pitches in terms of a content plane. The opposition on the content
plane is therefore between pitches that close phrases and those that do not. Thus, in
the opening of this music, the compass becomes part of a system of
communication.
Following the compass in the context of this theory of communication allows
two further related meanings to emerge as Sequenza VIII progresses. First, in a
meaning internal to the work, the qualities of forcefulness and regularity position
the dyad in a significant opposition to the music that immediately follows it: the
scurrying demisemiquavers commencing at the bottom of page one, after
approximately 1 minute of music.14 This new music contrasts strongly with the
compass through increased speed, a quieter dynamic and a huge expansion in
registral span, as fleet, soft arpeggios now sparkle up and down the instrument’s
range. Heard against this music, the compass sounds inflexible and cold.
These characteristics point to another significant opposition – this time external
to the work – between the dyad and the historical image of the instrument that
plays it. Commonly, the violin is associated with virtuosity, imagination and
intimate expression. This is clear from the summary description given in Boyden
and Walls’s entry on ‘Violin’ in the New Grove Online:
In beauty and emotional appeal [the violin’s] tone rivals that of its model, the human
voice, but at the same time the violin is capable of particular agility and brilliant
figuration, making possible in one instrument the expression of moods and effects that
13
Ibid.
14
I will sometimes include approximate timings in addition to page references in the
score. I will use as my touchstone the recording played by Carlo Chiarappa on the Denon
label (Luciano Berio, Duetti, Sequenza VIII, Due Pezzi, Corale (Denon, 1992)). Sequenza
VIII has been blessed with several fine recordings, including those by Maryvonne Le Dizes,
and Jeanne-Marie Conquer. I use Chiarappa’s version in order to refer to a single version of
the piece (the timings vary between performances) and because he is the dedicatee of the
piece.
may range, depending on the will and skill of the player, from the lyric and tender to the
15
brilliant and dramatic.
Nor is this a purely modern image of the violin. Duncan Druce states that ‘the
pliability of a violin’s sound, the ease with which it could …. make continual and
considerable dynamic inflexions throughout its range, was one of the most admired
features of the instrument in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’.16 Later, ‘the
desire to play broadly and expressively, with expansive melodic lines [and] a
variety of brilliant or delicate bow-strokes’ became characteristic facets of
Romantic violin playing.17
The opening music and the dyad associated with it are clearly far from these
musical ideals. Indeed, this music is antithetical to the historical meaning of the
violin and through this antithesis the dyad truly functions as a compass. For, as the
compass stabilizes a music that contradicts the meaning of the violin, it points both
listeners and performers away from these sounds. After hearing the compass, it is
hard not to interpret the rushing arpeggios at the end of the first page as a liberation
for the violinist: an escape to a truly ‘violinistic’ playing. The remainder of the
Sequenza explores this significant opposition, and to trace the compass through
this piece is to understand the historical dimension of this music.
Following pendulum and compass
Like Sequenza VIII, Foucault’s Pendulum lures its reader down a certain path. This
path depends on the central image of the pendulum, the slender thread that
promises to connect all historical fact in a meaningful narrative. The belief that
there is such a thread is initially derided by the main characters, yet it gradually
comes to dominate the novel, leading both readers and protagonists into
increasingly convoluted but ever more alluring directions.
The novel describes the gradual involvement of three men – Belbo, Casaubon
and Diotallevi – with cabalistic groups. At the start of the narrative, the three are
brought together by their amusement at the elaborate and irrational beliefs of those
who see all history as connected by secret threads, beliefs they dismiss as
‘moronic’, even while discussing them at length in a Milanese watering-hole. As
the narrative progresses, so too does their fascination with such beliefs and the
connections on which they depend, the kind of connections that join together the
15
David D. Boyden and Peter Walls, ‘Violin’, §I, 1 in L. Macy (ed.), Grove Music
Online, accessed 8 February 2005 at http://www.grovemusic.com.
16
Duncan Druce, ‘Historical Approaches to Violin Playing’, in John Paynter, Tim
Howell, Richard Orton and Peter Seymour (eds), Companion to Contemporary Musical
Thought (London, 1992), p. 1002.
17
Ibid., p. 1006.
144 Eugene Montague
Holy Grail, the Templars, the Nazis and Stonehenge via a maze of impeccable
numerology, dodgy translation and illogical conclusion.18 This fascination
increasingly absorbs the three men until, with the aid of Belbo’s new computer –
the ultimate connector of random facts – they devote themselves to generating the
Plan, an intricate, fictitious, historical narrative involving groups that symbolize
the arcane and mysterious, such as the Templars, Rosicrucians, Masons and others.
The joke, however, turns on the authors when the shady Diabolicals, a group that
combines aspects of many previous hermetic societies, gets wind of the Plan and
concludes that the three have access to a central secret. In a bloody finale, Belbo
refuses to reveal the (non-existent) truth to the Diabolicals and is hung from the
thread of the Pendulum. The novel ends with Casaubon awaiting a similar fate.19
The thread of the pendulum is thus the central image for the increasing
entanglement of the three protagonists with arcane truth. Moreover, as Bondanella
argues, the attraction of this thread is a motivating force for the reader as well.20 As
discussed above, from the beginning the notion that there is a mysterious meaning
to the pendulum acts as a seduction. The sense that there is some truth somewhere,
that a hermetic history does in fact connect the loose links of the plot, keeps a
reader following the novel, even as the stupidity of belief in such connections is
pointed out at length by the trio of skeptics.21 To read Foucault’s Pendulum is to
first ridicule, then grudgingly accept, and finally succumb to the allure of a central,
constant narrative thread, even while this thread is clearly being fabricated in front
of a reader’s eyes.
To follow the compass through Sequenza VIII is, likewise, to trace a central
thread, and to follow the dialogue between the constant identity of the dyad and the
changes in its meaning. These changes involve the gradual disintegration of the
significant oppositions noted at the start of the piece between the compass and the
rest of the music, and a resultant transformation in communication. This
transformation plays out over four sections, each defined by a particular texture, a
role for the A4–B4 dyad, and a return of the compass at moments of juncture. In the
course of these sections, the compass becomes more and more tangled with the rest
of the music much as, in Eco’s novel, the skeptics become more and more involved
with hermetic interpretations of history.
In the first section of Sequenza VIII, the compass functions as a registral centre
amidst rapid arpeggiated figures. These figures counterpoint the central dyad,
18
These connections, among others, are drawn by the mysterious Colonel Ardenti in
selling his manuscript to Belbo, an editor by trade. Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, pp. 119–49.
19
Diotellavi has already succumbed to cancer by this stage of the story.
20
See note 10 above.
21
Similar connections feature in Eco’s earlier The Name of the Rose (London, 1983),
where the abbot and detective William investigates a series of mysterious deaths, only to
discover that there is no coherent plan or single murderer behind the deaths, but only a
sequence of chance events.
branching out from it as the leaves from a central trunk. This music is fast and
fleeting, searching the upper registers of the violin and rarely repeating itself. In
contrast, the pitches of the compass sound a regular rhythm of crotchets, as shown
in Ex. 8.2, from page three of the score. This rhythm begins with B4 in the first
system of Ex. 8.2, emphasized by Berio’s bracketed reminders above the stave.
These pitches, including some outside the original A4–B4 dyad, function as a
registral and rhythmic contrast to the increasingly boisterous figuration and thus
are unmistakably linked to the opening compass. However, the inclusion of A4 and
other non-dyadic pitches in creating this rhythm show that, even at this early stage,
Berio’s path through the music is undergoing change.
Example 8.2 Sequenza VIII: the compass as registral and rhythmic ground
The function of the compass as a registral centre for the music reaches its fullest
expression at the end of the first section, on page four of the score, after about 3
minutes of music. Through the slowing tempo, and the prevalence of appoggiatura
figures in this passage, this expanse of register carries particular emotional weight.
In this register, beyond the limits of the human voice, the violin becomes ethereally
beautiful. Historically, such registers have signified not only virtuosic expression,
but also spiritual realms.22
Berio exploits this affective significance by writing a line that draws strongly
on tonal functions, thus evoking the musical past. This line, shown in Ex. 8.3,
begins by emphasizing F6, then associates this with C6: a rising fourth that
already hints at tonality. These hints expand in the fourth system of Ex. 8.3 with
characteristic ‘sighing’ appoggiaturas and linear tritones, resolving by step. This
22
Probably the clearest connection between this register of the violin and spirituality
in the Western canon is in the ‘Benedictus’ from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.
146 Eugene Montague
melodic line, framed by C6 and F6, carries with it a strong implication of a circle
of fifths progression in D major.23
The final semitone in this melodic line is expanded into a thirteenth, and there
is no cadence to D. With a sudden contrast, B4 returns and the compass, with its
inflexible rhythm and loud dynamic, brings the first section of the piece to an end.
As the compass interrupts this meditation on history, it also emphasizes its vital
role as a contrasting element. Without the opposition of the compass, the shreds of
tonality would lose their communicative power.
Example 8.3 Sequenza VIII: tonal references at the end of section 1
Yet the terms of this opposition are already beginning to change. As the second
section of the Sequenza begins, the compass itself alters, incorporating elements of
the tonal music it so recently opposed. Ex. 8.4, from page five of the score shows
how B4 takes on some trappings of tonality through the repeated ascent G4–A4–
B4. It is as if the tonal implications that were associated with D major have moved
23
D major is, of course, a traditional key for the violin in that it allows for all the open
strings to be used, and this amplifies the historical references created in this section.
to this compass pitch, not through any gradual modulation but through an abrupt
transference. These hints of tonality are augmented through a chain of ascending
fourths, C4–F4–B4, shown in Ex. 8.4, which hearkens back to the C6–F6 axis of
the earlier section. The implication of a tonal centre fades as this section continues,
but it is important evidence of the changing role of the compass as the piece
progresses and as the dyad becomes integrated into its surrounding music and,
perforce, into the musical history of the violin.
Example 8.4 Sequenza VIII: tonal implications and the compass
As a consequence of this integration, in the second section of the Sequenza the

compass is less separate from the rest of the music. This section, on pages five and
six of the score, is again motivated by a registral ascent and again, F6 features
prominently as a goal. However, the texture is now clearly polyphonic, continuing
that shown at the end of Ex. 8.4, and the lower register around the compass
remains active even as the upper voice rises. Moreover, the gradient of this ascent
is more gradual than in the previous section. The resulting registral climax is less
extreme, and the return to the compass at the top of page seven less disruptive,
again changing the meaning of this dyad.
In the third section, from page seven to the end of page nine, consisting of
around four minutes of music, the compass loses its identity almost completely
within the surrounding sounds. Here, Berio employs limited aleatoricism to
generate continuous buzzing demisemiquavers within the A4–E5 fifth. Chords of
three or four notes then interrupt this buzzing, like flashes of light. Ex. 8.5 shows
the score for the opening of this section.
148 Eugene Montague
Example 8.5 The opening of section 3 of Sequenza VIII
These textures and techniques clearly engage in general with the virtuosic
traditions of the violin, as epitomized in works such as Paganini’s Caprices. In
particular, the chords recall similar polyphonic textures in the Chaconne from
Bach’s Partita in D minor, BWV 1004.24 This connection is surely a deliberate one,
for Berio has cited the Chaconne as an influence on the Sequenza.25 Moreover, all
but one of the pitches of these flashing chords, as shown in Ex. 8.6, are grouped in
24
Bars 89–120 and 185–208 of the Chaconne are particularly similar to the Sequenza’s
chords.
25
Stoïanova, pp. 419–22.
three clusters around the D minor triad D4, A4 and F5.26 Not only is this voicing of
the triad particularly important to Bach’s Chaconne, but, as Ex. 8.7 shows, the
outer points of the clusters are symmetrical around the compass dyad.27 In this
way, the compass becomes intimately involved with virtuosic expression and with
the history of the violin as represented by the Chaconne.
Example 8.6 Sequenza VIII: D minor triad within three distinct clusters
Example 8.7 Sequenza VIII: symmetry around the compass dyad
At the end of this section the compass returns, clearly affected by the virtuosity. In
the middle of page nine, shown in Ex. 8.8, the familiar fff dynamic and the A4–B4
dyad emerge, but these accelerate towards a further outbreak of tempestuous speed.
Again, the compass changes through its proximity to other, more attractive, music.
In these first three sections of the Sequenza, the relationship between the
compass and its surrounding music becomes less polarized as the dyad enters into
the context of the music. Moreover, the mechanical and inexpressive aspects of the
compass, which at the opening set it apart from the violin as a historical
instrument, also change. Through its involvement with the virtuosic and expressive
music, the compass assumes a meaningful identity so that by the third section it is
no longer marked by rhythmic insistence, slow tempo or invariable dynamics.
Rather, the dyad is now absorbed into the virtuosic fabric of the Sequenza and thus
into the history of the violin.
26
One pitch, B3, is omitted from these calculations. This pitch appears only three times
in this passage and is somewhat separated from the others, always sounding a third below
the next lowest note in the chord. An explanation for its presence might be sought in terms
of the ‘noise’ inherent in all communication.
27
Most of the voice-leading in the chordal passage from bars 89–121 prolongs these
triad notes; in addition, these pitches are present in the last full D minor triad of the
Chaconne in bar 251.
150 Eugene Montague
Example 8.8 Sequenza VIII: change in the compass at the end of section 3
Change and meaning
At the start, I suggested that Berio’s image of a compass implies that the A4–B4
dyad indicates the destinations of the music, rather than being a destination itself.
To follow this compass is indeed to hear it pointing to – and contrasting with – the
rest of the Sequenza’s music. Over the course of the piece, however, the attraction
of this music changes the compass in significant ways. By the final section, on
pages 10 and 11 of the score, the compass has lost its regularity and insistence. As
Ex. 8.9 shows, A4 and B4 return at the end of the music, yet now the tempo is
fluctuating (molto instabile according to the score) and the mood is nostalgic and
restful. The pitch organization of this section accepts the compass readily,
favouring vertical sonorities that are symmetrical about the dyad (shown as boxed
in Ex. 8.9). These vertical chords strongly recall the flashing chords from the third
section, amplifying the affect of remembrance. All of this demonstrates that this is
not the compass of the start. While the original opposition on the expressive plane
still holds good, its correlation with the content plane has changed, and the
compass communicates a new meaning.
In A Theory of Semiotics, Eco emphasizes the mutability of signs. In Foucault’s
Pendulum, this mutability takes on deadly import, when the protagonists fail to
realize that their elaborately constructed web of lies is nonetheless a coherent code
and so can communicate. By constructing oppositions on the expression plane,
they have left it open for others, such as the Diabolicals, to correlate these
oppositions to any plane of content. Their playful construction of one central Plan
becomes their ruin.
Yet the novel also suggests that the attraction of the Plan for its authors – not to
mention a reader – is the possibility that it might be true. Thus, several critics have
suggested that Foucault’s Pendulum takes aim at the postmodernist tendency to

give narrative meaning complete freedom.28 For Belbo, Casaubon and Diotellavi
do not merely enjoy the abstract patterns of their Plan, they frequently sympathize
with its characters and laugh at its implications. Thus, they cannot and do not want
to escape the potential reality of the Plan, for they enjoy the possibility that others
can believe it, that it could communicate something.
From this perspective, Eco’s concern with the limits of narrative necessarily
involves communication, for it is communication that implies and creates fixed
meanings, as A Theory of Semiotics makes clear. Once signs communicate
meaning, once they are understood, they cannot remain free-floating – and the
understanding of signs, with the following of narrative, is a prime concern of a
reader. Therefore, communication entails fixity in a narrative.
Example 8.9 The changed compass in the final section of Sequenza VIII
By the end of Foucault’s Pendulum, all three of the Plan’s authors are dead, in
what is surely an ironic reference to the ‘death of the author’ enshrined by Roland
Barthes. However, these deaths also make a serious comment on the mutability of
meaning and the necessity for an author to recognize this. Belbo, even to the end,
fails to accept that the credence given to his concocted story by the Diabolicals
fundamentally changes both his status and that of his creation. Because the Plan
communicates – however falsely – its meaning is fixed and irreversibly
28
See, for example, Linda Hutcheon, ‘Irony-Clad Foucault’, in Rocco Capozzi (ed.),
Reading Eco: An Anthology (Bloomington, 1997), pp. 312–27, and Brian McHale,
Constructing Postmodernism (London, 1992).
152 Eugene Montague
transformed. If an author is one who creates the potential for meaning, she is also
one who dies when this potential becomes fixed through communication.
Berio’s Sequenza VIII deals with similar issues through its musical logic, and it
ends as the compass takes on a full meaning. At the opening of the piece, the cold,
inflexible compass communicates with a listener by pointing away from itself, to a
variety of different kinds of music. In addition, as it is played on the violin, the
significant opposition between the history of that instrument and the sound of the
compass is explored throughout the piece. By the end of the work, however, the
dyad has become a souvenir of the journey, signifying nostalgia and warmth but no
longer with the potential to indicate new sounds and meanings.
These changes in significance draw on the meaning of performance as a
temporal process and therefore add another dimension to the exploration of
meaning in Foucault’s Pendulum. At the end of the Sequenza there is regret and
nostalgia, but the violinist, through the closing section, accepts the compass as part
of an extended realm of communication. In brief, the compass has become part of
the violin’s repertory and is thus no longer a meaningless dyad.29 Berio’s music
therefore operates in a similar semiotic field as Eco’s novel, but Sequenza VIII
accepts that all music can and must sound in the context of history, in the very
specific matters of instrument and performance. Thus, the piece is a lesson in the
inescapable reality of history, a lesson that the protagonists of Foucault’s
Pendulum learn at the cost of their lives.
Bondanella reads the ending of Foucault’s Pendulum as a tragedy: the deaths of
Belbo and Casaubon represent the ‘fact that the human condition cannot avoid
interpretation and the search for meaning within a jungle of confusing and often
contradictory signs’.30 The tragedy of this condition is that it applies not only to the
protagonists, who ignored until too late the Diabolicals’ powers of interpretation,
but also to the readers, who from their vantage point know that the belief in a
thread was false, yet realize that this is what motivated their reading. In Sequenza
VIII, a listener who follows the compass is also perhaps betrayed at the end, as the
dyad ceases to point beyond itself, becomes absorbed into the music and only
indicates the past. Sequenza VIII is not a tragedy, however: music has a
concentrated and intimate relationship with temporal process, a relationship that is
fuelled by the potential for communicative change over time. Berio’s Sequenza
VIII explores this relationship through the path traced by the compass, and thus this
piece both encapsulates and celebrates the changes in communication that emerge
as a consequence of the passage of time.
29
In this process of communication, the Sequenza might be said to reproduce in
miniature the creation of new musical meaning over time, which occurs over time as new
sounds, or new works, are performed and accepted into existing musical cultures.
30
Bondanella, ‘Interpretation, Overinterpretation, Paranoid Interpretation, and
Foucault’s Pendulum’, p. 299.
Chapter 9
Sequenza IX for Clarinet:

Text, Pre-Text, Con-Text
Andrea Cremaschi
Analysing Sequenza IX, one point immediately stands out when comparing it with
other works from Luciano Berio’s catalogue: not only are there no dedicatees or
signs of collaboration with a specific performer, but there are also no recognizable
gestures or musical events within the text bearing explicit extra-textual references.
At first glance it would seem to be one of the most abstract of the Sequenza series,
as it is centred on only melodic and syntactic construction. However, if we take
into account Berio’s concurrent output, it becomes apparent that this is part of a
constellation of works which share materials and musical issues. In fact, between
1977 and 1983 Berio wrote four linked pieces: ‘Chemins V’ (1979–80, later
withdrawn) for clarinet and real-time digital filters, 1 Sequenza IXa (1980) for
clarinet, Sequenza IXb (1981) for alto saxophone, and La vera storia (1977–81). In
addition to these, in 1996 he returned to the same materials and used them as the
basis of a new work, Récit (Chemins VII) for alto saxophone and orchestra. All of
these pieces develop the same musical structures on which Sequenza IX is based in
different but complementary directions, thus adding the extra-textual dimension
which is missing in the Sequenza itself. The object of this essay is to investigate the
relationships existing between these works, in order to illustrate how the same
materials have been endowed with new meaning in the different configurations
they have taken on. To contain the discussion within reasonable boundaries, only
three of them will be examined, namely ‘Chemins V’, Sequenza IXa and La vera
storia, which make up the core of that constellation. Among other things, this will
let us look into one of the most important features of Berio’s compositional
thought: that is the constant process of revisiting the musical past, be it historic
memory or – as in this case – his own works. However, this practice took on quite
unusual traits in the compositions that are being considered here, as will be
demonstrated.
This analysis will require an examination of the text on two different levels:
apart from the analysis of the musical structures, the compositional processes that
1
The withdrawn piece, ‘Chemins V’, should not be confused with Chemins V (1992)
for guitar and instruments.
154 Andrea Cremaschi
caused them to assume their present configuration must also be studied. In order
not to break up the subject excessively, Sequenza IX is addressed first, since it is
the best-known among these works and it allows most of the topics under
discussion here to be introduced. Following on from this, the means by which
Berio constructed this text in relation to a parallel work is examined; and the
discussion concludes with its subsequent reutilization within a theatrical context.
Of gestures and melody
Sequenza IX, in its final version, may be considered as the quintessence of melody,
where the horizontal processes underlie almost all aspects of the composition.
Melody here is conceived both as a complex sequence of instrumental gestures and
as the basis for the exploration of harmonic structures. The principle that guides
these processes, according to Berio himself,2 is the concept of redundancy, which
implies a certain degree of repetitiveness and symmetry. This is achieved through
the elaboration of a subtle structural framework, based on the recurrence of a small
number of simple musical figures. However, they constantly reappear in new forms
and thus tend to assume different characters: the predominance of one or another
affects the formal flow.
The work’s starting point is the contrast between two pitch-fields, one made up
of seven pitches which tend to appear in the same register, the other consisting of
the five remaining pitches, which are more mutable. The first one, shown in Ex.
9.1, has the greatest importance.3
Example 9.1 Main pitch-field of Sequenza IX
This pitch-field should not be thought of as some kind of tonal centre, but rather as
one of the two poles of a dialectic process, in which we can observe both the
contraposition and the fusion of their elements. Moreover, its use is quite varied
depending on the sections of the work, and can range from a melodic reserve, to
the polarization of some of its components or to the starting point of horizontal
proliferations: this determines the creation of different degrees of tension.
2
See Luciano Berio, Two Interviews with Rosanna Dalmonte and Bálint András
Varga, trans. and ed. David Osmond-Smith (New York/London, 1985), pp. 124–7.
3
It should be noted that the pitches shown in the examples regarding Sequenza IX are
transposed for clarinet in B#, according to the published text. The examples from ‘Chemins
V’ and La vera storia are given at concert pitch, as they are found respectively in the
original manuscript and score.
Sequenza IX for Clarinet 155
The dialectic contrast between stasis and movement is one of the prominent
features of the work. It even acts at the level of the individual parameters, and each
one of them, when individually considered, shows constant movement between
different degrees of transformation: the Sequenza melody can be viewed as the sum
of different processes, each having its own duration and involving only one
parameter or two at a time. This is the way of listening that Berio defined as
polyphonic,4 which is characteristic of all the Sequenzas, but which acquires here a
particular meaning. It refers not only to the concept of virtual counterpoint between
contiguous horizontal events, but also to the internal constitution of these same
events, each one of them being the point of intersection of several structural paths.
This can be demonstrated with some examples. The first three systems on page
one of the printed score function as an introductory section: here we can see the
gradual emergence of the main pitch-field while, in an apparently digressive way,
some of the main musical gestures of the piece are introduced. At rehearsal letter
A, a process begins which then lasts for the rest of the page. This is characterized
by the repetition of a rhythmic pattern of ten values (see Ex. 9.2a) into which
individual notes and more complex figures are interpolated. A series of eleven
pitches, almost entirely made up of elements belonging to the fixed pitch-field, is
superimposed onto this rhythmic pattern (Ex. 9.2b).
Example 9.2 Sequenza IX: rhythmic and melodic patterns on page 1
a) Rhythmic pattern
b) Melodic pattern
The different length of these two patterns generates a different musical result at
every repetition, thus giving a propulsive character to the section. In this case,
movement is obtained by the superimposition of otherwise static elements.5
A somewhat similar section starts at rehearsal letter C and lasts until the first
metronomic change on page three (see Ex. 9.3). Here, three parameters guide the
process, since register is added to rhythm and pitch. Thus we can see a path that
4
See Luciano Berio, Two Interviews, p. 97.
5
A different yet not contradictory interpretation of this section can be found in
Philippe Albèra, ‘Introduction aux neuf sequenzas’, Contrechamps, 1 (1983): 91–122.
leads from an extreme initial mobility, in which the pitches continually appear in
different octaves, to a progressive reduction of the compass and to their fixing in
the mid–low register.
Example 9.3 Sequenza IX: pages 2–3
This is a direct consequence of the parallel process involving the pitches

themselves, which gradually shift from the mutable field to the fixed one. A static
rhythmic sequence is superimposed onto these two changing parameters and it is
repeated six times, again with slight variations: its ideal form never actually
appears but is reconstructed in Ex. 9.4. The result is a gradual loss of tension,
which mirrors the gradual increase of tension in the previous process.
Example 9.4 Sequenza IX: rhythmic pattern on page 2
The next section, beginning on the third system on page three, contrasts with the
previous one. Here all the parameters are linked: the harmony – which is steadily
centred on the main pitch-field – and the figural repetitiveness both contribute to
characterize the events. It is nevertheless a temporary situation, since a new
process in which the parameters are mixed up begins on the fifth system on the
same page. This leads to the point of greatest stasis in the piece: its peak is at
rehearsal letter E, as shown in Ex. 9.5.
Example 9.5 Sequenza IX: page 3
Then, on page four, new figures and more definite harmonic situations emerge.
Therefore, this preceding region can be seen as a transition phase, at the end of
which every element is deeply transformed.
Elsewhere processes involving individual parameters are apparent. For
instance, in the first half of page five there is a slightly varied and interpolated
repetition of a pattern of six pitches, each time on a different rhythmic figure (Ex.
9.6a). A similar idea, based on a different pattern of five pitches, is found on page
six (Ex. 9.6b). The two melodic patterns used in these passages are reproduced in
Ex. 9.6c.
Example 9.6 Sequenza IX: melodic patterns on pages 5–6
a) Page 5: six-note pattern

Example 9.6 (cont.)
b) Page 6: five-note pattern
c) reduction of the two melodic patterns
Example 9.7 Sequenza IX: melodic and rhythmic patterns on page 7
a) Sequenza IX, page 7
b) Contrasting rhythmic patterns on page 7

In these two cases, the partial stillness of one parameter is superimposed onto the
mobile nature of another, thus obtaining a constant increase in tension. It is no
coincidence that both processes are followed by a contrasting region of relative
stasis, due to the predominance of long notes, where the focus is on timbre and, in
particular, on multiphonic sounds.
A similar example can be found on page seven, between rehearsal letters N and
Q (Ex. 9.7a), although here the roles of pitch and rhythm are reversed. Now, it is
the opposition of two rhythmic figures (shown in Ex. 9.7b) and their variants that
plays the main role. Repetition is avoided thanks to a slowly evolving pitch-field,
which adds a sense of instability to the section: this gives a sort of circular motion
to this region rather than a true development.
Another interesting process is the progressive reduction of the components
from the main pitch-field that is found towards the end of the piece. It is hinted at
in the first three systems on page six but prevails in the section between rehearsal
letters Q and V, where it finally reaches its apex. Here we can see the gradual
disappearance of the higher components of the field, until only D and F (and then
G and D) remain, in the middle of page nine. In Ex. 9.8, three different stages of
this process are shown.
This process performs two main functions: on one hand it creates a strongly
oriented region, in relation not only to harmony but also to expressive tension
(which leads to the tremolos at rehearsal letter V); on the other hand it prepares for
the following section, which is characterized by a sudden change in the role of
some of the existing elements, and one in particular.
In the piece there is a single pitch that, although not belonging to the main field,
nevertheless plays a major role: this is the high B#(B#5) which appears on the final
pages. It is briefly introduced as a repeated note on page four, but from page eight
onward becomes the main structuring element. It is used both as a parenthetical
gesture and as a contrasting object which interrupts the mid–low melodic flow,
thus generating a polyphony between registers (see Ex. 9.8b). This pitch becomes
more important just after rehearsal letter V, where it starts proliferating and
generating a new melodic line in the high register: the generative and propulsive
principles are hybridized with its parenthetical function, thus forming a new
structural layer. On the last page, the contrasts are gradually recomposed, since the
B# tends to integrate with the other elements, thanks in part to the restrained
dynamics. The result is almost directionless in a way that seems to recall the
opening of the piece.
The Sequenza melody is evidently constructed using complex techniques. It is
obvious that such a redundancy of different simultaneous processes will yield a form
without a teleological direction on a large scale and it is therefore difficult to find a
single climax. Instead the overall form is made up of different moments, each with its
own character and its own expressive range, determined by the predominance of one
or more parameters: this causes a movement that can be described as sinusoidal,
because of the continuous succession of static and propulsive regions.
Example 9.8 Sequenza IX: pages 7–9
a) Page 7, last staff
b) Page 8, staves 1–5
c) Page 9, staves 4-5

There is more to say about the concept of redundancy. If interpreted and used as it
is in this composition, it needs a certain degree of repetitiveness in order to clarify
the message, but not a straight repetition. It is no coincidence that the most
repetitive sections are to be found in the first pages, as if to suggest a code for the
interpretation of the whole work. Once this code becomes clear, Berio starts
putting into effect more subtle elaborative processes in which symmetries and
repetitions are always present but in a less evident way. Yet, right from the start,
the models for the repetitive sections are often removed or interpolated by other
material: apart from producing less mechanical results, they also suggest another
code, which is to say that the listener should not expect total clarity and linearity
but rather elliptical and multilayered paths. These removals are therefore a signal
in themselves.
The clarinet and its double
The origin of Sequenza IX is to be found in the experiments which Berio led in the
late 1970s at the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique
(IRCAM) in Paris, where he directed the electroacoustic section from 1974 to
1980. There, thanks to the possibilities of sound manipulation offered by Giuseppe
di Giugno’s 4C system (antecedent of the more famous 4X), he began exploring a
new and fruitful field of research: real-time sound transformation. As in previous
electroacoustic work, once more it was the human voice, in a broad sense, which
guided his experiments: the piece he was composing, for clarinet and electronics,
was also conceived as a study on vowels. Significantly, it was called ‘Chemins V’,
to underline the idea of the timbral paths which characterize it.6
The true compositional phase was preceded by an analytical one during which
Berio compared the spectral qualities of Italian, English and French vowels. The
French ones soon disappeared from that list, probably in order to avoid an
overabundance of primary materials. With the vowels that remained, a pattern
became evident, similar to that represented in Fig. 9.1. 7 One can see a fairly
symmetrical structure in this matrix, and its components are often used in the
composition in this way.
Starting from these analyses, Berio drew a series of diagrams in which he noted
down the spectral contents of each vowel and attempted to transcribe them onto the
6
The following analysis is based on the sketches from the Paul Sacher Foundation in
Basel. I am indebted to the staff of the archive for their assistance.
7
This scheme is based on the one proposed by the International Phonetic Association
(IPA), from which the vowels not used by Berio have been excluded. For further
information, see International Phonetic Association, The Principles of the International
Phonetic Association (London, 1949). It is worth noting that in 1979 a major revision of the
IPA alphabet was published, which may have played a part in suggesting the phonetic basis
of ‘Chemins V’ to Berio.
stave as harmonic aggregates. Indeed, even if some passages are not totally clear, it
seems that he derived the pitch-field, on which the pieces here examined are based,
from these very analyses. There are a number of sketches that show how, starting
from these aggregates, through transposition of some pitches and then selection
and recombination, he came to define a set of pitches which exactly corresponds to
the main field of the Sequenza. So, in this phase Berio was probably developing the
phonetic materials in two different directions, setting them as a starting point for
the realization not only of the electronic programmes, but also for the clarinet part.
Fig. 9.1 Vowel matrix for ‘Chemins V’
It may also be conjectured that Berio was already working on these harmonic
materials and that he selected only the common pitches from the analyses.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to establish which was the true order from the
available sketches. Nevertheless, this testifies to his intention of reaching a full
interpenetration of clarinet and electronic materials.
In examining the musical structures of the piece more closely, the instrumental
score will be discussed largely in relation to the differences between ‘Chemins V’
and Sequenza IX, followed by an analysis of the electronic resources and the
interaction between the two dimensions. The analysis of the ‘Chemins V’ text
refers throughout to the Sequenza score rehearsal numbers, since this is the only
one which has been published.
The differences between the two pieces, for the clarinet part, are significant and
fall into two main categories: the cut of several short passages of ‘Chemins’
material, mostly from the region between rehearsal letters W and Z, and the
elimination of open sections in ‘Chemins V’ that call for improvisation by the
clarinettist between letters L and R.8 The last omissions are particularly interesting
since they testify to a relatively open formal conception in the ‘Chemins’, which is
absent from the Sequenza. In particular, between rehearsal letters Q and R
‘Chemins V’ contains a section which is a minute and a half long in which the
clarinettist has to choose and play seven different melodic fragments in a free
order, responding to electronic programmes in the same register (Ex. 9.9 shows
this is as it appears in one of Berio’s sketches). This is the section of the piece in
which the dialogue between the two dimensions is deepest and closest. These
fragments recall all the main gestures of the work, even if they are
decontextualized and in a condensed form: not only events which have already
been heard are presented, but also ones still to come, such as the A# (corresponding
to the transposed high B# in the Sequenza) from the last pages. This can be
considered as the ideal centre of the piece, being the exposition of ideas which are
developed elsewhere in completely different directions.
At two other points a simpler treatment can be found, where the clarinettist’s
only task is that of repeating a rhythmic sequence several times, choosing the notes
to be played from a fixed number of pitches. Besides these passages, the clarinet
part in the two works is identical, and so does not need further explanation.
As for the electronic part, its history is somewhat complex and not fully
reconstructable: it went through no less than four successive versions before being
completely eliminated, each more complex than its predecessor. In its final
configuration, it consists of nine programmes for the 4C, interspersed throughout
the whole piece. Each of them contains the computer instructions for filtering the
clarinet sounds and, in particular, the reference vowel, the loudness and the
loudspeaker through which it should be diffused: four loudspeakers are requested
to be placed in different spots of the hall, to allow the movement of sounds in
space or their simultaneous diffusion from different points. Thus, starting from the
clarinet alone, it is also possible to obtain very complex results from the point of
view of timbre and space. Moreover, throughout the piece there is the alternation
between moments in which the parameters of the electronic programmes are
strictly predetermined and moments in which their realization, given a limited
number of elements to choose from, occurs at random, creating a link between the
electronics and the improvisational passages of the clarinet. Indeed, the
principles that guide the filtering are quite similar to the methods of harmonic
control observed in the Sequenza, with regions that are characterized by
homogeneous sonorities and others in which different sonorities are
superimposed or hybridized. Berio often focuses only on open or closed
vowels, or front or back ones; or he creates symmetrical relationships inside
these two dimensions of the vocalic space, which he sometimes explores by
degrees and sometimes by sudden changes, creating a wide range of timbral
variations, even though using rather limited materials.
8
That is to say, in the ‘Chemins’ version of the clarinet part there is additional
material in these regions that is absent from the Sequenza score.
Example 9.9 Central improvisatory section in ‘Chemins V’
Programme 5, the simplest of the series, provides a good example of this treatment.
It is activated at the end of the multiphonic sound which appears just after rehearsal
letter H and lasts until letter I, for a total duration of 25 seconds. 9 As the
programme starts, the clarinet sound is filtered following the spectral envelopes of
the vowels [u] and [o], and the resulting sounds are diffused by loudspeakers one
and two respectively. A relatively open section follows, in which the sounds,
filtered using the vowels [u], [o], [ɇ] and [e], are each randomly chosen and
diffused by one of the four loudspeakers. Then, during the tremolo between C and
E (D and F in the Sequenza), the order is re-established, the sounds of [u] and [o]
being diffused by loudspeaker one, and [ɧ] and [e] by loudspeaker two. Finally, in
conjunction with the next clarinet multiphonic, the filtering follows the spectral
qualities of the vowels [i], [o] and [a], which are diffused by loudspeakers three,
four and one respectively, until all of the electronic sounds fade out.
Another type of electroacoustic treatment added to these programmes, although
not in real-time, is the recording and the subsequent reproduction of some passages
of the clarinet part in a virtual counterpoint between different moments of the
piece. This allows the multiplication of the sonic planes as, in addition to its
vocalized shadow from the nine programmes, the clarinet is accompanied and
counterpointed by a true double. This occurs at two points in the work, which
coincide with significant moments within the form. The first occurs in conjunction
with almost all of page seven, with the exception of the last system, and consists of
the restatement of earlier fragments that are contrasting in character: these are the
last three lines of page one, lines three to six of page two and the last five lines of
page three. These recordings are then immediately played back again in
conjunction with the improvisatory section of Ex. 9.9, confirming this moment as
the climax of the piece, the target of numerous processes. The subsequent recourse
to this technique also takes place in conjunction with a crucial passage: it consists
of the recording of almost the whole of page eight, the region characterized by the
contrast between the high A# and the phrases in the mid–low register. These same
materials are then played back just after rehearsal letter V, which marks the
beginning of the proliferating process generated by the A# itself. Thus, a double
counterpoint is created, which gives added emphasis to the dialectic contrast
between the two registers that characterizes the end.
A synthesizer, which reacts to the clarinet with melodic fragments derived from
the same harmonic materials, was added in the last version of ‘Chemins V’ to the
other two ways of sound processing, both of which were present from the very
beginning. Its interventions, however, do not go beyond the first pages of the
manuscript, which probably means that Berio reconsidered its use early on. This is
only one of the many elements which were considered by the composer and later
eliminated or significantly revisited.
All this rewriting and rethinking witnesses the fact that Berio at that time was
in a deeply experimental phase, but also that he was probably unsatisfied with the
9
These rehearsal letters are identical in both the ‘Chemins’ and Sequenza texts.
results. Many of the ideas only hinted at here were later developed on a larger scale
within the works composed at Tempo Reale in Florence, but even then it was only
after a great many attempts that he achieved a full correspondence between his
compositional thought and practice. 10 This may be an explanation for the
withdrawal of ‘Chemins V’: the complexity of the electronic programmes, which at
that time were very difficult to manage, was probably not balanced by adequate
musical results. However, there could be another reason, which is that Berio may
already have begun to concentrate on the possible development of these musical
materials without the contribution of the electronic resources: these took shape on
one side in the Sequenza and on the other side, as will be seen, in La vera storia.
To summarize, what becomes evident from the comparison of ‘Chemins V’
with Sequenza IX is the foregrounding of the melodic processes to the detriment of
other components. The elimination of the electronic programmes and the deletion
of the open sections emphasizes this feature, which was just one of Berio’s earlier
compositional concerns. This also led him to redefine the structural functions of
the individual sections, to the point of producing two completely different formal
realizations. The Sequenza is characterized by a framework that can be defined as
sinusoidal, due to the alternation of static and developing regions, and the absence
of a true climax. As for ‘Chemins V’, considering the importance of the
improvisatory parts, we may speak of centrifugal form, in which the basic gestures
are presented in the centre, an epiphanic moment. Such conceptual diversity is
even more striking when we consider that we are dealing with two parallel versions
of the same work.
‘Sarà la vera festa’
It is well known that Sequenzas III and V have a theatrical component which
permeates their musical functions. In the case of Sequenza IX, there is instead a
separation of these two features: the extra-musical elements seem to be absent from
it, but they reappear later as real theatre in La vera storia.11 Part II, scene 7 of this
work is a reworking of the Sequenza melody which emphasizes new aspects of its
materials. It is presented in a highly recognizable manner, and it can be considered
different mostly because of further cuts, which are again concentrated in the final
10
In 1988 Berio began composing large-scale works with live electronics, including
Outis (1995–96), Ofanìm (1988–97), Cronaca del Luogo (1999) and Altra Voce (1999). For
a more extensive account of these works, see Francesco Giomi, Damiano Meacci and Kilian
Schwoon, ‘Live Electronics in Luciano Berio’s Music’, Computer Music Journal, 27/2
(2003): 30–46.
11
For a detailed account of this work, see David Osmond-Smith, ‘Nella festa tutto?
Structure and dramaturgy in Luciano Berio’s La Vera Storia’, Cambridge Opera Journal,
9/3 (1997): 281–94.
pages: the identification of the relationship between the two works is thus
immediate and deliberately sought by Berio.
This is clear at the level of the materials themselves: the pitch-field on which
this scene is based is obviously identical to that of the other pieces examined here.
It should be added though that it also closely resembles the pitch framework on
which La vera storia itself is constructed, which is reproduced in Ex. 9.10.
Example 9.10 Pitch framework for La vera storia12
The most noticeable difference between this version of the melody and the
preceding ones is that now it is distributed between two instruments, the clarinet
and the alto saxophone, the instrument for which Sequenza IXb was written. This
not only causes the transformation of the protracted melody of the Sequenza into a
dialogue, but also takes up the idea of timbral transformation which guided the
electronic programmes of ‘Chemins V’. This is further highlighted by the addition
of the horn, which adds a metallic timbre by picking up pitches at the end of some
of the soloists’ phrases and sustaining them.
As for the orchestra, it should be noted that in this scene the instrumental
families are highly differentiated and each plays a particular structural role. For
instance, the strings serve mainly as elements of articulation, interspersing the
soloists’ dialogue with single harmonic aggregates. The woodwind and the voices
play instead a more localized but nevertheless a more important role: the global
structure of the scene comes in part from their symmetries.
The interaction between these orchestral families – the voices are integrated
into the orchestral texture here – and the soloists generate a form which can be
subdivided into five parts endowed with a number of internal correspondences.
After a short introduction that exactly follows the character and function of the
opening of the Sequenza, the entrance of the strings begins a new section, which
goes from rehearsal letters A to I. 13 This is characterized by the presence of
speaking voices and by three long interjections from the woodwind which closely
recall features from ‘Chemins V’. In fact, they correspond exactly to the regions in
which programmes two, three and four were used and they also recall, in an altered
manner, the improvisatory clarinet sections that were cut from the Sequenza. In the
following section, from rehearsal letters I to K, the chorus abandons the spoken
text and starts to sing: this change is underlined by the poetic text which, while
previously recalling human and social themes, is now centred around nature and
12
This appears as Ex. VII.2 in Osmond-Smith, Berio (Oxford/New York, 1991), p.
104.
13
Rehearsal letters refer here to the score of La vera storia (Milan, 1982).
space, following a path toward abstraction. There are three sung interjections, after
which the chorus is silent for the rest of the scene. There is a recognizable
symmetry between these and the woodwind interjections. Thanks to this simple
device, Berio creates a clear-cut form, which is very different from the one of the
Sequenza: the new form is much simpler and immediately comprehensible, and so
perhaps more suitable for a theatrical performance. Between rehearsal letters K and
N, a relatively static moment ensues, in which the clarinet and the saxophone are
left alone, accompanied here and there by a few interjections from the strings: this
passage plays almost a cadential role, its main function being to prepare the final
section. It is worth noting that this is the point where most of the cuts from the
Sequenza are concentrated, the purpose of which is evidently to eliminate any
residual sense of directional movement within the global form that would
contradict the stasis represented here. Finally, the last pages, from rehearsal letter
N onwards, are closer to the Sequenza, with the (now literal) counterpoint between
the phrases in the mid–low register and the high A#.14 Here again, however, it is
not presented as the result of a teleological process, but rather as a progressive
immobilization and crystallization of the sound.
We can therefore see La vera storia as simultaneously a step both back and
forward with respect to Sequenza IX, in that references to ‘Chemins V’ are found
here, but they are completely revisited and their functions changed. This is even
more apparent if we consider the fact that the similarities with ‘Chemins V’ are
concentrated mostly at the beginning, where the entries of the orchestra bear traces
of the electronic programmes. Further on, the differences become increasingly
evident, especially due to the cuts, to the point that the original melody is hardly
recognizable; and the A#, thanks to the intervention of the flute, looses its dialectic
nature and becomes more a harmonic background and texture amongst the
superimposed layers, which contributes to the gradual fading of the motor activity.
While ‘Chemins V’ and Sequenza IX show, in a deeply different way, a propulsive
tendency, here it is replaced by a chilling stasis.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be seen how in this series of works Berio put aside his typical
proliferating and commentary techniques to avail himself of subtractive ones,
which are based on the selection and reinterpretation of the materials. While this
change is especially evident when comparing ‘Chemins V’ to Sequenza IX, where
the elimination of the electronic programmes and the many cuts in the clarinet part
clearly go in this direction, nevertheless it can be found also in La vera storia,
which derives from them. Here too, in fact, notwithstanding the presence of the
orchestra and the chorus, the idea that drives the composition is that of selection
and variation of the structures rather than that of expansion. The interjections of the
14
This corresponds to the B# in the Sequenza and the A# in ‘Chemins V’; see note 3.
woodwinds and the strings do not develop the soloists’ parts, but articulate them
and emphasize their latent symmetries. The same applies to the cuts, which make
elliptical the processes that appear integrally only in the Sequenza, forcing the
listener to interpret them in a new way. All this causes the emergence of different
issues in each piece. ‘Chemins V’ was, among other things, an exploration of the
possibilities of sound transformation and musical structuring by means of
electronic resources. In comparison, the Sequenza is centred mainly on the melodic
processes, while it leaves all the other elements in the background. However, they
partly reappear in La vera storia: here the dialogue between the clarinet, the
saxophone and the horn on one side, and the orchestral entries (which often recall
the electronic programmes) on the other, seems to take up some features of
‘Chemins V’, in particular the emphasis on the role of timbre as a structural
element. It is clear that we are a long way from the concept of the Chemins series
in general: in this constellation of pieces, the musical structures do not imply the
idea of proliferation of possibilities implicit in the materials, but rather a revisiting
of them within a new context and from a different perspective.15 This is supported
by the fact that in 1996 Berio returned once more to Sequenza IX in order to derive
a true Chemins from it, Récit (Chemins VII), where the typical generative process
is partly re-established.16 The result is therefore not a simple linear succession but
rather a bifurcation starting from ‘Chemins V’, as represented in Fig. 9.2.
Fig. 9.2 Outline of the relationships among the Sequenza-related works
Further evidence of this is found in the fact that the first sketches of Part II, scene 7
of La vera storia were carried out not on the text of the Sequenza but on one of the
many manuscript versions of ‘Chemins V’. The Parisian piece can be seen as
the site of several experiments, which were then brought into focus in different
ways within the other pieces: Berio acknowledged only these others as works.
Finally, another point emerges from this analysis, which calls to mind another
major issue of Berio’s compositional thought: his research into the relationship
between sound and meaning. We can see the succession of these three works as the
emergence of the idea of the inherent communicative power of music, which can
15
In particular regarding La vera storia, see Luciano Berio, ‘Opera e no’, in La vera
storia (Programme booklet) (Milan, 1982), pp. 27–9.
16
See Giordano Montecchi, ‘Colloquio con Berio, a Proposito di Chemins VII, di
Riscritture e Trascrizioni’, in Francesco Degrada (ed.), Festival Luciano Berio (Festival
booklet) (Milan, 1996), pp. 100–101.
sometimes be greater than verbal language. In ‘Chemins V’, we find an idea of

complementarity: music, in order to strengthen its meaning, is accompanied by
other elements, such as the electronic resources and the voice, though the latter is
only evoked. In Sequenza IX, Berio takes this a step further: music is self-sufficient
and the external elements are suppressed or, better, remain at a hidden level, since
the main pitch-field probably derives from the analysis of the formants of the
vowel sounds. The musical structures, left alone, acquire their meaning from their
own symmetries and redundancies. A further step is taken with La vera storia, at
the root of which there is the same idea of music’s power of communication,
almost in opposition to verbal speech. It is well known that Part II of the work is a
vast new elaboration on a musical basis of the theatrical events of Part I, as if to
underline the supremacy of the musical component. Thus, Part II, scene 7 can be
considered the ideal heart of the work, since it is where this principle is taken to its
most extreme consequences. Music is the main source of meaning here: we have
already seen how it contextualizes and codifies the entries of the chorus. What is
striking is that, paradoxically, this occurs in the presence of spoken language.
However, its use within the piece follows musical rather than narrative principles.
The voices are integrated into the orchestral texture, whereas the clarinet and the
saxophone are the true protagonists. This is not the only experiment carried out in
this direction in the twentieth century, but it is significant that here it is performed
not by means of deconstruction and fragmentation of language – that is, through its
reduction to ‘non-sense’, as occurs in scene three – but rather by preserving it
integrally. The distinctiveness of what Berio does here lies not in the negation of
verbal meaning but in its expansion through a multitude of expressive planes, to
the point of being absorbed by them and almost vanishing. Here, words are
functions of music. In this constellation of works, we see the process through
which music creates meaning, analysed in three different stages of development.
Chapter 10
Proliferations and Limitations:

Berio’s Reworking of the Sequenzas
Edward Venn
As editor of the journal Incontri Musicali, Luciano Berio published an article in 1959
by his friend and sometime collaborator Umberto Eco, in which Eco first outlined his
theory of the open work.1 Developed at greater length in Opera Aperta,2 Eco’s
concept of the open work forms part of ‘a general aesthetics of modernism’ that has
continued to provoke debate over the last five decades.3 In a rhetorically powerful
exposition of his ideas, Eco opens with a list of instrumental musical works that he
describes as ‘works in movement’.4 In such works, the performer is free to re-order
the constituent elements of the work, in what might be classed a virtual collaboration
with the composer. This definition is unproblematic for a work such as
Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956), but it is not immediately clear how Berio’s
Sequenza I (1958), which appears in the same list, belongs within the same category.
Indeed, Eco evidently misunderstood the spatial notation used in Sequenza I, stating
that it granted the performer free licence to ‘hold a note within the fixed framework
imposed upon him, which in turn is established by the metronome’s beats’.5
This misinterpretation explicitly contradicts the performance indications given in
the score. Nevertheless, by publishing Eco’s article, Berio is complicit in
disseminating the error. Thus he is partly responsible for subsequent associations
between Sequenza I and an impoverished musical notion of the open work in which
openness is equated with freedom in performance.6 One can find further traces of
1
Umberto Eco, ‘L’opera in movimento e la coscienza dell’epoca’, Incontri Musicali,
3 (1959): 32–54.
2
Published in English as The Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni (Cambridge, 1989).
All references in the text to The Open Work come from this edition.
3
Peter Bondanella, Umberto Eco and the Open Text: Semiotics, Fiction, Popular
Culture (Cambridge,1997), p. 23. Eco has continued to refine his theory in further editions
of Opera Aperta, and in many subsequent articles, essays and books.
4
Eco, The Open Work, p. 12.
5
Ibid., p. 1.
6
On the misunderstanding and its dissemination, see Thomas Gartmann, ‘Das offene
Kunstwerk – neu erschlossen. Zu Luciano Berios Überarbeitung der Sequenza’, in Antonio
172 Edward Venn
this erroneous line of thought in an interview given in the early 1980s, in which
Berio stated that he hoped ‘to rewrite Sequenza I in rhythmic notation: maybe it
will be less “open” and more authoritarian, but at least it will be reliable’.7 I would
suggest that Berio’s use of ‘open’ refers here not to Eco’s specific theoretical
formulation, but rather to a more general use of the term that has passed into
common parlance.8 To avoid confusion, it should be noted that within this chapter,
further references to ‘openness’ are used solely in the context of Eco’s model
(elaborated below), and thus have specific theoretical nuances.
Some of these nuances, indicating that Berio indeed understood fully the
implications of Eco’s theory, can be found in a more recent interview. Here Berio
suggested that regardless of the notational system employed, the music of
Sequenza I ‘will automatically bring a feeling of instability, an openness which is
part of the expressive quality of the work’.9 Central to the argument that I shall
develop below is the belief that some of this ‘expressive quality’ – and hence
openness – results from the interpretative malleability of the ‘sequence of
harmonic fields’ that gives the work its name.10 What is true for Sequenza I is also
the case for all of those Sequenzas that take such a sequence as a ‘point of
departure … from which spring, in all their individuality, the other musical
functions.’11
But what does it mean for the expressive quality of a work if the same sequence
of harmonic fields – and indeed, their realization – is used as the basis for one or
more discrete works, as is the case with Berio’s reworking of various Sequenzas?
Berio has provided a tentative answer to this question, when discussing ‘forms of
transcription that are completely assimilated into the creative process’, a category
to which the reworkings of the Sequenzas undoubtedly belong.12 Although it is not
possible to speak of a definitive realization when discussing the reworkings, we
can nevertheless recognize a kinship between the reworkings and the process Berio
identifies as ‘part of the ups and downs of creativity: when, that is, you have a
single musical vision … going through different and self-sufficient formulations.’13
For example, in reference to Sequenza I, Thomas Gartmann has observed that its
renotation gave rise to new avenues of openness, which is to say, new expressive
Baldassarre, Susanne Kübler and Patrick Müller (eds), Musik denken: Festschrift Ernst
Lichtenhahn (Berne, 2000), pp. 219–34.
7
trans. and ed. David Osmond-Smith (New York/London, 1985), p. 99. A renotated version
was eventually published in 1992.
8
Note the analogous appropriation of the word ‘deconstruction’ – which has a
specific theoretical meaning – into everyday (mis)usage.
9
Theo Muller, ‘“Music is not a solitary act”: Conversation with Luciano Berio’,
Tempo, 199 (1997), p. 19 [emphasis added].
10
Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998) CD liner notes, p. 8.
11
Ibid.
12
13
Ibid., pp. 112–13 [emphasis added].
Proliferations and Limitations 173
qualities.14 To translate this into something approximating Berio’s terms, we might

say that the underlying musical vision is the same from one version of the
Sequenza to the next, but the differences in notational emphasis result in
autonomous works that create different interpretational possibilities.
Renotation, as in the case of both Sequenzas I and VII (1969) is but one of the
means by which a reworking can be made to differ from its progenitor. For
example, in the case of Corale (1980–81) and Chemins I–V, there are, broadly
speaking, two ways through which the material of the Sequenza is made to yield
new and self-sufficient formulations. The first of these is through superimposition
of material over the original work, which David Osmond-Smith has described as
‘commentary by harmonic enrichment.’15 There is therefore a ‘vertical’ dimension
to this manner of working. The second method of working is correspondingly
‘horizontal’, consisting of ruptures to the temporal flow of the original Sequenza.
In some cases, this results from interpolations, in others from omission of material.
Both means of reworking material – neither of which are necessarily mutually
exclusive – subject the underlying structure to particular tensions and stresses that
bring to the fore interpretative possibilities unrealized – or unrealizable – in other
works making use of the same material.
Thus there is a complex relationship between a Sequenza and its reworking, and
it is my contention that the notion of the open work can help shed significant light
on what this relationship means for the expressive quality of the works in question.
In speaking of comparisons between linguistic and musical structures, Richard
Hermann has observed that such analogies might provide a ‘way in’, but are ‘not
sufficient for a critical assessment’ of the music.16 The same limitations are
operative when exploring the relationship between an aesthetic concept such as
openness, and concrete musical structures. Whilst this approach may eventually
therefore prove to be insufficient for critical analysis, such an operation
nevertheless demonstrates the richness of the material in question, and hopefully
clears the ground on which a more substantial assessment can be constructed in the
future.
In Music and Discourse, Jean-Jacques Nattiez offers an extended critique of the

open work which, through its distorted reading of Eco, characterizes the general
14
This stands in contradistinction to Berio’s claim that the renotation might make the
work ‘less open’.
15
16
Richard Hermann, ‘Theories of Chordal Shape, Aspects of Linguistics, and their
Roles in Structuring Berio’s Sequenza IV for Piano’, in Elizabeth West Marvin and Richard
Hermann (eds), Concert Music, Rock and Jazz since 1945: Essays and Analytic Studies
(Rochester, 1995), pp. 397–8.
174 Edward Venn
musicological reception of Eco’s theory.17 Maintaining a separation of poietic,

esthesic and neutral levels,18 Nattiez claims that one of Eco’s conditions of
openness, that of a composer making a ‘criteria of value out of a multiplicity of
interpretations is … already a tautology’, since no message, artistic or otherwise, is
capable of generating ‘one single meaning.’19 Furthermore, Nattiez argues that
because a listener cannot perceive whether a composer intends a work to be open
or not, ‘the criterion of identity’ for an open work exists solely on the poietic
level.20 In short, although Nattiez admits that the concept of openness might have a
bearing on what the composer does, it is not a meaningful concept for performers
or listeners, for whom business presumably goes on as normal.
It is clear from Nattiez’s examples and a possibly exasperated footnote stating
that he does ‘not see in what sense the Sequenza I is “open”’,21 that he by-and-large
equates the notion of openness in music with ‘works in movement’ – that is, works
in which the ordering of components is left to the performer. But Eco insists that
the scope of the open work is much wider than this, regarding works in movement
as a ‘further, more restricted classification of works’ within the general category of
openness.22 Although the musical examples Eco provides in his exposition of the
open work are all ‘works in movement’, it is fallacious to assume they are the only
types of musical work that can be considered open. Nattiez’s failure to recognize
this does not weaken his discussion concerning the perceptual identity of works in
movement, but it does undermine his more general critique of openness.
It seems that the musical reception of Eco’s theory of openness was hindered
by his polemical and misleading choice of examples. Furthermore, by contrasting
the open work with works that are not open, Eco frequently gives the impression
that there exists a discrete ontological identity for the open work. Certainly,
Nattiez’s argument begins from this premise, in order eventually to refute the
notion that an open (musical) work is any different from any other musical work.
Nevertheless, as a heuristic, the binary division of works into ‘open’ or ‘closed’
categories remains useful for the purpose of definition. Thus, a ‘closed’ work can
be said to offer a limited range of interpretative possibilities based upon culturally
prescribed channels of thought. In contrast, an open work establishes a potentially
infinite network of relationships that are only weakly governed by convention, if at
all. This forces receivers to find their own way through the network and to
experience and choose between the multiplicity of interpretations that are
17
Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music, trans.
Carolyn Abbate (Princeton, 1990), pp. 82–7.
18
The poietic and esthesic levels respectively refer to aspects of the work relevant to
its production and reception. The neutral level is concerned with immanent structures of the
musical work.
19
Nattiez, p. 83.
20
Ibid., p. 87.
21
Ibid., p. 84.
22
Eco, The Open Work, p. 12.
available. Crucially, and as much of Opera Aperta and Eco’s later writings make
clear, openness is not a discrete quality, but exists on a continuum – a work (or
event) can be classified as more or less open, but it is not either open or closed.
The more open a work, the more there exist nodal points within it that invite the
receiver to engage in interpretation.
Although a work tending toward openness contains multiple interpretative
possibilities, open works cannot support and sustain any and all interpretations.
Talking of the limits of interpretation, Eco notes that a work will establish a ‘field
of oriented possibilities’ that results from chains of associations ‘previously
suggested by the co-text.’23 This field of possibilities serves as a constraint to the
interpretative potential of a work or event. This is not to say that receivers cannot
impose their own reading onto a work, but Eco argues that if such a reading
transgresses the limits created by the text, then the receiver has strayed into
‘overinterpretation’, or, rather, has ‘used’ the text rather than interpreted it.24 The
more open a text is perceived to be, the broader the limits of interpretation it
supports. Eco does not define what these limits are, relying on a ‘cultural
Darwinism’ in which a culture decides which interpretations are valid or not. Thus
Berio’s dissatisfaction with performers who misinterpreted or ignored the
implications of his spatial notation in works such as Sequenza I gives some idea of
the limits of interpretation that Berio felt were being transgressed.
Openness, therefore, is not (just) interchangeability of elements, and nor is it a
discrete quality that a work either can or cannot possess. Rather, it refers to the
latent potential of a contingent and contextual event or events to suggest multiple
and textually consistent interpretive possibilities. When Nattiez claims that
openness exists (if at all) in the creative process of the composer, he alludes to the
aesthetic principle to maximize this suggestiveness, in order to invite the listener to
actively engage in the interpretative process. Nattiez is quite right in stating that a
listener cannot perceive such moments as open, for strictly speaking there is no
such thing. Nevertheless, a competent listener faced with one of Berio’s Sequenzas
would doubtless be aware that the musical text affords the opportunity for a wider
and more complex range of interpretative decisions than, say, a commercial pop
song aimed at a teenage audience.25 In this sense, one can speak of openness as a
quality – an interpretative strategy – that the listener brings to the work,
encouraged by the nature of the work’s immanent structures.
Some measure of how a work can suggest such an interpretative strategy can be
discerned from David Osmond-Smith’s pitch outline of the 1967 Sequenza VI for viola
(see Ex. 10.1).
23
Umberto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington, 1990), p. 142.
24
Ibid.; see p. 57ff.
25
More so in his earlier works than his later, Eco makes connections between social
models and the degree of openness within a work. Thus the conventionalized meanings of a
‘closed’ work such as a pop song would reinforce the dominant ideologies of a society.
176 Edward Venn
Example 10.1 David Osmond-Smith’s outline pitch structure of

Sequenza VI26
26
Originally Example IV.2 from Osmond-Smith, Berio, pp. 45–6. Example reprinted
by permission of Oxford University Press. References are to pages and systems: thus 3.10
indicates page three, system ten of the Universal Edition score.
Example 10.1 (cont.)
The outline demonstrates how the first four pages of Sequenza VI consist of motion
(largely ascending) between the poles of A and E#, realized as part of a strongly
implied and intricate four-part counterpoint.27 No two ascents are achieved in the
same way: the Sequenza is a bravura demonstration of how to rework an individual
idea. Building on hints provided at 3.10–4.1, the underlying structural process from
page five of the score onwards significantly alters: fixed pitch fields (the unfilled
noteheads in Ex. 10.1) provide the basis for elaboration.
Despite the apparent rigidity of the underlying pitch structure, coupled with the
use of traditional notation in this Sequenza, the work clearly manifests the potential
to be characterized as open. As each Sequenza defines its own structure, rather than
relying on a pre-existing scheme (for example, tonality or sonata form), the listener
is forced to interpret each event in the light of what precedes it – and possibly
reinterpret it in the light of what follows. Notwithstanding the presence of tritones
as a unifying feature throughout Sequenza VI, there is little sense of causation: at
any given point, the listener is confronted with numerous equiprobable
continuations. For example, a listener may be able to infer the general morphology
of the first section (the ascents and descents), but it is a much more complex matter
to predict – and then interpret the relationship between – the numerous ways in
which the ascents and descents could be (and are) realized. Furthermore, not only
are events interpreted through their relationships with each other, and with the
inferred structures of the Sequenza, but also through the myriad allusions and
discourse with musical history that inevitably arise. The more receptive the listener
is to such connections – that is, the greater the degree of openness they bring to the
work – the greater the potential the Sequenza has for affording multiple
interpretations.
27
This account is indebted to David Osmond-Smith’s detailed analysis of the
Sequenza, of which I present only the briefest of summaries. See Osmond-Smith, Berio, pp.
42–8.
178 Edward Venn
II
Even once the sequence of harmonic fields and their notated configurations of a
work (that is, its immanent structures) are familiar to the listener, the work retains
the potential to be classed as open. This is because in the act of performing or
listening, one can remain receptive to the possibility of hearing new allusions and
new relationships both within and external to the work.28 In such circumstances,
nodal points previously familiar to the receiver in a certain capacity are ‘opened’ in
new ways. To put this differently, latent meanings made possible by the
configurations of the work are actualized and made to proliferate. By the same
process, other nodal points might be forced to close somewhat – their latent
meanings are ‘narcotized’.29 Berio’s reworkings of his Sequenzas actively engage
in the process of opening or closing such nodal points.
Berio described those Chemins based on Sequenzas as analyses of the original
works.30 It is more profitable, however, to describe the Chemins – as well as
Corale, and the renotations of certain Sequenzas – as performances that make
explicit some of the latent possibilities within the original version, whilst
suppressing others. Comparison of related works serves to highlight those figures,
gestures or nodal points that are given additional expressive emphasis, and those
that are suppressed, between one ‘performance’ and the next. Such is the case with
the renotation of Sequenza I, described above. That Berio returned to rework some
of these reworkings – Sequenza VI spawned Chemins II (1967), which in turn gave
rise to three further Chemins of various natures – indicates the provisionality of
such a performance: further performances are always possible, and no performance
is exhaustive (I will return to the case of Sequenza VI below).
In reference to Berio’s Bewegung (1971, rev. 1984) Osmond-Smith notes that a
‘fascination with working at the limits of perception (and well beyond most
listeners’ capacities for aural analysis) was a pervasive feature of Berio’s work’
during the late sixties and early seventies – a time when most of the Chemins were
written.31 Nevertheless, as Osmond-Smith’s authoritative account of Berio’s
commentary techniques comprehensively demonstrates, it is still possible for a
listener to perceive the means by which certain events are brought into focus. Thus
when creating a Chemins from a Sequenza, ‘the accretions that grow from it, or are
placed in counterpoint to it, are often such as to displace areas of harmonic and
textural density, and thus to reshape the work’s contours.’32
Berio’s reworking of the opening of Sequenza VIII (1976–77) concisely
demonstrates how the contours of the original might be reworked in order to
28
Once again, we are confronted with the notion of openness being afforded to a work
by a listener, rather than being an innate quality waiting to be discovered.
29
Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader (Bloomington, 1979), p. 23.
30
31
32
Ibid., p. 48.
generate new interpretative possibilities – even if some of the detail remains

beyond the ‘limits of perception’. The first page of the score consists of a series of
musical events occurring within a harmonic field expanding from two focal
pitches, A4 and B4, to cover the chromatic gamut from G4 to C5.33 In the sixth line,
there is a new rhythmic idea (Ex. 10.2a, motif y), and a brief textural change, with
a hint of two-part counterpoint. The harmonic field opens up further in the seventh
line to include D5 and F5 (Ex. 10.2b). This sudden expansion of the harmonic field
is articulated by a new rhythmic and melodic shape (motif z) which otherwise
passes without musical comment. At the end of the page, a strongly contrasted idea
that employs a new harmonic field, texture and dynamic extreme is introduced;
nevertheless, B4 remains as a focal pitch (Ex. 10.2c).
Example 10.2 Figures from Sequenza VIII
The opening of Corale, the reworking of Sequenza VIII for solo violin, string
orchestra and two horns, is given in Ex. 10.3. In this instance, an implied 4/4 at the
outset of Sequenza VIII has been lightly reinforced – note how salient events such
as the change from the fourth to the third string, and the addition of the B, fall on
the notional strong beats of the bar. The same is true for the addition of the second
horn in bar two. Even though subsequent events – the addition of a G4 in bar three
33
Page and line numbers refer to the score (UE 15990).
180 Edward Venn
and the entry of solo instruments from the string orchestra – gravitate toward the
second and fourth beats of the bar, the context provided by the opening two bars
means that the notional quadruple metre is heard as continuing. The placement of
these additional strata to Sequenza VIII acts as a constraint to hearing the regular
crotchets in any other metrical grouping; in this sense, they function to limit
meaning.
Example 10.3 Corale: bars 1–4
A similar limitation can be found in regards to the harmonic field and timbral
resources. By sustaining the pitches introduced by the solo violin, the string
orchestra makes explicit the otherwise implied harmonic field. The result is a soft
halo of sound within which the soloist can tease out new combinations of the
available pitches. The wide palette of instrumental colour reflects and intensifies
the timbral variety of the soloist’s line. Thus the sustained notes ensure that any
other potential harmonic fields and timbral colourings remain suppressed within
this compositional performance.
In a similar manner, the horns make explicit the central role of the pitches A4
and B4 by sustaining them in some capacity for most of the work. However,
although this serves on one level as a limitation, the particular realization in the
opening simultaneously causes a proliferation of meanings. This is achieved
through the repetition of a three-note fragment A4–B4–A4 (motif w, Ex. 10.3)
drawn from the soloist in bars 2 and 3 and echoing it in the horns. The repetitions
of this figure engender a multiplication of meanings as it is brought into new
contexts: or, more accurately, in Sequenza VIII, the repetitions of this figure exist
only in the memory of the listener, and it is this memory that combines with events
in the continuation. In Corale, the horns make this memory audible.34
34
A similar use of memory made audible can be found in Sinfonia (1968), of which
Berio states ‘The unforeseen and discontinuous dislocation of previously heard events
Memory thus forms an important part of Berio’s compositional aesthetic, but

his material looks forwards as much as backwards. So it is in bar ten, as
demonstrated in Ex. 10.4. By this point, the solo violin has explored a wide variety
of pitch combinations and timbres available within the chromatic cluster from G4
to B4. This in turn has given rise to a timbrally unstable sustained aggregate in the
string orchestra, which is given impetus through the use of motif y (compare Exx.
10.2a and 10.4). As with the motivic repetitions in bars 1–4, the use of this
rhythmic motif in the orchestral part serves to establish it as an important gesture:
when it eventually appears in the soloist’s part it will already have been invested
with meaning. The same thing happens on a local level: a dotted quaver before the
solo violin expands the harmonic field to include C5, the note appears in the string
orchestra. What initially is projected as a relatively undramatic moment in
Sequenza VIII is made much more prominent in Corale through the use of a
crescendo followed by the slight break giving agogic emphasis to the subsequent
downbeat and C5 pitch.
By bars 16–20 (Ex. 10.5), the number of pre-echoes has multiplied drastically. For
instance, triplet figures in the lower strings (bar 16) prepare for the two-part
counterpoint in the solo violin in the next bar, and motif z in the solo part is pre-
empted by multiple appearances of the figure in the three bars leading up to it
(compare Exx. 10.2b and 10.5). Furthermore, the harmonic field is expanded in
both directions. The widening of the field causes a re-evaluation of the harmonies
provokes a sort of block in the (musical) stream of consciousness that characterized the
previous parts, and particularly the third. The memory is continually stimulated and put to
work, only to be contradicted and frustrated’. Berio, Two Interviews, p. 108.
182 Edward Venn
to date: what was initially treated as stable is suddenly reinterpreted as the central
core of a larger harmonic event. The field also occupies the registral space that is
later claimed by the solo violin (see Ex. 10.2c; a pre-echo of this can be found in
the driving demisemiquaver arpeggio in the orchestral violin, bar 17, shown in Ex.
10.5). The expansion of the field and pitch space contributes to the ongoing re-
interpretation of the harmonic sequence of the original work, in which the implied
or actual harmonic fields of the Sequenza are placed into new contexts.
All of Berio’s reworkings make use to some extent of those techniques and
procedures manifest in the opening of Corale, enabling some generalizations to be
made. Within this approach, it is possible to select musical events (such as
gestures, rhythms, chords) and imbue them with an additional and immediate
significance that was not obvious in the original Sequenza (although this
significance existed as a latent potentiality). Furthermore, the fixed temporal
ordering of the original Sequenza is made to give way to a more fluid conception
of time in which events are subjected to a variety of juxtapositions and
superimpositions. Relationships between events that previously remained
possibilities – however remote – due to their separation in time and musical space
are suddenly actualized, whilst other potential associations remain dormant.
Nevertheless, through the selection of certain events and not others, a hierarchy is
established which privileges one set of interpretations at the expense of all other
possible hierarchies and interpretations. Note, too, how the premonitions and
recollections of motivic material that informs the texture of reworkings such as
Corale tend to be inexact, imperfect. On the one hand, this gives rise to a
proliferation of varied motif-forms that generate their own interpretative fields. On
the other, it mimics our own selective memory processes, emphasizing the
contextual and contingent nature of how we listen and perform.
III
Instances of manipulating the structure of a Sequenza through the use of elisions

and/or insertions are common to all of the Chemins and Corale. The most far-
reaching of these instances occur in the multiple reworkings of Sequenza VI. In an
often-quoted line, Berio likened the relationship between these reworkings as being
‘something like the layers of an onion’.35 By this, Berio is referring to the practice
of adding strata to an existing core, and indeed, this is more or less found to be the
case when comparing Chemins II (for viola and nine instruments) with Sequenza
VI. But the other Chemins do not have so straightforward a relationship to either
35
See, for instance, Roger Smalley, [Review of Luciano Berio, Sequenza VI; Chemins
II; Chemins III. Walter Trampler, Julliard Ensemble, LSO/Berio (RCA, 1971)], Musical
Times, 112/ 1544 (1971): 973.
Sequenza VI or to each other. Chemins III (1968) is more like ‘an able
orchestration of Chemins II’ than an extra layer of an onion, for there are very few
instances of actual addition of material.36 Furthermore, neither Chemins II nor
Chemins III preserve the original structure of Sequenza VI. As Osmond-Smith
notes, there is an insertion of material in both Chemins II and III at the point at
which the underlying structural processes change (see Ex. 10.1, line 5.1). In
36
184 Edward Venn
Chemins II, this is achieved by means of interpolating into the structure a series of
short, dense gestures throughout which the solo viola remains silent. The latent
expressive drama inherent in the change of organization in Sequenza VI is thus
realized through a polarization of the relationship between soloist and ensemble. In
Chemins III, this polarization is taken to extremes: the final two bars of the
interpolation are expanded to create a highly dramatic series of interchanges
between soloist and orchestra.
An even more far-reaching reinterpretation of the musical structure can be
found in Chemins IIb (1970).37 Here, the soloist’s part has been subsumed into an
orchestra only slightly smaller than that called for Chemins III. Whilst on one level
a transcription of Chemins II (in an albeit more radical manner than for Chemins
III), Chemins IIb contains significant distortions to the underlying structure that
require it to be interpreted in different ways.
It becomes clear that for all of the above cases, the analogy of the onion only
goes so far in describing the relationship between the various works. In order to
preserve the vegetative metaphor, and to make use of one of Eco’s favoured
examples, I would suggest instead that this relationship is more like a rhizome. The
rhizome, a tangled mass of bulbs and tubers, is used metaphorically to represent a
theory of interpretation in which every unit of meaning can be connected in some
way to every other unit. Depending on context, these units are sometimes
proximate, sometimes more distantly or indirectly connected. So it is with the
Chemins: the various reworkings and structural adjustments serve to bring into
focus certain events and relationships that at other times are hidden beneath the
mass of other connections, whilst sending others into the hidden depths of the
rhizome.38
A comparison between the structural deviations between Sequenza VI, Chemins
II and Chemins IIb is instructive in this respect. Table 10.1 presents a survey of
major structural changes from one work to the next. For the purposes of this
overview, I have not taken into account small timbral, rhythmic or pitch changes
between the reworkings, for all that these impact on our interpretative responses; I
am more concerned here with the larger contours of the works in question. What
most vividly leaps out from the comparison is that Chemins IIb disrupts
significantly on four occasions structural principles of Sequenza VI that Chemins II
has treated as inviolate. As with the interpolations in Chemins II and III discussed
above, these disruptions occur at structurally strategic positions. The first of these
(at E1 in Chemins IIb) occurs at the peak of the second ascent (compare Table 10.1
with Ex. 10.1), serving to delay the subsequent descent. Equivalently, an
37
For the purposes of this discussion, I will treat Chemins IIb and IIc as identical. A
more thorough investigation would examine the impact of the addition of the bass clarinet in
Chemins IIc on the field of interpretative possibilities suggested by the structure.
38
Speaking in more general terms, Eco has written that ‘artistic activity consists in
positing new relations between the elements of the “rhizome” of experience’. Limits of
Interpretation, p. 145.
Table 10.1 Relationship between structures of Sequenza VI, Chemins II and Chemins IIb (compare with Ex. 10.1)
186 Edward Venn
interpolation at H1 results in a lingering at the start of the ascent that occurs

between 3.2 and 3.5 of Sequenza VI. Neither of these interpolations alters the
general morphology of the work, but the resulting hiatuses at the respective peak
and trough of the linear pattern cause the listener to assess the significance of these
extremities in a different way than if the hiatuses were not present. One might also
note here the generally faster tempo of Chemins IIb, and the fact that each of these
interpolations coincides with an increase in the underlying pulse: the resulting
temporal compression of the material once again forces the relationship between
events to be assessed differently from what would otherwise be the case.
A more startling alteration occurs with the cut of the passage I – M -3 from
Chemins II to Chemins IIb. As Ex. 10.6 demonstrates, the cut removes the whole of
one ascent (from A4 to E#5) and much of the following ascent. To achieve this,
Berio elides what was originally the bar before I in Chemins II with a solo viola
figure that occurs some 31 bars later. In doing so, figures that were temporally
distant in one version are made proximate in the next. Compared to earlier ascents
and descents in Chemins IIb, the reworking presents the listener with a marked
discontinuity: a sudden leap in the underlying linear pattern to F5/ G5, emphasized
by a dramatic change of texture. Even without prior knowledge of the related
pieces, one is invited to account for – to interpret – this discontinuity in the light of
previous events within Chemins IIb.
One further cut serves to alter radically the contours of Chemins II: some 56
bars are removed in the reworking as Chemins IIb. This eliminates a structural
drama described by Osmond-Smith (in relation to Sequenza VI) as a ‘battle’
between two focal chords (labelled I and II in Ex. 10.1, 5.6–5.8).39 Without this
conflict, chord I is left unchallenged, creating a (moderately) harmonically stable
end to the work. In doing so, the cut distorts the balance of the work: what
originally fell into two roughly equal halves divided by the structural change at 5.1
– T in Chemins II – becomes in Chemins IIb an extended argument followed by a
more tranquil coda. The resulting change of emphasis in how the sections are
perceived has significant ramifications in how the work is understood in its
entirety. From the point of view of the structure, and more so than any other
reworking, Chemins IIb exists towards the limits of interpretation created by the
Sequenza on which it is based.
IV
The theory of the open work offers a space in which the means by which a text
invites the receiver to participate actively in the creation of meaning can be
described and explained. Like the phenomena that it seeks to define, openness
resists a fixed identity, remaining fluid and forever negotiable. What Berio’s
reworkings offer us is the chance to see how a composer renegotiates the
39
significance of his materials from one performance to the next, to see how
meanings are made to proliferate or be held in check. In short, they offer us the
opportunity to observe openness in practice.
I suggested above that the commentary technique can be said to provide an
enactment of the listening process one finds when faced with an ‘open work’. It is
not too far-fetched to supplement this with the suggestion that the use of
interpolations and elisions found in Chemins IIb, when considered alongside the
works to which it is related, recreates the act of reflection that occurs after the
listening experience. More precisely, the transformations of structure that occur
between reworkings of this nature hint at the types of long-range connections (or
disjunctions) that as listeners we are at liberty to make once that whole work has
presented itself to us. In this sense, Chemins IIb might be considered a distorted
memory of Chemins II, or even Sequenza VI. But there is no reason to assume any
one work has any ontological primacy over any other: although chronologically it
was composed first, Sequenza VI could just as feasibly be understood as a
contemplation of the structures (to be) heard in Chemins IIb.
This observation tallies with a notion of reworkings as a particular type of
transcription, in Berio’s sense, noted above, of having ‘a single musical vision …
going through different and self-sufficient formulations.’40 Although Berio
suggested that a series of transcriptions – what I have termed compositional
performances – would arrive at a ‘definitive realization, decanted from (or
destroying) all the others’,41 there is no reason to suppose that this ‘single musical
vision’ will ever actually be presented as a tangible musical work. Indeed, it seems
unlikely that a vision capable of supporting a rhizomatic network of interpretative
and expressive possibilities can ever exist: we can only access it partially,
incompletely.
Understanding the reworkings of the Sequenzas in the ways described above
should not blind us to the scintillating delights of the reworkings, the
compositional virtuosity and frequently dazzling displays of colour and texture.
Rather, it should alert us to the underlying compositional aesthetic, as well as the
active role we have as listeners in shaping our own experiences of the work. In
reminding us of the uniqueness of each listening experience – the provisional and
fleeting nature of the interpretative decisions we make – the reworkings invite us to
guard against habitual responses and ossified listening practices.
40
Berio, Two Interviews, pp. 112–13.
41
Ibid., p. 113.
Example 10.6 Structural differences between Chemins II and Chemins IIb
PART 3
Analytical Approaches
Chapter 11
Vestiges of Twelve-Tone Practice as

Compositional Process in Berio’s
Sequenza I for Solo Flute
Irna Priore
The ideal listener is the one who can catch all the implications; the ideal composer is
the one who can control them.
Luciano Berio, 18 August 1995
Introduction
Luciano Berio’s first Sequenza dates from 1958 and was written for the Italian
flutist Severino Gazzelloni (1919–92). The first Sequenza is an important work in
many ways. It not only inaugurates the Sequenza series, but is also the third major
work for unaccompanied flute in the twentieth century, following Varèse’s Density
21.5 (1936) and Debussy’s Syrinx (1913).1 Berio’s work for solo flute is an
undeniable challenge for the interpreter because it is a virtuoso piece, it is written
in proportional notation without barlines, and it is structurally ambiguous.2
It is well known that performances of this piece brought Berio much
dissatisfaction, a fact that led to the publication of a new version by Universal
Edition in 1992.3 This new edition was intended to supply a metrical understanding
of the work, apparently lacking or too vaguely implied in the original score.
However, while some aspects of the piece have been clarified by Berio himself,
1
A three-note chromatic motif has been observed running as a unifying thread in all
three works. See Cynthia Folio, ‘Luciano Berio’s Sequenza for Flute: A Performance
Analysis’, The Flutist Quarterly, 15/4 (1990), p. 18.
2
The observations regarding the difficulty of the work were compiled from informal
interviews conducted between autumn 2003 and spring 2004 with professionals teaching in
American universities and colleges, to whom I am indebted. In particular, I would like to
thank Brooks de Wetter-Smith and Richard Hermann for their invaluable advice.
3
See Chapter 1 in this volume by Cynthia Folio and Alexander Brinkman for a more
detailed discussion of the circumstances leading to the publication of the 1992 score.
192 Irna Priore
others remain obscure. The work still poses a great challenge to flute students,
professionals and teachers alike, not only because the metric and note values are
complex, but also because the compositional language is not easily grasped.
This study offers a structural analysis of the work in order to shed some light on
a piece that has suffered from historical mystification, largely because of its
seemingly ambiguous musical language. Rhythm, proportional notation and
performance practice have been critically discussed elsewhere:4 what is presented
here is an analysis of the work based on ideas of form, motivic unification and
compositional language as they relate to the opposing compositional aesthetics of
the 1950s.
History and its stories: composition in the 1950s
Berio’s early musical studies were initially limited by the post-war environment in
Italy. His introduction to the music of the twentieth century came in 1946, when he
first heard Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.5 Independently, he investigated other
works of the Second Viennese School, but from 1950 it was the influence of the
teaching and the music of Luigi Dallapiccola (1904–75) that shaped his early
compositional language. Although Berio was not exclusively committed to one
technique over another, serialism was the central organizational principle of his
works in his early days. As David Osmond-Smith comments:
In [Dallapiccola’s] scores, Berio found a striking demonstration of the generative

impetus that serial matrices can give to melodic invention. But he was never greatly
enthralled by the impeccable musical geometries of the Webernian tradition … Berio
took on board the exigencies of serial orthodoxy only in as much as they suited his
creative needs.6
Another important aspect of Berio’s formative years was his involvement with the
Darmstadt School. He presented his Cinque Variazioni (1953) and Nones (1953–
54) at the annual summer school at Darmstadt in 1965, where he met several
important composers. This generation of young composers was particularly
interested in total serialism, the application of the twelve-tone system to all aspects
of the work. Boulez’s essay ‘Schoenberg is Dead’ (1952) was instrumental in
4
See Claudia Anderson, ‘An Operatic View of Sequenza’, Flute Talk Magazine, 24/2
(2004): 12–15; Robert Dick, ‘Berio Sequenza’, Larry Krantz Flute Pages (2003), accessed
11 September 2003 at http://www.larrykrantz.com/rdick2.htm#bseq; Aralee Dorough,
‘Performing Berio’s Sequenza’, Flute Talk Magazine, 19/7 (2000): 11–13; Cynthia Folio,
‘Luciano Berio’s Sequenza for Flute’; and Harvey Sollberger, ‘Luciano Berio’s Sequenza
for Solo Flute’, Flute Talk Magazine, 6/2 (1986): 12–18.
5
David Osmond-Smith, Berio (Oxford/ New York, 1991), p. 4.
6
Ibid., p. 6.
disseminating this philosophy.7 In this essay, Boulez acknowledges Schoenberg’s

discovery of serialism, but condemns him for ‘creat[ing] works of the same nature
as those of the old sound-world which he had only just abandoned.’8 Boulez goes
so far as to say that it is not possible to test the new technique of serialism without
leaving behind nineteenth-century form, structure and ‘the global architecture of
the work … The two worlds [of nineteenth-century form and serialism] are
incompatible.’9 Boulez challenges his audience by asking:
How can one associate oneself unreservedly with an output [Schoenberg’s] that displays
such contradictions, such illogic? … What are we to think of Schoenberg’s American
period, which shows utter disarray and the most wretched disorientation? … From now
10
on technical rigour is abandoned.
Boulez’s dissatisfaction, although aimed at Schoenberg, was in fact directed

towards his contemporaries and the way the new generation of composers
approached the twelve-tone system. To Boulez, it was not enough to use pitch as
the main element of serial technique: instead, all aspects should be considered. He
concludes his argument by asserting that ‘it is not leering demonism but the merest
common sense which makes me say that, since the discoveries of the Viennese
School, all non-serial composers are useless (which is not to say that all serial
composers are useful).’11 Boulez asserts how the new generation of composers
should treat aspects of the music other than pitch serially, suggesting that serial
process could equally be applied to the generation of structure, as well as to
duration, dynamics, attack and timbre in a more holistic and creative approach to
serial procedure: ‘[perhaps] we might expect of a composer some imagination, a
certain measure of asceticism, a bit of intelligence, and finally a sensibility which
will not blow away in the first breeze.’12
As a result, Boulez, together with Stockhausen, scorned or treated with
indifference any composer who did not adhere to their compositional philosophy or
was not part of their group. Berio was greatly impressed by Boulez’s writings, not
only at the time but throughout his life. Although the Darmstadt School was one of
the most progressive movements of the time, it was confronted with the emergence
of chance music, which John Cage had been pursuing in America since the 1940s.
Cage had met Boulez in Paris in 1949 and after Cage’s return to America, they
maintained a steady flow of communication through the series of letters they
7
Reprinted in Pierre Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, collected and
presented by Paule Thévenin, trans. Stephen Walsh (Oxford, 1991), pp. 209–14.
8
Ibid., p. 212.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid., p. 213.
11
Ibid., p. 214.
12
Ibid.
194 Irna Priore
exchanged until 1954.13 Initially, they engaged in friendly conversation but, little
by little, their differences amounted to an obstacle too great to cross: total
indeterminacy and the total control of strict serialism were fundamentally
incompatible. As early as 1951, Boulez wrote to Cage: ‘The only thing, forgive
me, which I am not happy with [in Cage’s Music of Changes], is the method of
absolute chance (by tossing the coins). On the contrary, I believe chance must be
extremely controlled.’14 Although he had visited Europe on three previous
occasions, the only year Cage attended Darmstadt during this period was in 1958,
after his disagreements with Boulez had already become public. He was scheduled
to perform Music of Changes, but the performance was cancelled and instead he
delivered three infamous lectures. The first lecture discussed Music of Changes;
the second publicly criticized Stockhausen, asserting that his use of indeterminacy
in Klavierstück XI was altogether unnecessary and ineffective; his third lecture
attacked the Darmstadt School composers themselves for their fixation on the total
control of the musical process, suggesting that they were ‘stupid and unable to
listen’ and asking, ‘if one of us says that all twelve tones should be in a row and
another says they shouldn’t, which one of us is right?’15 As Christopher Shultis
comments, ‘no other event in Darmstadt’s history ever generated more controversy
than Cage’s 1958 lectures.’16
Berio appears to have been initially distanced from the passionate intellectual
arguments between Boulez and Cage regarding the main compositional currents of
that decade. In 1952, the year of Boulez’s article ‘Schoenberg is Dead’, Berio
composed only Study, for string quartet. The following years, he stayed in Milan,
producing few if important works, while at the same time actively pursuing his
electronic studio research at the RAI Studio di Fonologia with Bruno Maderna. In
1957, Berio was commissioned by Gazzelloni to write a miniature flute concerto,
which Gazzelloni premiered with the Ensemble du Domaine Musical, directed by
Boulez; and the following year, during a residency at the Darmstadt Institute,
Sequenza I for solo flute was written and dedicated to Gazzelloni. These facts may
lead us to speculate that Berio sided with the European side of the argument at that
time, although Cage’s impact and ideas did not go unnoticed by Berio.17
For Berio, reconciliation between freedom and total control came with a
prominent literary scholar from Italy, Umberto Eco. Eco proposed a new approach
to structure, the ‘open work’, which he defined as:
13
The letters are collected in a series called: The Boulez-Cage Correspondence, ed.
Jean-Jacques Nattiez and Robert Samuels (Cambridge, 1993).
14
Quoted in Christopher Shultis, ‘Cage and Europe’, in David Nicholls (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Cage (Cambridge, 2002), p. 35.
15
Ibid., p. 36.
16
Ibid., p. 38.
17
For example, in November 1958, Berio invited Cage to Milan to work at the RAI
Studio di Fonologia, where Cage composed Fontana Mix (dedicated to Berio and Cathy
Berberian) and Aria (dedicated to Berberian).
one that ‘produces in the interpreter acts of conscious freedom, putting him at the center
of a net of inexhaustible relations among which he inserts his own form.’ … What is
more important, adopting the proper attitude toward an open work has political and
social ramifications: the open work denies conventional views of the world, replacing
18
them with a sense of its discontinuity, disorder, and dissonance.
Examining the works of James Joyce, Eco could offer an explanation and
justification of the divergent aesthetics of the time. The old forms were to serve as
a frame, while the artist distorted the surface of the work by interpolating layers of
other materials that opened up the work to multiple interpretations. Therefore,
while holding on to some type of archetypical form, the artist could provoke a
sense of disorder. This dichotomy is captured by Timothy Murphy:
Eco’s exemplary open musical works consist of rigorously composed parts that may be
assembled in many different orders (as in Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI [1957]), or of
parts whose relation is capable of change even if their order is fixed (as in the durations
and tempos of Berio’s original Sequenza for flute [1958]); an open work is not
improvisatory like jazz or Indian raga, nor is it a complete refusal of intention and
control, as in Cage’s Zen-influenced works. Open works are not indeterminate, not
totally without pre-existing structure, but rather suspended between many different but
fully determinate structures. Thus they enable a composer, in principle at least, to
reconcile the apparently contradictory imperatives of complete control, which reached
its apotheosis in the total serialism of the earlier Boulez and Stockhausen, and the
19
freedom in performance that was the hallmark of Cage’s aleatory works.
Joyce’s works served as a literary analogue where the open work could actually
exist alongside with the most modern tendencies of the time. It was specifically
Finnegans Wake (1939) that had the most impact: to this day, it is debated and
discussed as Joyce’s highest achievement, according to his advocates, but generally
regarded as difficult to understand in terms of both its language and plot:
Finnegans Wake could be considered an attempt to answer the question, ‘What

happened to HCE?’… The problem is the same with the story of HCE: we try to choose
one version. But which one? Unfortunately, ‘Zot is the Quiztune’ (110.14) and Joyce,
20
like Hamlet, … knew it.
18
Deborah Parker and Carolyn Veldstra, ‘Umberto Eco’, in Michael Groden and
Martin Kretswerth (eds), The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (2005),
accessed 13 January 2006 at http://litguide.press.jhu.edu/. Work cited: Umberto Eco, The
Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni (Cambridge, 1989), p. 4.
19
Timothy S. Murphy, ‘Music After Joyce: The Post-Serial Avant-Garde’,
Hypermedia Joyce Studies, 2/1 (1999), accessed 21 March 2007 at
http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v2/murphy/index.html. HCE is the main character, Humphrey
Chimpden Earwicker.
20
Vincent John Cheng, Shakespeare and Joyce: A Study of Finnegans Wake
(University Park, 1984), p. 23.
196 Irna Priore
Finnegans Wake’s mesh of stories, distorted language, quotations, references and

other influences offer multiple readings because of the many embedded
associations that not only change the meaning of the words but also add layers of
interpretation to it. The technique of distorting the surface of the work, of
incomprehensible quotations and of frequent and apparently meaningless repetition
combined with investigation and discoveries in the field of electronic music may
be the generating impulse behind Berio’s music at the time. In 1953, Berio wrote
his first work using Joyce’s poems, Chamber Music. The work, set for mezzo-
soprano, clarinet, cello and harp, is a song cycle written for Cathy Berberian using
three poems from Joyce’s homonymous work: I: ‘Strings in the Earth and Air’;
XXXV: ‘Monotone’; and IX: ‘Winds of May’. Chamber Music is not the only
Joyce-influenced composition in Berio’s artistic output. Joyce’s works were to be a
continuing influence on Berio, and other compositions employing Joyce’s texts
are: Thema: Ommagio a Joyce (1958), Epifanie (1961), Sinfonia (1968) and Outis
(1995–96). Osmond-Smith remarks that Thema was the ‘culmination of an
investigation, with Umberto Eco, into the musical aspects of language’21 a fact that
greatly affected his treatment of musical structure.
Analysis: serialism and the ‘open work’
It is now possible to place Sequenza I for solo flute in the context of Berio’s
compositional style, considering the literary influence of Joyce and the strong
claims for serialism made by the Darmstadt composers. Berio had already used the
twelve-tone method in earlier compositions, including Chamber Music, Cinque
Variazioni and Nones and traces of twelve-tone practice can also be found in
Sequenza I, something which is largely overlooked in other analyses of the work.
Berio once said that his ‘title [Sequenza] was meant to underline that the piece
was built from a sequence of harmonic fields (as indeed are almost all the
Sequenzas) from which the other, strongly characterized musical functions were
derived.’22 Berio may be referring to the saturation of certain intervals according to
the partition of the initial row and to the use of a fixed pitch sequence, as will be
discussed shortly. Musical functions may refer to musical gestures employed at
certain times (cadenza-like passages contrasted with lyric moments). These two
features certainly point to a structural conception of the work: a coherent harmonic
material expressed monophonically, where unity is guaranteed by elements such as
repeated patterns, melodic contour, rhythmic gestures and groupings of notes.
21
22
Luciano Berio, Two Interviews with Rossana Dalmonte and Bálint András Varga,
The first staff of the piece presents 21 pitches (see Ex. 11.1). By eliminating
repeated pitches, the following twelve-tone series is obtained: 9 8 7 6 5 4 1 3 2 0 T L.23
This row presents several interesting properties. Two distinct hexachords define the
main ‘harmonic fields’ of the piece: <987654>, a chromatic subset, and its literal
complement <1320TL>.24 These hexachords are combinatorial at T6, T7I and T1I.
Because both hexachords are members of set class [012345], transpositions at the
interval i=6 will always yield a combinatorial arrangement.25 This row affords three
distinct combinatorial row areas: 26
1. P9 R9 I4 RI4
2. P9 R9 P3 R3
3. P9 R9 IT RIT
With exception of I1, all the recognizable forms of row from 1.1 to 3.3 (the first
major section of the piece) are the invariant pairs P3 and R3 (combinatorial) and P2
and R2 (not combinatorial). These forms of the row appear after the first entrance
of P9 in 1.1, as follows shown in Table 11.1.
Example 11.1 Opening of Sequenza I
In Ex. 11.2, the pairing of forms of the row is indicated side by side. It is not
surprising that the combinatorial rows (Exx. 11.2a and 2b) exhibit a high level of
invariance; however, it is also worth noting the high level of invariance in the
forms of the rows employed, either at the trichord or the dyad level, and with the
pair that is not a combinatorial one (Ex. 11.2c).27
23
References to the music are to the Zerboni edition of Sequenza I. In the absence of
barlines, examples are located by means of page and staff numbers (e.g. 2.3 refers to the
third staff on page two).
24
For those not familiar with set class theory, T=10 and L=11, using a fixed ‘do’
system in which C=0. This set is therefore referred to as P9 where 9 indicates the pitch A as
the starting note. Angle brackets indicate <ordered sets>. Square brackets indicate [pitch
class universe].
25
T, here, refers to transposition, where the same integer is added to each element.
Combinatoriality refers to a 12-tone practice of combining a form of the row with a
transposed or inverted forms of itself (or its complement) to create an aggregate.
26
The forms of the row are indicated by the first pitch of the prime or inverted order.
Retrograde and retrograde-inversion take their names from the prime and inverted orders.
For example: the retrograde of P9 is R9, despite having L as its first pitch.
27
Berio was familiar with the idea of combinatorial pairs, as he had analysed the
works of Maderna that made use of such technique. See Berio, Two Interviews, p. 68.
198 Irna Priore
Table 11.1 Recognizable row forms appearing between 1.1 and 3.3
Row Form Combinatorality Appearance

P9 1.1
R2 non-combinatorial 1.2
R3 combinatorial end of 1.2
P2 non-combinatorial end of 1.4
I1 non-combinatorial beginning of 1.6
(from C# grace note)
P3 combinatorial 1.6 (fragments)
P9 end of 1.7
R3 combinatorial last note of 2.3
I1 non-combinatorial last note of 2.5
P9 2.9
P3 combinatorial 2.10
P2 non-combinatorial 3.1
Example 11.2 Sequenza I: pairings of forms of the row
a) P9 and R3
b) P9 and I1
c) P9 and R2
Four complete occurrences of P9 can be found at 1.1, 1.7, 2.9 and 5.4 (see Ex.
11.3). On two other occasions, fragments of P9 can be seen starting on the last note
of 3.10 and at 4.4. The four statements of the row are not identical, but similar
manipulation of the melodic material occurs. For example, the initial statement of
P9 presents several pitch repetitions: if we take this first appearance of P9 and
extract the notes of P9 from it to leave only the repetitions, we obtain two layers of
P9, where the second layer is a compressed version of the first. Similar procedures
are used each time P9 reappears: in 1.7, three pitches appear out of order; in 2.9 and
5.4 pitch repetition (usually as a pair of notes) interpolates the ordering of the row,
only one pair actually appearing in exchanged order.
Example 11.3 Sequenza I: entries of the four complete occurrences of P9
a) 1.1
b) 1.7
c) 2.9
200 Irna Priore
d) 5.4
The original row is derived: that is, its four discrete trichords are all variations of
the first three notes of the row, and all therefore belong to the same set class [012].
The consistency of the row also results from the limited number of intervallic
relationships within the row itself. The row allows only i=1 (seven times), i=2
(three times) and i=3 (once) between adjacent intervals. Not by accident, the most
prevalent interval classes throughout the piece are i=1, 2 and 3.
Other observations can be drawn from segmenting the piece into small motifs
and phrases. A designation of ‘phrase’, in this context, suggests a group of notes
that are separated by break marks in Berio’s score and are formed by several
smaller segmentations of groups (motifs) of between three and ten notes. These
motifs form meaningful musical gestures and are usually linked by similar
notation: in the Zerboni edition they appear either as grace notes, or are separated
by a considerable distance, or are notated with larger or smaller note sizes. Ex. 11.4
shows a possible segmentation of the opening phrase. These small motifs play an
important role because they reappear throughout the piece. An association can be
made between them because of similar intervallic and/or contour relationships to
the opening gesture. The motif is transformed in myriad ways throughout the
composition by the use of register, attack, contour and duration. The three-note
opening motif [012] is especially prevalent, appearing more than 110 times; it not
only generates the row, but it is also responsible for another important prominent
idea of the piece, the whole-tone dyad [02] that occurs as frequently as the opening
motif itself. Given that [02] is embedded in the [012] motif, both of these most
prominent motifs therefore find their origin within the derived trichord of the row.
The most salient unification of the work is provided by [012] and [02].
Example 11.4 Sequenza I: half-step and whole-tone motifs (segmentation)
Even when the integrity of the [012] motif is lost due to melodic manipulation of
the original material, its consistency and audibility is guaranteed by the contours of
the musical gestures. The trichord motif [012], expressed as <-1+11> prevails
throughout the composition. As the composition progresses, the more transformed
this motif becomes: the most frequent manipulation is that of altering the size of
the interval leap: instead of +11, the contour is expressed with of leaps of +13,
+14, -1 and so on. Table 11.2 charts the appearances of the main chromatic motif
and its contours. 28
Table 11.2 Appearances of the main chromatic motif
Row form Contour of [012] motif Page and staff location

P9 <-1+11> 1.1
R2 <-1-14> 1.2
P2 <-1+10> 1.4
I2 < +1-11> 1.6
P9 <-13+11> 1.7
R3 <-1+2> 2.3–4
P9 <+11+11> 2.9
I2 <+1+13> 2.10
P2 <-1+10> 3.1
R7 <+11+14> 3.4
P5 <-1+11> 3.5
IT <-11-11> 3.8
P9 <-1-1> 4.1
I3 <-11+1> 4.3
P9 <-1+11> 4.4
P2 <+11-1> 4.5
P4 <+11+11> 4.9
P9 <+11-11> 5.4
I2 <+1+13> 5.5
P2 <-1+35> 5.6–7
I2 <-11+1> 5.9
Richard Hermann offers a different explanation for the motivic manipulation in

this piece. He has pointed out that adding or deleting pitches to an established
motif or series is an early example of electronic studio techniques applied directly
to an acoustic composition. He writes:
Berio’s transformational processes in the pitch dimension can generally be described as

‘filtering,’ that is deleting pitches of a chord or motif, or ‘flanging,’ adding pitches to a
chord or motif. These are early electronic studio techniques. These same techniques can
28
Contour describes the shape of a set expressed as semitone steps up (+) or down (-).
202 Irna Priore
also be thought of as linguistics’ morphological processes such as the affixes: prefix,

29
infix, and suffix.
The use of flanging and filtering techniques, as indicated by Hermann, contributes

to a sense of disordering in regards to the main idea of the piece. Berio manipulates
each phrase, which initially may have been based on one or two (or even more)
forms of the row, by adding and omitting pitches, or simply altering the order,
given that the reappearances of P9 are not pitch-identical. There are many examples
of both filtering and flanging every time that P9 – or any other form of the row – is
presented. For example, in the first entrance, the first two pitches A and G# are
reiterated after the third pitch of the series (G) is introduced: this would be an
example of flanging. An example of filtering occurs in the second entrance of P9 at
1.7, when the repetition of the note A that occurs in 1.1 is omitted (see Ex. 11.3).
The continual transformation of the original idea and the flanging and filtering of
the series provoke a loosening of twelve-tone compositional procedures and give
Berio more freedom in the composition. At the same time, the unifying framework
offered by the series is what guarantees a modicum of structural integrity.30
Although the piece is highly consistent and strongly unified through a
saturation of its two main motivic ideas, a clear compositional twelve-tone practice
is not easily perceived. The forms of the row are difficult to identify because row
order is continually severed or because there are too many reiterations of pitches. If
Berio does not lock himself into strict twelve-tone practice, is it relevant that the
row allows a restricted number of relationships? What purpose does a row serve if
most of its melodic properties are diluted in the way Berio manipulates the melodic
material here? Notwithstanding questions such as these, the row’s importance is to
provide an underlying structure to the work. It is this aspect of the compositional
process that may be compared to Joyce’s literary technique: the structure is open,
allowing the row to be projected in a multi-dimensional way (see Ex. 11 5).
The row is also projected into the structure of the piece by the way in which
Berio organizes the form and the motivic ideas. Serial technique manifests itself by
defining large areas of the piece. The reappearances of P9 in 1.7 and 2.9 reaffirm
the harmonic consistency of this area, pointing to a formal region of the piece.
Another striking consistency is the literal repetition of a pitch collection that
amounts to a much greater number of pitches (that is, greater than 12). Not only are
the notes literally repeated, but the entire area from 1.1 to 2.2 reappears twice
more, although the last occurrence is condensed. Therefore, these large areas tend
29
Richard Hermann, ‘Why is Berio’s Music So Hard to Understand for an
Anglophone North American Music Theorist?’ Paper presented at the Eastman Festival in
Honor of Luciano Berio, Rochester, NY, 29 April 2003.
30
Similar procedures can also be found in Sequenza V for trombone (1966), where a
vestige of serial practice is manifested in the opening section of the piece by reiterations of
pitches, which eventually form a 12-tone row.
Example 11.5 Sequenza I: multidimensional layers of P9
to point to a form more than to a series. In order to avoid repeating identical pitch
orderings Berio does not use literal forms of the row, which is instead constantly
altered through repetition and exchanged pitch ordering.
Cynthia Folio and Francesca Magnani have both noticed that there are indeed
several pitch repetitions taking place in the composition. They individually
conclude that some type of serial arrangement is present, without necessarily
implying the idea of a row or other twelve-tone techniques. They argue that an
unusually large note series appears at least three times. Folio comments:
Since many of Berio’s works are serial, it is not surprising to find that the flute
Sequenza is based on a repeating pitch pattern. What is unusual, however, is that this
pattern is a super-tone-row of approximately 175 notes; it is treated very freely (in fact,
I studied the piece for a long time before I discovered the row); and notes are often
repeated after being stated.31
Folio maps the first 175 notes from 1.1 to 2.2 against the same sequence of pitches
starting in 2.9. Magnani makes a similar suggestion, pointing out the recurrence of
a large note pattern that appears three times in the composition. She takes the
sequence starting at the end of 1.2 to the beginning of 1.7 and maps it against two
other occurrences from 2.10 to 3.2 and, in an abridged version, from 5.5 to 5.8 (see
Ex. 11.6).32 These two scholars do not exactly agree on the placement of the super-
set series. Magnani says:
31
Folio, ‘Luciano Berio’s Sequenza for Flute’, p. 18.
32
Folio, ‘Luciano Berio’s Sequenza for Flute’, p. 20 and Francesca Magnani, ‘La
Sequenza I de Berio dans les Poétiques Musicales des Années 50,’ Analyse Musicale, 14
(1989), p. 79.
204 Irna Priore
If we make comparisons within the network of pitches, we discover that the sensation of
a unity constantly in the process of being transformed derives not only in the elemental
‘series’, the architecture of the entire work, but also in the fact that all the material
exposed within the first section is the object of the two reprises, as all of this material
(lines 1–7) is, effectively, contained within the last section (lines 40–46), just as it is
33
contained in the beginning of the second (lines 16–19).
Example 11.6 Sequenza I: Magnani’s series
This sequence undeniably occurs three times in the composition, although the
repetition of notes is varied by the use of different registers, durations and forms of
attack. Because this is a large section of the music, these three distinct regions are
not only not hegemonic but not even easily perceived. On the contrary, the notes
cross over boundaries such as fermatas and rests, and avoid falling into similar
phrase arrangements.
Berio has said that his idea of form is directly related to the notion of
transformation:
33
[Si nous faisons la comparaison avec le réseau des hauteurs, nous découvrons que la
sensation d’une unité perpétuellement en voie de transformation tire son origine non
seulement du fait que la ‘série’ féconde, l’architecture tout entière, mais que c’est tout le
matériau exposé dans la première section qui fait l’object de deux reprises, car la dernière
section (lignes 40–46), en effet, s’y trouve entièrement comprise (lignes 1–7), de même que
le début de la seconde (lignes 16–19).] Francesca Magnani, p. 79.
I think it is more interesting to think in terms of formation than of form. The real
enriching experience is to be able to perceive processes of formations, transformation –
34
of changing things – rather than solid objects.
Formation (or process) is a better term here due to the continual manipulation of
the implied harmonic material: the melodic material never returns unaltered. This
blurs the idea of form on the surface of the piece, while maintaining harmonic
coherence at the structural level.
If the reappearance of pitch-ordered sections (A and A’) may be identified, then
a (contrasting) middle section must separate them. Although this seems to be an
obvious consideration, the subject of the piece’s form has been one of great debate
and speculation. Among the published analyses of the work, a number of formal
interpretations have been offered, including sonata form, sonata rondo, binary form
and other more unusual formal arrangements. Seven possible interpretations of the
structure are summarized in Fig. 11.1.
The disagreement over form goes to the core of the concept of the open work.
If the work is perceived as open, then several readings and interpretations are
possible. To lock the piece into one formal type of closed arrangement (e.g. sonata
form) would seem to contradict Berio’s approach to form in the 1950s. On the
other hand, ascribing the idea of open form to the work would allow a multi-
dimensional structure inviting multiple readings. Eco, who had already compared
Berio’s work to the literary movement of the 1950s, said again more recently:
It is not really necessary, but it is useful to remind ourselves that ‘structure’ in those
days [the 1950s] and particularly in Italy, was something to avoid; it meant scaffolding,
mechanical artifice that had nothing to do with moments of lyrical intuition, and at most
stood out in a Hegelian sense as a negative impulse, as conceptual residue, which at best
35
served to let the moments of poetry shine like individual jewels.
At a remote background level, all of the analyses indicate a more or less complex
binary arrangement, where A is invariably determined by the reappearance of P9
and B is a more lyrical, fluid and cadenza-like gesture. Analysis I only shows the
four appearances of P9 (Fig. 11.1) as identified in my analysis. Analysis II reflects
the dynamic contrasts that the piece exhibits. There are three main subdivisions of
the work according to the way the dynamics are arranged. In the music from 1.1–
3.3, all phrases that are separated by rests end with diminishing dynamic markings,
going from sffz to pppp. From 3.4–5.3, the phrases end with loud and rising
34
David Roth, ‘Luciano Berio on New Music’, Musical Opinion, 99 (1976), p. 549, as
quoted in Gale Schaub, Transformational Process, Harmonic Fields, and Pitch Hierarchy in
Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I through Sequenza X (PhD dissertation, University of Southern
California, 1989), p. 6.
35
Umberto Eco, On Literature, trans. Martin McLaughlin (Orlando, 2002), pp. 201–2.
Fig. 11.1 Seven interpretations of the formal structure of Sequenza I
dynamic markings, going from pppp to sffz. From 5.4–5.10, the dynamic markings
return to the original pattern, going from pp to pppp.36
Analysis III shows Sollberger’s sonata-form arrangement. Sollberger suggests
272 ‘measures’ that produce a sonata-form structure, with 1.1–1.6 as the first
theme or subject, 2.1–2.2 as the transition, 2.3–2.8 as the second theme, followed
by a ‘refrain’ of the first theme (2.9–3.1), a development starting at 3.2 and a coda
from 5.6 to the end. Although Sollberger does not indicate a recapitulation (which
could be located at 5.4, the point at which P9 returns), his analysis favours the
phrase arrangement over all.37 Analysis IV shows Claudia Anderson’s sonata rondo
or ‘opera scenes’ approach. Her analysis is closely related to Sollberger’s, although
she does indicate a recapitulation taking place at 5.4. Analysis V is Gale Schaub’s
analysis, which also favours the pitch repetition model, identifying the sections as a
binary arrangement in the form ABAA plus Coda.38 Analysis VI shows Aralee
Dorough’s interpretation, in which a mixed form nonetheless still resembles a
binary arrangement. Analysis VII shows Magnani’s pitch ordering. She only
indicates the literal repetition of a large portion of the music, as already discussed.
The main recurring sections are from 1.2 to the beginning of 1.7, 2.10–3.2 and 5.5–
5.8, and are interpolated by contrasting sections. The pitch repetition does not
agree with the break markings and fermatas that are indicated by Berio himself. 39
The following features are common to each approach:
1. Almost all of them show the entrances of P9 as the main thematic idea.
2. A contrasting section occurs somewhere between 3.1 and 5.3.
3. Almost all of the analyses read a Coda in the last five staves.
Therefore, as regards the form of the work, should we then choose one archetypical
form over another or stay with a very loose ABA arrangement? As Joyce may have
answered: ‘Zot is the Quiztune.’ This multiplicity of interpretations does not
necessarily imply that all approaches to the form are interchangeable and equally
valid. The ability to produce different readings is what makes for the complexity of
the work. Berio demonstrated that he was well aware of the many possibilities of
making, listening or talking about music when he said:
When music has sufficient complexity and semantic depth, it can be approached and
understood in different ways[,]… can be heard on many levels, and is continually
generating musical meaning … The more concentrated and complex [a musical
36
Ernst Kִenek (in the 1940s) had already suggested using extreme dynamic contrast
and range as means of defining a formal region. See Ernst KĜenek, Music Here and Now,
trans. Barthold Fles (New York, 1939), p. 159.
37
Harvey Sollberger calls each break mark as one ‘measure’, which he numbers from
1 to 272.
38
Schaub, Transformational Process, Harmonic Fields, and Pitch Hierarchy in
Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I through Sequenza X.
39
In the 1992 Universal Edition, rests are substituted for the break markings.
208 Irna Priore
discourse] is, the more complex and selective are its social relations, and the more
40
ramified its meanings.
The many different readings regarding the structure of this piece may be obtained
not only through a pitch series, but also through the use of register, dynamic and
motivic manipulation. Extreme register and dynamic levels combined with
different durations and the frame of breaks and pauses help to create an impression
of polyphony. Sequenza I is composed using a recurring motivic pattern [012] that
is serially arranged as a twelve-tone derived row. Sometimes, one form of the row
is stated polyphonically, occasionally two forms of the row are used
simultaneously, and at other times forms of the row are scrambled and diluted
into a cadenza-like figure. These compositional procedures are open to observation
and analysis, but the difficulty of the piece remains in the fact that the
transformational processes are sometimes performed systematically, as with the
choice of row, forms of the row, literal repetition of pitches and dynamic levels;
and sometimes done intuitively, as with the choice of flanging and filtering pitches.
The continual manipulation of the melodic material allows the piece to be
understood in multiple ways, as is apparent in the divergent readings of the form.
Berio has said that ‘in the Sequenzas as a whole there are various unifying
elements, some planned, others not’.41 Open form may only help us to know that
more than one reading is possible, leaving the interpreter to complete the process,
either at the background level of the form, or the motif level through the dilution of
the initial motivic idea, or at the micro-level of the notes (the spatial notation gives
some room to the performer to apply slightly different durations).42 The beauty of
the work is the enigma it presents and the debate it encourages. Berio understood
that this was a virtuoso work, designed to challenge the performer: ‘my own
Sequenzas are always written with this sort of interpreter in mind, whose virtuosity
is, above all, a virtuosity of knowledge.’43 We can only agree with him.
[insert 011.priore17.pdf here)
40
41
Ibid., p. 90.
42
In the first version of 1958, Berio clearly implies a steady beat through the inclusion
of metronome markings. Notes were supposed to be placed according to the beat. His
1992 version of the work leaves less room for rhythmic alterations, although at some
remote level, any performance of any work is never precisely the same.
43
Chapter 12
Sonic Complexity and Harmonic Syntax

in Sequenza IV for Piano
Didier Guigue and Marcílio Fagner Onofre
Although Berio’s Sequenza IV for piano (1965–66) has become, like most of the
other pieces in the series, a landmark of twentieth-century literature for the
instrument, several factors set it apart from the rest. While almost all of the other
pieces were written in close collaboration with eminent players, from Severino
Gazzelloni (Sequenza I) to Rohan de Saram (Sequenza XIV), this is the only
Sequenza to have been conceived and elaborated directly at the piano by Berio
himself, although it is dedicated to Jocy de Carvalho. According to Albèra, the
piece ‘results from the composer’s own instrumental gestures’, giving it ‘this
improvised character, influenced by jazz’.1 On the other hand, David Burge reports
that Berio talked to him ‘with great excitement’ about Stockhausen’s Klavierstück
X (1961) after he had heard it for the first time, saying that ‘this “new way of
playing piano” had inspired him to write a big piece for the instrument’ that would
use clusters ‘in a different way’ and ‘require the employment of middle pedal
“most of the time”’.2 These observations put Sequenza IV into a distinctive position
within the whole cycle, as it is more likely to demonstrate affinities with Berio’s
personal pianistic background and the acknowledged inspiration of Stockhausen,
rather than with the other Sequenzas. Indeed, apart from the almost permanent use
of the sostenuto pedal, this Sequenza contains none of the typically avant-garde
extended instrumental and vocal techniques which supply the more theatrical and
dramatic elements of the Sequenzas for voice and trombone, Sequenza IV’s
adjacent pieces in the series. This is why Gale Shaub, comparing these first
Sequenzas, can assert that Sequenza IV ‘achieves its uniqueness primarily through
purely musical means’,3 that is, through a more conventional idiomatic approach
symbolized perhaps by the use of a time signature, an atypical feature in the
Sequenzas as a whole.
1
Albèra considers this particularity a crucial vector of Sequenza IV’s originality.
Philippe Albèra, ‘Introduction aux neuf sequenzas’, Contrechamps, 1 (1983), p. 102.
2
David Burge, Twentieth-Century Piano Music (New York, 1990), pp. 163–4.
3
Gale Schaub, Transformational Process, Harmonic Fields, and Pitch Hierarchy in
Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I through Sequenza X (PhD dissertation, University of Southern
California, 1989).
210 Didier Guigue and Marcílio Fagner Onofre
However, as he decided to include this ‘big’ new piano piece in the Sequenza
series, Berio applied to it the overall generative structural concept of the cycle,
namely a ‘sequence of harmonic fields’ from which most of the other musical
dimensions are derived, associated with a ‘control of the development of harmony
and melodic density’, as well as the intent to ‘melodically develop an essentially
harmonic discourse’.4
All the materials of the piece are derived from the opening vertical chords,
which are progressively horizontalized, creating a ‘continuum of figurations’ from
dense chords to thin ‘arpeggiating and eventually melodic fragments which interact
in a syntactic flux between structurally opposite and intermediate constituents’.5
The vertical objects heard in the first moments of the piece are, in fact, a
number of examples of the two main sonic categories which constitute the core of
the music’s kinesis. The first category (A) consists of bi-triadic vertical structures
built upon two superposed major, minor, augmented or diminished triads. The
objects in this category tend to feature a resonant – if not consonant – sound
design. Some of them may have an added seventh and/or ninth reinforcing this
resonant, harmonic strand. Conversely, the second category of objects (B) is based
on chromatic relationships, with a large number of seconds and fourths, making
them more inharmonic, ‘anti-resonant’, almost ‘noisy’. As Albèra says, ‘this
opposition is maintained throughout the work: the second category generates, for
instance, the clusters, while the first one, taking advantage of its ‘consonant’
intervals, develops melodic figurations’.6
This essay aims to address the way the composer controls the evolution of the
relative sonic complexity of the Sequenza’s chord objects – one of the ‘purely
musical means’ Schaub alludes to – concentrating on the immanent harmonic
structure rather than discussing any of their linear, gestural or melodic expansions
or transformations. Other authors have observed the fluidity of the time structure,
where the music gradually shifts from one sonic category to the other. Although
the return of the initial harmonic section at the end of the piece (from 1614)7 clearly
suggests an overall ABA form, it is far from easy to pinpoint exactly when each
section begins and ends.8 ‘The image of an unstable but directed “flux” or
evolution is an appropriate description of the formal design of [this piece] since the
4
trans. and ed. David Osmond Smith (New York/London, 1985), pp. 97–9.
5
John McKay, ‘Aspects of Post-serial Structuralism in Berio's Sequenza IV and VI’,
Interface, 17 (1988). We do not intend to develop a thorough comparison with
Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X, but it is, however, interesting that it is also built upon a
structural opposition between clusters (or chords) and fast, single-voice chromatic gestures.
See Jonathan Harvey, The Music of Stockhausen (London, 1975), pp. 42–7.
6
Albèra, p. 103.
7
As the score has no bar numbers, bars are identified throughout this chapter by page:
1614, therefore, refers to the fourteenth bar on page 16.
8
Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X displays a clear ABA overall layout. See Harvey, pp.
42–7.
relatively unpredictable succession of constituent types … is part of a global

transformation of the texture of the piece from the predominance of one constituent
type to the predominance of another’.9 It is more likely that there is more than one
level and dimension to the structure of the piece, and that each of them follows its
own time scheme, which does not necessarily coincide with the others. It makes
sense to suppose that the Sequenza’s structure is generated through an ‘out-of-
phase’ polyphony of sonic dimensions, and some of our conclusions agree with
this premise.
Methodology
To fulfill this task, we made use of an approach in which multi-dimensional sonic

objects, rather than low-level pitch-classes, form the basic syntax of the musical
structure and its analysis. In this context, a sonic object is defined as the
combination and interaction of the music’s primary components (a collection of
pitch-classes) and secondary components. These are, in the first instance, the two
complementary parameters without which the abstract pitch-class does not sound:
the register (which transforms it into an absolute pitch) and the amplitude, resulting
from the dynamic volume at which it is played. Secondly, there are the vectors that
configure the distribution of sounds in the dimensions of both space (vertical
structures patterns) and time (pulse patterns). Finally, the higher level secondary
components include all the mechanical devices that transform the sound. In
Sequenza IV, this dimension is controlled by the pedal marking.
The components of each object are weighted on a numeric scale of zero to one,
according to a relative complexity principle where 1.00 is the maximum value for
‘complexity’, corresponding to the configuration that would produce as complex a
sonority as possible. This maximum complexity is the paradigm the object under
analysis is then compared to. The specific meanings of ‘complexity’ and its
correlate ‘simplicity’ (‘maximum simplicity’ carries a zero weight), vary according
to the nature of the vector. It can be described, for instance, as vectors of poorness–
richness, weakness–strength, emptiness–fullness, and so on.10 The specific vectors
we have used for this essay are described below.
9
McKay, p. 226.
10
Our weighting system is aided by a library of computer functions we are developing
under the name of SOAL – Sonic Object Analysis Library, distributed with the IRCAM’s
OpenMusic software (http://www.ircam.fr). See: Didier Guigue, Sonic Object Analysis
Library - OpenMusic Tools for analyzing musical objects structure (Paris, 2005). As SOAL
exclusively reads MIDI files, all sonic objects selected from the Sequenza for this essay had
to be encoded in this language before being analysed by a set of functions, each of them
corresponding to one of the musical components.
Pitch sonic quality (Q)
In the first instance, the specific sonic structure of an object is determined by the
relative timbral complexity of each of its inner pitches. For the piano, it is possible
to condense this complexity into the general principle of a weighted decline in the
timbral complexity across the instrument’s range, such that the higher the pitch, the
less complex its sonic quality.11 This intrinsic quality is modified by the attack
speed of the piano’s hammer as it strikes the string, an action which results from
the dynamic marking in the score as interpreted by the player. This amplitude
modulation can be broadly defined as linear: the faster the attack, the stronger the
modulation, so the louder the dynamic marking, the higher the weight. The
combination of the two values produces q, a sonic quality for each note’s pitch. To
obtain the Pitch Sonic Quality (Q) value for the chord-object as a whole, it is
necessary to both conflate the individual q values and take into account the pedal
marking, whenever present. In our model, the piano pedal marking acts as a
multiplier and is based on the assumption that the sustaining pedal boosts the
whole sonic complexity, while the una corda suppresses it, in which case the
multiplying factor is less than one.12
Amplitude rate (A)
This evaluates the object according to the dynamic marking. The complexity
weight is obtained by dividing the chord’s MIDI velocity value (which corresponds
to the dynamic marking) by the maximum velocity value (127) which corresponds
to the theoretically loudest possible sound (usually symbolically marked with fff or
more).
Relative range vector (R)
Range (ambitus) refers to the space defined by two boundary pitches. The relative
range vector compares the input object’s pitch range to the piano’s complete range
and obtains the complexity weight by dividing the interval between the object’s
lowest and highest pitches by the whole pitch range. The vector goes from narrow
(0.0) to wide (1.0).
11
The three main acoustic factors of this decline are (1) the decreasing number of
audible partials for a given fundamental, (2) the decreasing rank of the loudest partial(s) and
(3) the shortening of the decay rate of sound.
12
For the sources of these assertions, see previous publications by Guigue: Sonic
Object Analysis Library (Paris, 2005); ‘Sonic Object: A Model for Twentieth-Century
Music Analysis’, Journal of New Music Research, 26/4 (1997): 346–75; and Une Etude
‘pour les Sonorités Opposées’ (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 1997).
Register
Seven piano registers have been defined according to some global timbral
differences caused by physical or mechanical variations, such as the number of
strings per note (producing a correlated detuning or ‘chorus’ effect), the strings’
material (wound or unwound), the presence of dampers, the average stretching rate
of the tuning, etc.13 The registers are shown in Table 12.1. Among the various data
the software can return, the most relevant for this analysis were the number of
notes by register (NNR), and the each object’s lowest and highest registers.
Table 12.1 The piano’s registers categorized according to acoustic

criteria
Register label Range

-3 A0–A1
-2 B1–G2
-1 G2–E3
0 F3–F5
+1 F5–D6
+2 D6–D7
+3 D7–C8
Relative linearity vector (L)
This measures how equidistant the pitches are. The interval between the contiguous
pitches is compared to a paradigmatic interval which corresponds to the interval
that would be necessary for pitches to be exactly equidistant (chromatically
approximated). The higher the weight, the less linear the pitch distribution, and,
consequently, the more ‘complex’ the sonic object, where complexity equates with
the object’s resonant harmonic properties.
Relative harmonicity vector (H)
The relative harmonicity vector evaluates the closeness of the object’s vertical
pitch distribution in relation to a paradigmatic harmonic spectrum-like structure,
deduced from a hypothetical fundamental (which is either the lowest pitch in the
object or a lower transposition) and constructed inside a given spectrum
bandwidth. The fewer the number of pitches common to both paradigm and object,
the less ‘harmonic’ the object is and the higher its complexity weight. Secondly,
the average harmonic rank of these pitches (treating them as if they were the
13
Again, more detailed information is available under Guigue’s publications in
bibliography. One of our main sources is Hideo Suzuki and Isao Nakamura, ‘Acoustics of
Piano’, Applied Acoustics, 30 (1990): 147–205.
partials of the hypothetical fundamental) is calculated: again, the higher the rank,
the further the average ‘partial’ is from the fundamental, and the less ‘harmonic’
the object is. The final H value is the mean of these two complexity weightings.
Both relative linearity and harmonicity are models for evaluating the inner pitch
distributions by scanning the object’s adjacent intervals. Therefore, the spectrum-
like distribution model does not refer to some concrete acoustic structure, as the
model works with notes, not harmonics; nor does it intend to imply tonal functions
as it only evaluates adjacent intervals, although it may help to reveal a
composition’s low-level harmonic structure. Moreover, the resulting values tend to
be negatively correlated: for obvious reasons, the more equidistant the distribution
of pitches in a chord, the less harmonic, as the harmonic model implies a
logarithmic rather than equidistant distribution of intervals.
Selection criteria and nomenclature
In order to provide a global map of the evolution of chord structures in Sequenza

IV, we have taken into account only chords of six pitches or more. This choice was
made based on the following observations: (1) the Sequenza’s characteristic bi-
triadic chords – the number of pitches in them never being less than six – form the
most salient harmonic (i.e. resonant) content of the piece; (2) another striking sonic
aspect of the Sequenza is the large number of very dense vertical structures, up to
12 pitches, as in bar 64 (510) and bar 159 (136); (3) small chords tend to dissolve
into melodic figurations (see, for instance, 45–411 and 1011–1013) losing the relevant
harmonic structuring function. However, we included two exceptional pentacords:
the A61 chord (313), a F major triad with an added ninth, which is a close
declension of A6 (see Ex. 12.1), and the B19 (813), a highly inharmonic structure.
These chords deserve consideration because of their exceptional configuration in
the Sequenza’s harmonic context. On the other hand, we excluded clusters, as they
can hardly be considered part of a harmonic syntax.
Besides the two designations A and B, corresponding respectively to the bi-
triadic and non-triadic main categories, each chord-object receives an order
number. Variations of the same object are considered declensions of its matrix,
where the matrix corresponds to the chord’s first occurrence in the score.
Declensions are identified by an added exponent to the matrix number,
corresponding to their order of appearance. Exact repetitions of the same chord
(matrix or declensions) receive the same label.
Declensions are related here to three main compositional devices: changing one
or more notes, usually by moving to the next chromatic or diatonic note as shown
in Ex. 12.1, chords A1–A11, and A4–A41, or Ex. 12.2, chords B5–B51; absolute
density oscillation, where one or more pitches is added or subtracted, as in Ex.
12.1, A5–A51, and Ex. 12.2, B8–B82. This oscillation is generally used in
conjunction with the former device – see A6–A61, or B4–B43, and the B15 group,
for examples; the use of a very common idiomatic pianistic gesture, where one hand
has its pitches changed by transposition and/or by one of the other two
Example 12.1 Sequenza IV: A-category chord objects, including matrices

and declensions
Example 12.2 Sequenza IV: B-category chord objects, including matrices

and declensions

techniques, while the other hand continues to play the same chord. Various
examples of this can be found in Ex. 12.1.
Networks of similarities between chords based upon absolute density variations
can be observed, as they are ‘part of Berio’s compositional approach as
exemplified in most of the Sequenzas’.14 In fact, common procedures ‘which alter
the original pitch-class structure, such as those based on permutational or
combinatorial operations, are rarely found’.15 Conventional transposition, when a
single interval change is applied to all pitches, only occurs once in the work,
between the A1 and A2 matrices.16
Finally, it should be noted that we have taken into account the misprints of the
1967 Universal Edition score, gathered by Gale Schaub who accessed the
composer’s manuscript, as follows:
1. 110, last chord (last chord of the second system): a G5 must be added in such a
way that the chord becomes an exact repetition of A3, the sixth chord from the
beginning of the piece.
2. 61, (first chord of the page): the low C must be sharpened in such a way that this
becomes an exact repetition of B2, the third chord of the piece.
3. According to Schaub, the dynamic mark ppp on 174 of the manuscript was
overlooked by the engravers and therefore does not appear in the printed score.
We have restored it for our analysis of the pitch sonic quality of the
corresponding objects. 17
Sonic qualities of chords
Global distribution of chords
According to the above criteria, we classified six different A-category matrix

chords, most of them present in the opening of the piece (11–22) shown in Ex. 12.1
with their declensions. This means that B-category chords (25 matrices, as shown
in Ex. 12.2 above) take charge of most of the harmonic structure: after introducing
Sequenza IV, they alternate with A-chords in the first five bars and from 113 to 22,
but almost exclusively control the remaining vertical structures.
Some isolated exceptions are found in the A6 category chords (313 and 1210);
two A4 declensions found at 69 and 85; and A5 introduced on 814, then repeated at
115, 134 and 154. During the ‘recapitulation’ section at the end of the piece, apart
from one repetition of A1 (173), a significant number of instances of A2 (and, to a
14
Schaub, p. 77.
15
Ibid.
16
This is the reason why we chose not to consider A2 as a declension of A1. In
addition, the right and left hand transpositions are in contrary motion.
17
Schaub, pp. 76, 88, 102.
lesser extent, A1) appear (164, 1614–173, 1711–1713), becoming the main element of
the closing structure of the whole work. The other A-chords do not reappear.
These observations imply some form of pseudo-tonal bipolar construction
underlying Sequenza IV’s harmony, where A-chords function as gravity centres,
while B-chords push toward an alternative, dissonant pole. As in the most
idiomatic tonal structure, sonata-form, ‘tonic region’ chords (A-chords) introduce
the work before being quickly superseded by ‘dominant region’ chords (B-chords),
which take charge of most of the harmonic syntax. During the final ‘recapitulation’
section, ‘tonic chords’ (especially the A2 chord) return with far more intensity, to
resolve and dissolve the former tensions. However, there is no unequivocal
evidence for definitively sectioning the Sequenza according to this hypothesis. The
polar oscillation between the A and B harmonic structures retains an essentially
fuzzy behaviour.
A matrices’ sonic qualities
Table 12.2 Analysis of sonic structure of A-category chords
SO Q A R NNR18 L H
A1 (11) 0.05 0.19 0.32 (0 0 0 3 3 0 0) 0.3 0.6
A2 (12) 0.04 0.19 0.18 (0 0 0 5 1 0 0) 0.07 0.46
A3 (13) 0.04 0.19 0.2 (0 0 0 6 1 0 0) 0.13 0.4
A4 (15) 0.07 0.19 0.29 (0 0 1 7 0 0 0) 0.07 0.76
A5 (814) 0.06 0.39 0.33 (0 0 0 5 2 0 0) 0.16 0.83
A6 (1210) 0.05 0.09 0.45 (0 1 2 3 2 0 0) 0.1 0.73
Note: SO – Sonic Object label (pagebar); Q – Pitch Sonic Quality; A – Amplitude Rate; R –
Relative Range; NNR – number of notes per register; L – Relative Linearity; H – Relative
Harmonicity.
As shown in the NNR column of Table 12.2, all A-chords, except the last one, are
almost entirely condensed into the piano’s central region (registers -1 to +1, see
Table 12.1 above). This compositional choice creates relatively narrow ranges (R).
Generally associated with very soft dynamics (A), the overall sonic aspect of A-
chords is characterized by relatively poor timbral richness (Q). 19
These initial sonic qualities are somewhat offset by a complex vertical
distribution, due to the bi-triadic model: A-chords, despite the triadic layout that
should theoretically produce relatively simple sonorities, tend to sound quite
18
The list of integers is formatted from the lowest piano register (first value) to the
highest one (seventh value). The integers represent the absolute number of notes in the
corresponding register.
19
0.19 in the amplitude column corresponds to a ppp marking, while 0.39 is the
average amplitude weight applied to the mf-to-pp simultaneous decrescendo of the A5
chord.
complex (see the relatively high values in the H column). This inherent
inharmonicity is slightly greater in the last matrices. Apart from downward register
expansion, this is due to the elimination of pure triadic relations in the left-hand
chords (for example, compare A3 with A4).20 On the other hand, the highly
inharmonic quality of A5 and A6 allows them to mix more effectively with the
generally dissonant context of the B-chords in which they are submerged (see
pages eight and twelve of the score). The desire to integrate the two sonic
categories appears also to be the reason for the unusually wide range and the
striking pppp dynamic marking of A6 (see A, R and NNR values), since it
therefore merges into a very large register span and very low dynamic context (see
the score again, page 12).
B matrices’ sonic qualities
As might be expected, there is a larger amount of structural diversity in the B

matrices, resulting in the larger span of the Q and A lists (see Table 12.3 below).
These qualities progressively increase over the course of the piece, with the Q and
A values tending to become greater for the final matrices. (See the statistics in Fig.
12.1), remembering that matrices are labeled here according to their order of
appearance in the score.
Fig. 12.1 Evolution of Q and A weights in the B matrices
Note: Matrices are placed on the horizontal axis in the order they appear in Table 12.3
below. Weight values are computed on the vertical axis. The tendency lines, produced by
two third-degree polynomial functions, show that sonic quality complexity tends to increase
progressively towards the last matrices.
However, the NNR column demonstrates that Berio continues to avoid the most
extreme registers. In fact, most of the B chords tend to reproduce the vertical span
20
It must be also noticed that the left-hand ‘perfect’ triadic quality of matrices is
weakened in the declensions.
of the A category, with their range largely restricted to the central region and only
a small number of them expanding into the +2 register (chords B4, B15 and B17).
Ex. 12.2 above shows that declensions, with few exceptions, preserve the matrices’
global range.
Of particular note are some low-register objects, namely the first three matrices,
which contain pitches in the -2 register, and, more impressively, B19, the only
chord which reaches the -3 register, having A1 as its bass note; and also the
remarkably narrow objects B5 and B7. B7 is especially noteworthy for its cluster-
like figure, an extremely high density object concentrating nine pitches into the
span of a tenth. One can also observe the linear quality of the pitch distribution of
B2, B11 and B12, built upon superimposed fourths. This intervallic structuring
counters the triadic system of A-category chords.
There must be a structural and/or acoustic reason for Berio having
systematically avoided the extreme piano registers in his chordal material,
reserving them for melodic gestures (see page eight, for example). We suggest that
the structural and sonic function of the resonant chords activated through the
sostenuto pedal led the composer to choose the most resonant piano region for his
purpose: the poor sustaining power of the highest piano register (+3) would not
allow an effective resonance effect, while the rich lowest tones would blur the
perception of harmonic structures.
Harmonic syntax according to the relative sonic complexity of successive

chord objects
Using the data above, the inner sonic qualities of the Sequenza chords can be
mapped against the chronology of the piece to evaluate how they contribute to its
harmonic structure. For this task, we put the 137 chords shown in Exx. 12.1 and
2.2 – the matrices and all their declensions – in the order they appear in the score,
including exact successive repetitions. This sequence appears in the various graphs
below on the X axis.21 It was then correlated on the Y axis against the vectors
described in the methodology section. In the following analysis, we only comment
on the most significant results.
Structuring the harmonic syntax by amplitude
The organization of dynamics emphasizes low-amplitude chord objects, as 42 per

cent of them have a dynamic marking of pp or softer. This quiet context tends to be
disturbed by strong and unprepared contrasts, as heard near the beginning of the
piece (for example, 18 and 113). Nonetheless, these incidents do not affect the global
21
It should be noted that most of the chords are in the first and two last pages of the
work: the first 29 chords appear on the first page, while all chords from n. 93 onwards are
found on pages 16 and 17.
Table 12.3 Analysis of sonic structure of B-category chords
SO Q A R NNR L H
B1 (11) 0.1 0.19 0.46 (0 2 2 4 1 0 0) 0.21 0.52
B2 (12) 0.11 0.19 0.36 (0 2 2 4 0 0 0) 0.09 0.6
B3 (13) 0.09 0.19 0.36 (0 1 1 5 0 0 0) 0.21 0.59
B4 (14) 0.05 0.19 0.34 (0 0 0 5 3 1 0) 0.29 0.78
B5 (15) 0.06 0.19 0.22 (0 0 0 7 0 0 0) 0.19 0.45
B6 (15) 0.07 0.19 0.44 (0 0 2 3 3 0 0) 0.36 0.66
B7 (16) 0.06 0.19 0.18 (0 0 0 9 0 0 0) 0.25 0.49
B8 (17) 0.12 0.28 0.3 (0 0 2 6 0 0 0) 0.18 0.42
B9 (25) 0.1 0.19 0.33 (0 0 0 4 2 0 0) 0.38 0.53
B10 (28) 0.15 0.73 0.33 (0 0 0 4 2 0 0) 0.28 0.6
B11 (31) 0.04 0.19 0.24 (0 0 0 5 1 0 0) 0.18 0.54
B12 (34) 0.08 0.28 0.29 (0 0 0 5 1 0 0) 0.05 0.44
B13 (42) 0.19 0.54 0.37 (0 0 1 5 1 0 0) 0.19 0.7
B14 (57) 0.14 0.54 0.3 (0 0 0 6 2 0 0) 0.19 0.64
B15 (510) 0.1 0.36 0.4 (0 0 1 6 4 1 0) 0.15 0.75
B16 (61) 0.11 0.36 0.29 (0 0 1 7 0 0 0) 0.28 0.64
B17 (61) 0.1 0.82 0.36 (0 0 0 4 1 3 0) 0.11 0.64
B18 (85) 0.04 0.19 0.21 (0 0 0 7 1 0 0) 0.23 0.55
B19 (813) 0.18 0.28 0.31 (1 0 2 2 0 0 0) 0.25 0.52
B20 (915) 0.07 0.19 0.24 (0 0 1 5 0 0 0) 0.19 0.6
B21 (96) 0.15 0.31 0.22 (0 0 2 4 0 0 0) 0.17 0.41
B22 (98) 0.15 0.71 0.26 (0 0 0 4 2 0 0) 0.27 061
B23 (101) 0.33 0.82 0.3 (0 0 2 4 0 0 0) 0.3 0.45
B24 (121) 0.14 0.39 0.23 (0 0 1 5 0 0 0) 0.47 0.54
B25 (152) 0.21 0.73 0.33 (0 0 0 5 2 0 0) 0.3 0.63
principle of cyclic form, which is clearly shown by the tendency line in Fig. 12.2.
A slow ‘fade-in’ is created by progressively increasing the number of loud objects
in the soft atmosphere, mainly between 112 and 213 (nn. 20–36 on the X axis in the
graph).
After a section where melodic gestures predominate (from 35 to 510), the climax
is abruptly reached at 511 (n. 46). This marks the beginning of the central macro-
section and corresponds to the loudest moment of the Sequenza. It is dominated by
a non-triadic chord sequence, which begins with a repetition of the two first B-
category chords of the piece (Ex. 12.3) but closes with a bi-triadic one (A32 on 67;
n. 52). This loud section then continues with mainly melodic content (611–84).
Thereafter, a quite rapidly decreasing curve is dramatically announced by the
contrasting ppp chord at 85 (n. 57), which leads to the most subdued moment of the
piece, 1210–136, played at pppp throughout (nn. 74–77). This section acts as a
resolving agent to the previous loud section.
Fig. 12.2 The chronological order line of amplitude values
Note: The graph shows the tendency line obtained by a fifth degree polynomial function.
Example 12.3 Sequenza IV: B-matrix chords at the dynamic climax
a) Chords B1 and B2 from the opening of the piece, 11–12
b) Chords B1 and B2 at the dynamic climax, 511–61

Following this, a new section begins in which the dynamics globally increase,
reaching its peak at 1614 (n. 111). This peak may be considered to act as a marker
for the beginning of the ‘recapitulation’. At this point, a sequence of ppp A-
category chords begins (1614–173) countering the loud B-chord sequence that
announced the previous section (511–67). This sequence uses declensions of the two
first A-chords of the piece.
A second peak occurs at 175 (n. 120). Finally, after a short pianissimo section,
the last bars show a concluding dynamic structure, clearly described by the
tendency line (nn. 129–137), the upper extreme of which is represented by three mf
objects. It hardly needs to be pointed out that a closing amplitude which reflects
that of the very beginning, as is found here, is typical of a cyclic structure.
Structuring the harmonic syntax by register
As noted earlier, Berio largely avoids chords which explore the outlying piano
registers, so we would not expect to find strong range and register contrasts in
Sequenza IV. However, analysis of the sequence of chord registers reveals
interesting structural elements. Fig. 12.3 immediately shows a fairly systematic
alternation of relatively narrow and wide chords, and/or high–low registers.
This ‘saw-wave’ construction of harmonic sequences, a pendulum motion
between low and medium-high registered chords, directly affects the sonic surface,
as any listener can experience on hearing the very beginning (graphically described
in Fig. 12.3, nn. 1–9). This system is sustained until 813 (n. 61), disregarding the
number of melodic events that may be inserted between two successive harmonic
objects, as can be observed on pages two to three or page six. The chord sequence
of page six is reproduced in Ex. 12.4.
There are a small number of ‘zero-registered’ objects (referring back to Table
12.1’s definitions), which correspond to some specific non-triadic chords whose
pitches are all compressed into the piano’s central register (F3–F5). Two of them
have been described in the first section: B5 (which appears on 15, 19, 1111 and 175)
and B7 (16, 115, 213 and 175). The third one is a declension of the B8 family, B83,
and twice appears briefly on page 15 (1510–1511) as a complementary sonic
component of the B24 chord, which surrounds it through the sustaining action of
the pedal.
At the start of the piece, these zero-registered chords serve to make the
harmonic sequences more dynamic and varied, as B5 is inserted into wider
structures (15) or, on the other hand, when the brief appearance of B6 (16) is
absorbed into the more restricted sonority of the sustained B7 chord. The narrow
span of B51 (111) allows it to merge better into the first appearance of non-chordal
material. At 213, chord B7, played sffz, has a clear punctuating function, closing a
somewhat agitato passage and preceding a softer moment. Its unusually
compressed harmonic structure stresses this function.
There is no doubt that the gravity centre of this oscillating structure is situated
between 89 (B42, n. 60) and 813 (B19, n. 61). These two chords, shown in Ex.12.5,
present the strongest contrast of register in the piece, due to the fact that the second
one is the only chord in the piece to reach the lowest (-3) piano register. This pair
divides the whole work into two large parts of approximately equal length.22
Fig. 12.3 The chronological order line of object’s registers
Note: The top line of the Y axis corresponds to the highest register, and the bottom line to
the lowest one. Registers are labeled from -3 to +3 (see Table 12.1 above).
Example 12.4 Sequenza IV: pendular movement between registers in the

chord sequence of page 6
From this moment on, the pendular system becomes somewhat diluted, and
sequences of equally spanned chords appear with more and more frequency, as
seen between 911–138 (nn. 67–80 in Fig. 12.3) and 146–154 (nn. 86–90, also shown
in Ex. 12.6). This diminution of registral activity occurs in a context where the
most extended melodic gestures of the piece are presented (cf. pages 12–13) – that
is, at the point where harmonic syntax becomes less important from both structural
and perceptual points of view.
22
This moment occurs at around 5 minutes 30 seconds in an approximately 11-minute
performance of the work.
Example 12.5 Sequenza IV: maximum contrast of register in the two chords
of page 8
Example 12.6 Sequenza IV: dilution of the pendular motion
Example 12.7 Sequenza IV: the anticipation of chords in the final section
a) the two alternately registered chords of 138–1311
b) the final section of chordal material, 1510–165

In this sense, the short section between 138 and 1311 – a repeated sequence of two
alternately registered chords (see Fig. 12.3, nn. 79–84, and also Ex. 12.7) which
interrupts the long melodic flow – seems to push the music back into a more
chordal layout, as it was in the beginning. However, it can also be interpreted as
anticipatory, a false entry of the final section, which in fact starts at 1510 with an
identical registral movement, although using a larger collection of alternating
chords.
From this point, harmonic structures converge into the final sequences of a few
alternating repeated chords during the last bars of the work. Fig. 12.3, from n. 110
(corresponding to 1614) to the end, effectively demonstrates the resolving function
of what ought to be a recapitulation: Berio almost completely eliminates the
pendular movement he used to contrast the register of the harmonic material,
dissolving it into longer sequences in the same register. His registral strategy for
the harmonic material is, therefore, directly correlated to the actualization of the
form.
Structuring the harmonic syntax by the inner distribution of pitches
As described earlier, most of vertical structures avoid the spectrum-like

distribution model.23 Two of them, belonging to A-category chords, deserve special
attention for their unusual inner structure. The first is A61 (313, n. 41 in Fig. 12.4).
Already mentioned in the first section, this chord is built upon a linear
superposition of fifths, forming an F major chord with added ninth.24 The second
chord is A51 (154, n. 89), which has the most linear distribution of pitches of all
selected material – an almost regular superposition of thirds.25
In a sense, these chords polarize the overall trends in harmonicity. They have a
marking function for the Sequenza’s macro-form, implying, once again, a three-
part structure. Fig. 12.5 shows these chords grouped into sequences where they are
generally arranged in decreasing complexity order. Three of those sequences, each
containing four chords, are especially relevant; they are outlined with thick
horizontal lines in the figure.
The first group corresponds to the four chords that precede bar 11 on page one,
three B-chords concluding on a bi-triadic A-chord (Ex. 12.8a). The decreasing
complexity of their inner vertical structure, on the spectrum-like distribution
23
More precisely, 75 per cent of the relative harmonicity values (weights) are greater
than 0.50, which means that the same proportion of chords have an inharmonic structure. As
stated in the Methodology section, the less spectrum-like the chord, the more linear its pitch
distribution tends to be. This is confirmed by the relative linearity data, whose values range
from 0.04 to 0.47, meaning that most of chords tend to have a linear distribution.
24
Its unusual structure, containing a major triad formed by a linear superposition of
fifths, makes it simultaneously both relatively harmonic and linear (H=0.30, L=0.31).
25
In contrast to the former chord, its interval building dismisses any ‘spectrum-like’
paradigm; this gives it the lowest linearity weight (L=0.04) together with the highest
harmonicity (H=0.83).
paradigm, acts as a cadential rest, which seems to anticipate the very first
introduction of melodic gestures. The second sequence begins at 27 and prepares a
second cadential gesture marked by its two final chords, B7 sffz (213), and B8 ppp
(31). This acts more as semi-cadence, introducing the last and most conclusive one,
represented by the last four chords of the section. It begins with B31 (32), a
superposition of mixed intervals; proceeds through the next bars with B11 and
B12, both built upon fourths, a rare feature in Sequenza; and concludes with that
singular F major chord, A61 (313), built upon fifths (Ex. 12.8b). It seems very clear
that the music reaches a temporary conclusion here, a point of articulation, and that
this position is essentially created through the manipulation of the inner
distribution of pitches, on the complex–simple vector of sonority.
Fig. 12.4 The chronological order line of H values
Fig. 12.5 Excerpt of Fig. 12.2 (order ns. 1 to 41) with tendency line
Note: Thick horizontal lines mark ‘cadential’ sequences of decreasing sonic qualities.
While the central part, which would correspond to a development section (pages 3–
15), reveals a more complex sequence where relatively harmonic structures
alternate with more inharmonic ones (see nn. 41–89 in Fig. 12.4),26 the same
26
In this central section, chords tend to dissolve and disappear into melodic gestures.
tendency toward decreasing complexity can be observed, albeit in a less marked

form, between 154 – the location of the other A51 chord – and 169 (nn. 89–104 in
Fig. 12.4). This may be said to form a transitional section to the final
recapitulation, which is reached, on this vector, at 169 (n. 104). Here a significant
contrary movement begins (see Fig. 12.6), where sonic complexity dramatically
increases towards a climax, and then diminishes as the piece concludes.
In terms of musical syntax, this is an almost ‘classical’ way to conclude a form.
The maximum complexity in inner-pitch distribution is progressively reached
through three main increasing steps:
1. from 1610 to 176 (nn. 105–121 in the graph), passing 174 (n. 118) by a complex
bi-triadic chord, A45;
2. from this point to 178 (n.126), culminating with a very dense B44 chord;
3. from here to 1711, which begins with two occurrences of B1, the opening
dissonant chord of the Sequenza (nn. 132–133).
Example 12.8 Sequenza IV: chords arranged in order of decreasing

complexity of inner pitch distribution
a) the four chords before bar 11 of p. 1
b) the chord sequence of 32 to 313
After this the sonic tension is dissolved in the two last bars with the gentle
repetition of one of the simplest bi-triadic chords of the piece, A23. Ex. 12.9 shows,
in musical notation, the main steps of these progressions.
Fig. 12.6 Excerpt of Fig. 12.4 (nn. 105 to 137, corresponding to

1610–1713), with tendency line
Note: H values on the Y axis are scaled from 0.4 to 0.8 rather than from 0 to 1.
Example 12.9 Sequenza IV, chord progression between 1610 and 1713
Note: Numbers between staves are the corresponding order number of the chord. Some
repeated chords are omitted. The curve in the graph beneath the example follows the relative
complexity of their inner distribution of pitches (H) weights, as also shown in Fig. 12.6.
Sonic qualities, harmonic structure and overall form
This analysis points to some aspects of composition that contribute to the

structuring of the Sequenza’s harmonic objects. Berio establishes a bipolar relation
between two modalities of vertical distribution of pitches, the ‘bi-triadic’ and ‘non-
triadic’. Although most of them are highly dissonant, the analysis of the modalities
of inner distribution of pitches allows the structural organization to be formalized,
as shown above. This organization establishes some functional connections
between chords and groups of chords: in some places, the traditional notion of
‘cadence’, as a concluding ‘tension-to-rest’ chordal movement, remains relevant, if
applied to the pitch distribution quality.
The harmonic bipolarity is echoed in the way register is organized, based upon
a pendular motion between lower and higher registered chords.27 The register
distribution throughout the piece depends upon a teleological process, namely a
progressive, although non-linear slowing down of the register-switching motion, a
‘modernist’ feature. Conversely, the amplitude scheme points towards a somewhat
‘conservative’, archetypal cyclic trend, where things end in a way similar to how
they have begun. In other words, each of the three dimensions of harmonicity,
register and amplitude has its own independent structural logic which might be
related to historical composing processes.
Another point of interest is the relative span each of these dimension occupies
on the complexity vector. Fig. 12.7 shows that Berio uses practically all the piano’s
dynamic range to generate strong contrasts of amplitude for the chords, from the
rare pppp (appearing only at 1210 and 146) to the far more frequent loud sffz (heard
as early as 18). However, there is an overall tendency to stay inside a soft range
most of time, the most frequent dynamic marking for the chords being ppp.
The composer adopts a quite opposite approach for the structural use of the
piano’s pitch range (R values in Fig. 12.7). This restricted use of register is not
apparent in the ‘melodic’ gestures, as can be easily verified with a simple glance at
the score – see, for example, 23 and, more systematically, page 10 onwards. The
way Berio explores the piano’s whole range in the melodic material is akin to the
writing of the Sequenzas for monophonic instruments, which usually span their full
tessitura. Registering the harmonic material – an exclusive facet of polyphonic
instruments – in such a way that it opposes the wide ambit of the melodic gestures
helps to give a specific sonic and structural identity to this dimension.
The third set of statistics in Fig. 12.7 reiterate what has already been stated
about the chords’ inner pitch distribution: most of them have a relative inharmonic
distribution pattern, with neither many consonant harmonies, nor entirely ‘noisy’
vertical structures such as clusters. Meanwhile, a structure can be found here in the
27
The average and mode values of our list of lowest and highest registers for matrices,
according to Table 12.1 above, show that there is a slight statistical tendency for the B-
category chords to use lower registers than in the A-category.
chronological organization of chords, revealing sequences of more or less

harmonic complexity.
Fig. 12.7 Minimum, average (mean) and maximum values for Amplitude
(A), Relative Range (R), and Harmonicity (H) for all chords and
declensions
However, more important is the systematic dephasing of the points of articulation

of these three dimensions. This dephasing undoubtedly favours the sense of fluidity
in the form, as there is no exact point where these dimensions converge to segment
the structure clearly, which, in turn, tends to obscure its perception (and, maybe, its
analysis). Fig. 12.8 broadly summarizes this dephased structure.
Fig. 12.8 The global formal tri-partition according to the three sonic vectors
Note: Numbers indicate the pagebar where the points of articulation occur (italics for sub-
sections).
The polyphonic layering of these three vectors of sonority is only part of the
complex layout of the piece. The conclusion of Schaub’s analysis states that ‘the
parameters of harmony, melody, texture, rhythm, and dynamics undergo separate
transformational processes’,28 which means that all of them are implicated in the
structural formation at some level, but in independent ways. Similar polyphonic
approaches can be seen, for instance, in the Sequenza V for trombone, with its three
layers – ‘normal’ sound, sound with plunger mute, and mixed trombone and voice.
Here, however, the structure appears to be far more complex, from a ‘surface’ layer
which alternates between mainly chordal and melodic gestures, to an underground
of resonances, sustained by the middle pedal. The surface alternation undoubtedly
offers the most readily perceived articulation. Beneath this, the sequence of
28
Schaub, p. 107.
resonant sounds functions as a ‘background layer of slowly moving chords’29 and

makes an essential, although subtle, contribution to the overall harmonic sonority.
It also follows its own formal scheme, where the teleological processes that make
chords increasingly dense appear to play the most important role.30 In this context,
independent processing of chords’ amplitude, register and inner distribution of
pitches add yet more elements of complexity, although not at such an apparent
level: they remain in the middle-ground. Our aim has been to bring them
temporarily into the foreground, to better appraise the contribution of the harmonic
material to the sonic design of the Sequenza.
29
David Osmond-Smith, Berio (Oxford/New York, 1991), p. 39. Some of these
‘chords’ barely deserve this definition, as they have as few as one or two pitches, as on page
six.
30
See for instance the progression between 61 and 129, which starts from a single pitch
and reaches a cluster.
Chapter 13
The Nature of Expressivity in Berio’s

Sequenza VI for Viola
Amanda Bayley
Context and approach
Whilst it might seem appropriate to consider Sequenza VI (1967) in the context of

other twentieth-century repertoire for solo viola, in his writings, Berio emphasizes
the importance of a wider historical context. He is disparaging of musicians who
specialize in contemporary music and his respect for composers from different
periods proves significant for understanding his conception of the Sequenzas and
the ‘virtuosity of knowledge’ that he requires from the performer.1 Virtuosity,
which Berio identifies as the most obvious unifying element in the Sequenzas as a
whole,
often arises out of a conflict, a tension between the musical idea and the instrument,
between concept and musical substance … Another instance where tension arises is
when the novelty and the complexity of musical thought – with its equally complex and
diverse expressive dimensions – imposes changes in the relationship with the
instrument, often necessitating a novel technical solution (as in Bach’s Violin Partitas,
Beethoven’s last piano works, Debussy, Stravinsky, Boulez, Stockhausen, etc.), where
the interpreter is required to perform at an extremely high level of technical and
2
intellectual virtuosity.
Regarding the technical virtuosity associated with the history of any instrument,
Berio claims that he never ‘abuses’ the instrument in the manner of the more
experimental styles of his contemporaries. He has ‘never tried to alter the nature of
the instrument, nor to use it “against” its own nature’.3 As far as he is concerned
‘the composer can only contribute to the transformation of musical instruments by
using them, and trying to understand post factum the complex nature of the
1
2
Ibid., pp. 90–91.
3
Ibid., p. 92.
234 Amanda Bayley
transformations’.4 These processes of instrumental and compositional

transformations will be analysed in the following pages in the context of a
changing definition of expressivity in performance.
Berio expects players to bring a historical perspective to the Sequenzas and to
be ‘capable of … resolving the tension between the creativity of yesterday and
today’.5 Many of his compositions may be retrospectively viewed as informed by
his experiences in the electronic studio (the ‘creativity of today’). Alongside other
composers he was not only in search of new sounds but also new ways of thinking
about musical material. Consequently, the ‘primacy of pitch as a primary focus for
structure was severely challenged’ by Berio, as were traditional notions of metre
and time.6 David Osmond-Smith highlights two aspects of Berio’s work in the
studio that helped to evolve his handling of orchestral sound and also explain his
wide use of multilayered musical structures: ‘the experience of counterpointing
complex layers of sound, and the gestural style of writing … provided rhetorical
continuity in the absence of more traditional harmonic frames of reference’.7 Here,
‘gestural style’ refers to the implied physicality of Berio’s writing in the electronic
medium despite the absence of a human body.
In Sequenza VI physical gesture from the human body emanates from the
opening sempre fff tremolo ‘chords’ that dominate most of the piece (see Ex. 13.1).
Berio’s vigorous exploration of the instrument’s potential resonance makes explicit
the ‘tension between the musical idea and the instrument’ and shows that he was
clearly not seeking a beautiful sustained tone. The viola is taken to its expressive
and dramatic limits at the opposite end of the spectrum from its inherent, mellow
lyricism.
Example 13.1 Opening of Sequenza VI
Sustaining this fortissimo results in extreme effort and concentration on the part of
the player. For much standard repertoire a successful performance would be one in
which the player is perceived to be acting effortlessly, but clearly, in this context, it
4
Ibid., p. 91.
5
Ibid., p. 91.
6
7
Ibid., pp. 15–16.
Sequenza VI for Viola 235
is the sheer physical struggle and awkwardness of sustaining the required volume
across four strings that determines the performance aesthetic.
Expressivity in performance
Essays about expressive aspects of performance tend to focus on the contribution

that a musician brings to the performance to make it interesting, either by adding to
or deviating from what is written in the score. A number of authors who analyse
the psychology of performance have attempted to quantify such expressive
characteristics in terms of duration, fine tuning, vibrato, dynamics, rubato and
articulation.8 What such research does not cover, however, is a broad repertoire:
examples are mostly from tonal music. Eric Clarke makes the general observation
that ‘performers are expected to animate the music, to go beyond what is explicitly
provided by the notation or aurally transmitted standard – to be “expressive”’,9 but
for Sequenza VI this method of ‘being expressive’ is not generally applicable
because many of Berio’s prescribed notations and nuances in the score (for
example, broken tremolo sempre fff to be played ‘as fast as possible, toward the
frog’) already take the performer to their limits of expression. There is nothing left
to give. How can one go ‘beyond’?
This problem of interpretation is highlighted by Clarke as an interesting
question for the psychology of music: ‘What should be done about expressive
markings already in the score … must the corresponding tempo and dynamic
changes in the performance be regarded as inexpressive simply because there is a
marking in the score?’10 Through consolidation of the literature devoted to the
psychological principles governing expressive performance in music, Clarke
suggests that ‘expression can be understood as the inevitable and insuppressible
consequence of understanding musical structure, yet it is also a conscious and
deliberate attempt by performers to make their interpretations audible’.11 He
identifies interpretative ‘processes which either emphasize expressive properties
already implicit in the music or superimpose a pattern upon it’ and concludes that
‘a theory of performance which is presented as a set of rules relating structure to
expression is too abstract and cerebral, and that the reality is far more practical,
8
See, for example, Johan Sundberg, Lars Frydén and Anders Friberg, ‘Expressive
Aspects of Instrumental and Vocal Performance’, in Reinhard Steinberg (ed.), Music and the
Mind Machine: The Psychophysiology and Psychopathology of the Sense of Music (Berlin,
1995), pp. 49–62; and Caroline Palmer, ‘On the Assignment of Structure in Music
Performance’, Music Perception, 14/1 (1996): 23–56.
9
Eric Clarke, ‘Understanding the Psychology of Performance’ in John Rink (ed.),
Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding (Cambridge, 2002), p. 59.
10
Ibid., p. 63.
11
Ibid., p. 65.
236 Amanda Bayley
tangible and indeed messy’.12 Progress therefore needs to be made on a case-by-

case basis rather than trying to generalize for all performances of all music.
One case study that has acknowledged the dilemma of defining expression in
contemporary music is a recent collaborative project between composer Bryn
Harrison, pianist Philip Thomas and Eric Clarke and Nicholas Cook. From the
section on contemporary performance practice in the article ‘Interpretation and
performance in Bryn Harrison’s être-temps’, they admit that ‘there is essentially no
discussion in this paper of expression as it has been conventionally understood –
the topic that more than any other dominates performance research’. The reason
given is that:
‘Expression’ (if that word is to be used at all here) is located in rather different and
much more momentary attributes of the performance, and a concern with rubato and
continuous dynamic shaping, both of which have been the central preoccupation in
performance research, simply doesn’t apply here – both because the material resists
being treated and understood in that way, and because Philip’s primary interest is
13
focused on rather different aspects of interpretation and execution.
This change of focus for the performer is the significant parallel to be drawn here
with Sequenza VI. Berio deliberately minimizes the possibility of subjective sound
qualities or interpretative input from the performer interfering with his ‘message’.
There are no written indications of expression at the beginning of the piece, nor
even later on where the character changes. Naomi Cumming recognizes a similar
attitude from ‘experimenters in musique concrète’ who ‘draw attention to the
material qualities of sound, trying to force attention away from subjective
projections, to get you to hear the sounds without indulging a need for “expressive”
satisfaction’.14 Providing an individual interpretative slant that will make one
performance different from another is no longer the player’s primary concern, but
the fact that Berio does give the player some freedom is evident from the
alternative scorings that he provides. His directions at the front of the score are
specific yet are likely to vary (if only slightly) from one player to another: ‘as fast
as possible’, ‘avoid prolonged patterns of regular articulation’, ‘sometimes the
broken tremolo can be momentarily substituted by legato tremolo and/or
arpeggios’.15
A comparison of different recordings (or performances) of a piece would
normally reveal that ‘the performer’s identity is heard in his specific choices about
degrees of emphasis to be accorded certain points, so that “gesture” is not only a
realization of a notated potentiality, but a marker of his or her own “feel” for the
12
Ibid., p. 65–6.
13
Eric Clarke, Nicholas Cook, Bryn Harrison and Philip Thomas, ‘Interpretation and
Performance in Bryn Harrison’s être-temps’, Musicae Scientiae, 19/1 (2005), p. 61.
14
Naomi Cumming, The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification
(Bloomington, 2000), p. 129.
15
Luciano Berio, Sequenza VI for viola (Universal Edition, 1967), performance notes.
shape’.16 While there will always be some ‘degrees of emphasis’ that will vary
from one performer to another, in Sequenza VI they are also carefully notated in
the form of detailed dynamic markings, a variety of accents, and indications of
which string to play to give the desired sonorous effect. In this context, gesture is
more to do with the physical realization of the notation than an individual ‘feel’ for
the shape.
New ways of identifying expressivity from musical structure rather than from
performance now need to be considered. The explicit ‘expressive’ notation of the
opening fff tremolos of Sequenza VI is manifested as an analytical component of the
score which is subsequently perceived as a ‘gestural motion’ in performance. A
similar observation has been made by Cumming in her analysis of Brahms’s Violin
Sonata in G major, which contributes to her theory of expressivity:
These qualities of motion, derived both from the pitch and rhythmic organization,
together give the figures their ‘gestural’ content. An idea of gesture does not get
imposed on the music, as something external to it, but emerges from the qualities of its
17
own ‘motion’.
Owing to the prolongation of the tremolo throughout Sequenza VI, a better

example could hardly be found to demonstrate that ‘implicit in this view of
figuration as “gestural” is an acceptance that the combined aspects of musical
motion are not perceived as abstract qualities but “through the body”’.18 An
absence of metre means that structural emphasis is now placed on rhythm which,
combined with texture, pitch and articulation, is responsible for defining mobility,
or gestural motion.
Analysis of structure
In 1968, the year following the completion of Sequenza VI, Berio was himself
advocating against pre-compositional systems – such as serialism, which he had
previously explored – because they only reduce live processes to ‘immobile,
labelled objects’. He stated that significant musical ideas are the result of ‘a system
of interrelationships in progress’.19 Berio’s views are further elaborated during an
interview in 1976 where, he observes, for tonal music:
16
Cumming, p. 147.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Quoted by George W. Flynn, ‘Listening to Berio’s Music’, Musical Quarterly, 61
(1975), p. 394. Original source: Luciano Berio, ‘The Composer on His Work: Meditation on
a Twelve-Tone Horse’, Christian Science Monitor, 15 July 1968: 8.
238 Amanda Bayley
there are many interesting aspects especially between the play of different levels –
foreground, background, etc. – but … the structural description of music has nothing to
20
do with the way we perceive it. The main tonal plan is not what we perceive.
While this might seem a contentious observation to make for tonal music, it is
perhaps more accurate for atonal music. The underlying pitch structure in Sequenza
VI is not what we perceive despite a background continuity revealed by David
Osmond-Smith’s detailed analysis, where specific roles are allocated to individual
pitches: the piece is ‘integrated by an evolving network of pitch relationships’ and
is thus ‘typical of Berio’s large-scale structural thought’.21
Since pitch is not the primary parameter that is of immediate significance to
the listener, it is more worthwhile investigating how large-scale structure is
generated from the allocation of specific roles to dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture
and rhythm, either in combination with or separately from pitch. Pivotal chords or
harmonic structures within the piece do not necessarily correspond with changes in
any of these parameters because there are a number of layers to the structure of the
piece. In a general sense, Berio acknowledges the relationship between form and
content: ‘[t]he notion of form can also be that of formal description of music of a
certain complexity. You cannot, because of an absence of a predetermined
hierarchy, have a really complete description because of the multi-layered quality
of music’.22
For Berio, one of the most important and fascinating aspects of music is ‘the
possibility of coordinating the different layers for the perception’.23 As he stressed
in an interview in 1995, for him the multilayered character of a work of art:
includes not only the process of composition but also of listening. The combination of
layers, which are present in different degrees without obliterating each other, can create
a very interesting magma. If these layers have real functions – harmonically, timewise,
in terms of density – their coexistence creates an implicit ‘drama’ that can be very
24
meaningful.
It is this drama that the following analysis attempts to unfold, especially in terms of
density, for which it is more important to show shapes rather than sections,
intensities rather than divisions, overlaps rather than distinctions.
20
David Roth, ‘Luciano Berio on New Music’, Musical Opinion, September (1976) p.
549.
21
22
Roth, p. 549.
23
Ibid.
24
Theo Muller, ‘“Music is not a solitary act”: Conversation with Luciano Berio’,
Tempo, 199 (1997), p. 18.
Perception of dynamics and tempo
A perception study of Sequenza VI was carried out by Irene Deliège and

Abdessadek El Ahmadi in 1990 to identify the cues which facilitate the division of
the work into its main groupings or sections in aural analysis.25 In the experiment,
composers, musicians and non-musicians were required to indicate perceived
segmentations during performance. The results were remarkably unanimous
between all participants. The plan of six sections proposed by a non-musician
subject is reproduced in Fig. 13.1 below.
The recorded performance used for the experiment was by Walter Trampler.26
For clarity and comparison I have added the timings corresponding to the different
sections of Walter Trampler’s recording as well as the timings from the more
recent recording by Christophe Desjardins of Ensemble InterContemporain.27 This
later recording is the interpretation upon which my following analysis and all
subsequent music examples are based because it is the most readily available
recording at the time of writing. The relatively large discrepancies in the timings
between these two performances (see Fig. 13.1) are mostly due to the alternative
scorings Berio provides: Walter Trampler chooses the (b) versions whilst
Christophe Desjardins follows the (a) versions and also includes all the optional
inserts.
Taken from the original example by Deliège and El Ahmadi, the height and
degree of shading of the sections in Fig. 13.1 correspond to the perceived volume
of sound: sections one and five, great intensity; sections two and four, medium
intensity; sections three and six, low intensity.28 A time scale has been added to
make the sections proportional. The different intensities have been arrived at from
changes in the perceived volume of sound, which would seem to suggest that the
participants in the experiment found overall volume of sound to be the most
important structure-defining parameter. However, when this is compared with an
analysis of the score rather than a performance, representation of Berio’s notated
dynamic levels produces quite different results, as shown in Fig. 13.2. While
specific dynamics have been plotted in Fig. 13.2, these do not indicate detailed
crescendo and diminuendo shadings responsible for note shape and phrase shape
(although in places this level of detail is perceptible from a diagonal line as distinct
from a vertical line).
25
Irene Deliège and Abdessadek El Ahmadi, ‘Mechanisms of Cue Extraction in
Musical Groupings: A Study of Perception on Sequenza VI for Viola Solo by Luciano
Berio’, Psychology of Music, 18 (1990), p. 19. In this context a cue is defined as ‘a rather
brief marker whose impact is very clear in sound and rhythm’.
26
Walter Trampler, ‘Sequenza VI for viola’, on Luciano Berio, Sequenza VI, Chemins
II, Chemins III (RCA, 1971).
27
Christophe Desjardins, ‘Sequenza VI for viola’, on Luciano Berio, Sequenzas
(Deutsche Grammophon, 1998).
28
Deliège and El Ahmadi, p. 25.
240 Amanda Bayley
Comparison with Fig. 13.1 shows some correspondence with dynamic level
in the first two sections and the last section of the piece but sections three, four
and five are quite different. Section three (4:51–7:44) in Fig. 13.1 reveals nothing
of the extreme and rapid dynamic contrasts ranging from sff to pp that characterize
this section of the piece and which would therefore seem to increase intensity in
terms of dynamics, and therefore tension. Instead, from a listener’s perspective it
seems to be the overall dynamic level that averages out at around mf, which defines
the section as having a low intensity. Additionally, there appear to be other,
perhaps stronger, factors perceived in performance, which cannot easily be
separated from dynamic level. Changes in texture and timbre, for instance, provide
thinner and calmer qualities, which could be perceived to be contributing to a
lower intensity of sound in section three, as in section six, compared with the
otherwise predominant polyphonic tremolos in the rest of the piece.
Graphic representation of tempo, in the form of durational changes, provides
another layer to the structure, which conflicts with the perception study in Fig.
13.1, but shows similarities with the dynamic intensities in Fig. 13.2. The
metronome marking is indeed the only instruction given to the performer at the
beginning of the piece. Time signature and barlines are absent.
Specific metronome markings (some of which are preceded by an accel.
marking) prescribe the changes in duration shown in Fig. 13.3. The absence of a
regular pulse means that these changes in duration contribute to rhythmic activity
rather than perceived changes in tempo. Interestingly, the largest number of
durational changes occurs between 4:31 and 7:27. A comparison of Figures 13.2
and 13.3 shows that duration and dynamics share a similar profile: areas of greatest
intensity (where intensity refers to extreme contrasts and rates of change, rather
than volume of sound) occur in the third section of the piece. In Fig. 13.1,
however, section three is the area of lowest intensity, showing that there is an
obvious discrepancy between perception of volume of sound and the dramatic
character written into the score. There is a further mismatch between changes in
duration and perceived section divisions. Conventionally, tempo changes help to
define sections but Berio is clearly obscuring such uniformity of parameters and
tempo is no longer of large-scale structural significance.
Texture
The essence of Sequenza VI has been neatly captured by Stephen Morris on his
sleeve note to the recording by Walter Trampler: ‘Rather like an etude, Sequenza VI
focuses on a single problem: the development of a kind of polyphony of different
textures’.29 Berio’s treatment of texture demonstrates Dunsby and Whittall’s claim
that ‘the more distant the texture of an atonal piece is from that of a tonal piece, …
29
Stephen Morris in Luciano Berio, Sequenza VI, Chemins II, Chemins III (RCA,
1971), sleeve notes.
Fig. 13.1 Plan of Sequenza VI, adapted from Deliège and El Ahmadi (p. 25)
242 Amanda Bayley
the less perceptible … local hierarchic links are likely to be’.30 The gestural and
textural components of the insistent tremolos provide fundamental building blocks
whose changes can be summarized as shown in Table 13.1.
Table 13.1 Textural and gestural structure of Sequenza VI
Section Texture
1 Polyphony predominates
Tremolos on three or four notes simultaneously
2 Polyphony/tremolos interspersed with monodic
fragments
3 Largely monodic
Tremolos on single pitches
4 Polyphony predominates but more timbral variety
Less sustained, more rests
5 Sustained polyphony
Tremolos on three or four notes + glissandi
6 Sustained two-part harmony (minimal tremolo)
A consideration of texture reinforces the sections of low, medium and high

intensity determined by perceived volume in Fig. 13.1 and therefore emulates the
same graphic shape: tremolo chords create greatest intensity (sections one and five)
while emphasis on monody, sustained pitches, lyricism and less tremolo (sections
three and six) reinforce the sections of low intensity. This would suggest that
volume of sound is to some extent determined by the texture of the music or, at
least, the relationship between the two is very close. A further observation to be
made is that textural shape does not coincide with tempo or dynamic changes. This
contradiction is a good example of the ‘schizophrenia between the different
parameters, the different layers’ Berio recognizes in his music.31
The American composer, George Flynn, observes that ‘the dramatic vitality [of
Sequenza VI] derives not from the mere presence of alternating textures but rather
from the ways in which the textures are prolonged and related to one another’.32
For example, it is only after the first 1 minute and 43 seconds of virtually non-stop
tremolos, punctuated by rests, that we hear the first melodic interjection, which
extends beyond the demisemiquaver upbeats to the tremolos (Ex. 13.2). This
melodic gesture provides momentary release from the surrounding tension.
30
Jonathan Dunsby and Arnold Whittall, Musical Analysis in Theory and Practice
(London, 1988), p. 116.
31
Roth, p. 549.
32
Flynn, p. 417.
Fig. 13.2 Dynamics in Sequenza VI
244 Amanda Bayley
Example 13.2 Sequenza VI: melodic interjection from the first section of the
piece, 1:43–1:49
This brief melodic fragment later becomes extended into a predominant monodic
feature of the piece, as described above (for example at the beginning of the second
section, 2:22). However, interspersing this initial fragment within the overriding
polyphonic texture of the first section introduces the idea which is later to be
developed and provides an additional layer of continuity besides the tremolos
themselves.
Continuity/discontinuity
The multilayered quality that Berio identifies in his music resonates with
references to continuity throughout the writings of Pierre Boulez. From a
conducting perspective Boulez comments that ‘even in music where the sound is
not continuous I still try to obtain a certain continuity through discontinuity’,
concluding that ‘the sense of continuity is the most important element in
performance’.33 The most obvious level of continuity and discontinuity in
Sequenza VI is provided by the tremolo figures which define large-scale sections
through their textural function. At a foreground level they provide local colouration
through their timbral and rhythmic functions.
As a structural feature they put into light relief the passages where Berio briefly
returns to the viola’s traditionally more sonorous characteristics. For atonal music,
generally, the longer that any particular sound quality or pitch predominates, the
more important it becomes as a point of reference. It has been observed that
‘repetition is likely to increase the possibility of an event being relatively more
“essential”, relatively less “essential”, if only in a motivic sense’,34 and here
rhythm, texture and timbre can be interpreted in this motivic sense.
Two organizational principles from psychology, which have been observed by
Deliège and El Ahmadi to function in the analytical hearing of musical form, are
‘the principle of sameness which constitutes groups and groupings of groups
[and] the principle of difference which differentiates them’.35 These principles have
33
Quoted by Arnold Whittall in ‘Boulez at 80: The Path from the New Music’ Tempo,
59/233 (2005), p. 9. Original source: Boulez on Conducting: Conversations with Cécile
Gilly, trans. Richard Stokes (London, 2003), p. 80, 91.
34
Dunsby and Whittall, p. 117.
35
Deliège and El Ahmadi, p. 20.
Fig. 13.3 Tempo changes in Sequenza VI
246 Amanda Bayley
parallels with the ideas of continuity and discontinuity expressed by Boulez as they
emphasize the structural significance of changes in intensity:
the notion of discontinuity is far more important [than continuity] both in the fields of
timbre and of pitch. Discontinuity provides a means of transition … as much as it
36
provides abrupt divisions and separations.
Discontinuities – in whatever form they might take – are responsible for outlining
the perceived sections of Sequenza VI as well as contributing to processes of
transformation.
From the composers’ observations in the 1990 experiment, Deliège and El Ahmadi
identified ‘plateau’ zones and ‘tiling’ zones leading into the different sections (see
the dotted lines in Fig. 13.1). These zones might conventionally be described as
‘cadence points’ or transition sections. The first change in the pitch and rhythmic
development of the piece occurs at 2:04 where repeated chords and subsequent
glissandi coincide with the harmonic arrival point of the initial ascent to E#, the
first climax of the piece.37 However, as with other divisions between sections,
where one parameter changes (in this instance pitch) others provide continuity
(rhythm, timbre and texture) in terms of the ongoing tremolo chords. Despite these
persistent tremolos, a static feel is created from 2:04–2:20 by the albeit irregular
repetition of chords and glissandi (Ex. 13.3).
Another relatively static succession of chords occurs later in the piece at 7:46.
Here, however, the chords do not provide the same transitory function because in
the context of the surrounding material there is now a lyrical ‘phrase’ from 7:32–
7:44 that serves this transitory purpose (see Ex. 13.4). In striking contrast with the
previous erratic rhythms, pitches, dynamics and tempos of section three, dynamic
shape, note lengths and the performer’s added vibrato on the sustained B all
contribute to the more conventional expressive function of this particular phrase.
Example 13.3 Sequenza VI: transition into section 2, 2:04–2:22
36
Pierre Boulez, ‘Timbre and Composition – Timbre and Language’, trans. R.
Robertson, Contemporary Music Review, 2 (1987), p. 170.
37
See David Osmond-Smith’s analysis in Berio, pp. 44–7.
Fig. 13.4 Sequenza VI: representation of notated timbral events
248 Amanda Bayley
Example 13.4 Sequenza VI: 7:23–7:56
Note: The first staff is the end of section three. The second staff is the transition to section
four, which begins on the third staff.
Berio himself generalizes that there is ‘no phrasing of a conventional nature’38 in

Sequenza VI and such a distinct phrase is indeed unique. Here, and elsewhere in the
piece, rests, and sometimes dynamic markings, play an important part in creating
separations or discontinuities, thus distinguishing one section from another.
Timbre
For the analysis of timbre it is useful to adopt Samuel Frank Pellman’s definition
used for his analysis of Sequenza V, as ‘the aggregate effect of all of the audible
frequency components of a sound, and their relative intensities, at any given
instant’.39 This definition provides a useful basis for describing the various timbres,
the changes in timbre and their subsequent structural implications. As with aspects
of dynamics, texture and tempo already discussed, timbre should not be considered
in isolation but in connection with other parameters, in order to discover whether it
complements existing intensity profiles or contradicts them to form yet another
layer to the piece.
Timbre is exploited with expressive intent to generate different levels of
tension. Following the initial high level of tension sustained for the first 26 seconds
of the piece all other levels of timbre sound relatively calm. As with Sequenza V:
38
Nancy Uscher, ‘Luciano Berio, Sequenza VI for Solo Viola: Performance Practices’,
Perspectives of New Music, 21 (1982–83), p. 286.
39
Samuel Frank Pellman, Part I: Horizon. Part II: An Examination of the Role of
Timbre in a Musical Composition, as Exemplified by an Analysis of Sequenza V by Luciano
Berio (DMA dissertation, Cornell University, 1979), p. 107.
structures generated through manipulation of timbre are best revealed through
comparison and contrast of timbres … Not only are the similarities and differences to be
noted, but the degree of similarity is equally significant. With such information, it becomes
possible to identify any meaningful patterns embedded in the succession of timbres.
40
An example of such a pattern is embodied in the notion of progression.
Changes in the degree of tension are a particularly significant aspect of timbral

progression, in this case from relatively complex, noisy sounds to relatively simple
ones. The high level of tension in the timbre of the tremolos is a result of the onset
transient combined with the attempt to play all four strings simultaneously with
fast rhythmic repetitions and at a fff dynamic. The fact that the tremolos cannot be
considered separately from pitch, dynamic and especially rhythmic qualities means
that large-scale timbral progression follows the overall textural shape of Sequenza
VI, while local alterations of timbre are the principal means of elaborating
individual events. From the timbral–textural shape (emulated in Fig. 13.1) the areas
of perceived low intensity coincide with more conventional modes of expression
conveyed by vibrato on the relatively long, sustained melody notes in section three
and especially section six. In these sections, the performer is briefly given the
freedom to be more expressive. Vibrato is normally considered to be an internal
variation of a sound, which represents a departure from the relative calm of
steadier sounds or of silence,41 but in this context vibrato provides the relative
calm.
Timbre plays a significant expressive role in this piece. Fig. 13.4 lists the
different instrumental techniques written in the score which are responsible for
defining a specific timbre. An attempt has been made to represent an intensity scale
ranging from sotto voce to col legno. However, further research is needed to supply
the physical data on the sounds in order to provide a more detailed objective
analysis of timbral intensity. Contrast is already created by the use of sul ponticello
in section two (see Fig. 13.4), and a timbral progression is evident in section three
where there are greater combinations and contrasts of timbre: con sordino
accompanies sul ponticello alternating with harmonics and changes between
strings (where II or III is specified). The more action-related timbral contrasts of
pizzicato and col legno occurring in section four would form the peak of an
intensity curve for timbre. A further layer of timbral intensity could be included in
Fig. 13.4 where tremolos provide colouring at a local level in sections three and six
(see Ex. 13.5), compared with sections one and five where they dominate the
texture. At the lowest levels of intensity, con sordino (which marks the beginning
of section six) and subsequent sotto voce instructions both help to reinforce the
softest dynamic region of the piece and the restful repose of the Coda.
40
Pellman, pp. 109–10.
41
Pellman, p. 119.
250 Amanda Bayley
Example 13.5 Sequenza VI: section 6, 11:26–12:08
Note: The tremolo tritone at 11:56 provides colouring at a local level.
Processes of transformation
Relating details to the larger design of things, Berio observes:
In today’s music it is difficult to decide which is more relevant in view of structure.

Actually, I would even question the concept of structure in such cases. There seems to
42
be a constant transformation of things, not with a specific hierarchy.
Observations made so far regarding continuity and the layers of different

parameters, which overlap and often blur the divisional sections of the piece from
Fig. 13.1, confirm an absence of hierarchy. In order to avoid formalistic moulds for
analysing his music, Berio prefers to think in terms of formation rather than form:
‘The real enriching experience is to be able to perceive processes of formation,
transformation – of changing things – rather than solid objects’.43 These processes
of transformation are another way of understanding techniques of variation. The
challenges that late twentieth-century music brings to music analysis, as well as
performance, require traditional terms to be revisited. Definition of the motif needs
to extend beyond the concept described by Arnold Schoenberg: ‘the features of a
motive are intervals and rhythms, combined to produce a memorable shape or
contour which usually implies an inherent harmony’.44 A modified definition needs
to include what have conventionally been considered secondary parameters and
might read as follows: the features of a motif are interval, rhythm, timbre, texture
and dynamic, combined to produce a memorable shape, contour or sound quality.
This subsequently has implications for the way that variation is perceived and
explained in a new context. With reference to Schoenberg again:
A motive is used by repetition. The repetition may be exact, modified or developed …

Variation … is repetition in which some features are changed and the rest preserved. All
42
Roth, p. 549.
43
Ibid.
44
Arnold Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, ed. Gerald Strang and
Leonard Stein (London, 1967), p. 8.
the features of rhythm, interval, harmony and contour are subject to various alterations.
Frequently, several methods of variation are applied to several features simultaneously;
45
but such changes must not produce a motive-form too foreign to the basic motive.
For much twentieth-century music it is not just rhythm, interval, harmony and
contour that are subject to various alterations but also timbre, texture and
dynamics. In Sequenza VI, variation can be perceived by tremolo being repeated
while its pitch content changes. In Ex. 13.6, there is a gradual change of pitch in
successive tremolo chords where there is usually at least one note which stays the
same while the other pitches move stepwise or by semitone. Elsewhere, the
rhythmic and timbral features of the tremolo provide a layer of continuity while its
texture changes from being polyphonic to monodic or vice versa: the acciaccatura
chord at 5:26 in Ex. 13.7 is the pivot point within the process of the tremolo chord
from 5:18 transforming into a single pitch tremolo at 5:26. It would be expected
that the tremolos would continue on chords at 5:26 but they change to single notes,
sometimes preceded by acciaccatura chords.
Example 13.6 Sequenza VI: section 1, 0:43
The passage from 5:53 (Ex. 13.8) demonstrates a variety in timbre: pitch stays the
same while dynamics, timbre, articulation and rhythm are all varied. This particular
combination of timbral and dynamic markings makes this 4-second extract
particularly intense in its expression. As mentioned above, the fact that pitch and
rhythm are relatively simple means that our attention is drawn to these expressive
45
Schoenberg, p. 9.
252 Amanda Bayley
characteristics. Tremolo also acts in an expressive, timbral capacity: within the
monodic texture of section three it is featured on just one note within a melodic
line (see Ex. 13.9).
From 7:59 alternations between arco, pizzicato and col legno create variations in
timbre and articulation, thus adding further expressive layers to the music. Features
historically associated with expression are phrase shape, vibrato, rubato, dynamics
and articulation. Vibrato is the only one of these expressive characteristics not to
be notated in Sequenza VI, although phrasing is no longer defined in conventional
terms. Additional notated parameters that serve an expressive purpose include
legato slurs and articulation marks for staccato, accents of different kinds, tenuto,
bowing indications, and various combinations of these.
A specific manipulation of pitch, which has an expressive and dramatic
function, is the glissando. Within section five (8:46–9:30), ascending and
descending glissandi contribute to the already frenetic and intense activity of
prolonged tremolos, shown in Ex. 13.10. This passage might be interpreted as an
antecedent phrase answered by an even more extreme consequent phrase (9:30–
10:30) – the only section of the piece where the composer indicates an element of
indeterminacy requesting the random placing of fingers within each four-part chord
(Ex. 13.11).
Example 13.11 Sequenza VI: section 5, 9:30
Conclusion
Since the late eighteenth century, an increasing interest in instrumental timbre as

an expressive element in music has related to the way composers write for different
instruments. In the twentieth century, composers have exploited timbre as a
structural mode of expression. We can see how Berio has developed the use of
timbre further than Schoenberg or Webern through his concern for the physical
conditions of sound emission in Sequenza VI. In the absence of a hierarchy the
variable relationships between different parameters are responsible for defining
musical structure. The foregoing analysis has considered how different parameters
interact with each other, how they complement or contradict each other at different
structural levels. Within an overall shape and within individual shapes, my graphic
representations of the different layers isolate specific points of interest. The
relationships between different parameters are perhaps more clearly articulated in
the graphs than in the score.
Emerging from this analysis of Sequenza VI is the dual perspective that
analytical enquiry can bring to twentieth-century and twenty-first century music by
investigating, on the one hand, characteristics of musical structure as represented in
the score and, on the other, characteristics of performance. For example, analysis
of timbre in Sequenza VI includes expressivity in performance, such as vibrato
(which is a function of timbre as well as pitch), as well as structural expressivity,
such as tremolo. However, the relationship between structure and performance will
be different for another piece and continually needs to be questioned for the benefit
254 Amanda Bayley
of both the performer and the listener. Performance and analysis research has a
long way to go to develop the range of techniques needed for interpreting music
from the late twentieth century onwards. Applying fresh analytical techniques to
the score and to performance will help to clarify the nature of expressivity for a
broader repertoire, whether that is measured from musical structure or from
expressive performance.
Chapter 14
A Polyphonic Type of Listening

In and Out of Focus:
Berio’s Sequenza XI for Guitar
Mark D. Porcaro
‘Here it is, the ‘maledetta’ (accursed one). It will drive you to despair as it has me.
Coraggio!’
Luciano Berio, Letter to Eliot Fisk
In a series of interviews in 1980–81, Luciano Berio explained that each of his

Sequenzas is unified by three traits: virtuosity, idiomatic writing and above all
polyphony.1 In 1998, he wrote that by polyphony he meant a ‘polyphonic type of
listening ... [which] should be understood in a metaphorical sense, as the exposition
and superposition of differing modes of action and instrumental characteristics’.2
Berio’s Sequenza XI for guitar (1988) presents a clear example of ‘a polyphonic
type of listening’ where, if one engages in a close listening, one perceives a
complex polyphony of four musical sections that each develop independently. In
order to engage in a ‘polyphonic type of listening’ the listener must pay attention to
the relationships between the four sections, rather than just to the apparent
polyphony created by independent lines separated by register or timbre.
A polyphony of differing modes of action
In his comments on Sequenza XI, Berio only addressed the idiomatic nature of the
guitar: he never specifically discussed how he used virtuosity or polyphony. Out of
the three unifying elements of the Sequenzas, polyphony is the least perceptible on
a surface level: apart from one obvious two-voice polyphonic passage there is no
apparent external polyphony in Sequenza XI. Indeed, at first glance, Sequenza XI
appears to consist of several unrelated musical gestures. For example, the work
1
trans. and ed. David Osmond-Smith (New York/London, 1985), pp. 90–99.
2
Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998), CD liner notes, pp. 8–10.
256 Mark D. Porcaro
begins quietly with a mixture of tambora3 and strummed chords, which soon erupt
into violent fortissimo rasguados.4 By the end of the fourth line of music a new
idea emerges: a short, linear, arabesque-like gesture that culminates in a three-note
trill. As the music progresses, similar juxtapositions of disparate elements appear.
Throughout the work the listener is left to wonder how – or if – the several
components interact.
To understand better how Berio employed a polyphony of the different modes
of action, we can turn to a compositional procedure used by Igor Stravinsky. In an
analysis of three of Stravinsky’s works, Edward T. Cone noticed a compositional
procedure in which a single idea is broken up by interruptions of other contrasting
ideas.5 Sequenza XI exhibits this same fractured texture in which Berio cuts up and
pastes together four musical areas. The four different sections are distinguished by
the type of textural material that they contain. Each section, if excised from the
work, proceeds in a logical manner. However, Berio never allows one section to
complete before he interrupts it with another section. He, like Stravinsky, separates
the linear flow of a section either by introducing or continuing the development of
another section. This separation and interruption of the various sections requires
the listener to engage in a polyphonic type of listening.
Before examining the workings of the various sections and their forms, we
must address the issue of differing modes of tension in Berio’s works. In a
discussion of the form of Sequenza I for flute, Berio states that ‘the temporal,
dynamic, pitch and morphological dimensions of the piece are characterized by
maximum, medium and minimum levels of tension’. Maximum tension in time is
‘produced by moments of maximum speed in articulation and moments of
maximum duration of sounds’. In pitch, Berio creates maximum tension ‘when
notes jump about within a wide gamut and establish the tensest intervals, or when
they insist on extreme registers.’ Finally, maximum tension in the morphological
dimension ‘is obtained when the image, my image of the flute, is drastically altered
with flutter tongues, key clicks and double stops (two notes at once).’6 This
discussion of Sequenza I not only explains that Berio is consciously working to
develop what he calls a ‘wide transformational trajectory’,7 but also shows that the
development of minimum, medium and maximum levels of tension within the
differing modes of action (time, pitch, timbre, etc.) generates a type of polyphony
between the different musical elements.
3
Tambora is an effect where the guitarist strikes the strings with the side of their right
hand. It produces a percussive effect.
4
Rasguado is the term used for quickly strumming the strings with either the back of
the nails or the flesh of the fingers on the right hand.
5
Edward T. Cone, ‘Stravinsky: The Progress of a Method’, in Benjamin Boretz and
Edward T. Cone (eds), Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky (Princeton, 1968), pp.
157–8.
6
7
Ibid., p. 26.
Sequenza XI for Guitar 257
One might well argue at this point that all music creates polyphony between the
elements of pitch, harmony, timbre and so forth. What seems to be different in
Berio’s music is that he purposefully separates each element, thereby allowing the
independent development of levels of tension within that element. Thus, it is
possible that the point of maximum tension occurs at different places for each
element, requiring the performer and listener to understand each element as a
separate entity.8
In a sketch of Sincronie for string quartet (1964), Berio gives evidence that he
thought of each parameter of music as having independence. In this sketch, he
identifies five different parameters and their levels of tension at various moments
in the work.9 Each line of the graph plots independently the level of tension –
maximum, medium and low – for each of the five parameters of the work:
Timbro (variaz[ione]) morfol[ogia]

Inensità (opp[ure] variaz[ione] dinamica)
Frequenza variaz[ione] (opp[ure] complessità della articolazione)
Tempo
Sincron[izzazione] (opp[ure] omogeneità con valore contrario)10
The sketch of Sincronie shows that Berio viewed each parameter as a separate unit
in the work, or as an individual voice in the polyphony of the different elements.
Perhaps we can better understand how Berio perceives tension if we think of it
in different terms. In a 1976 interview, Berio suggests that ‘maybe a dialectic
between the focus and the out-of-focus of things is a theme of my work’. He
further clarifies:
This corresponds to a basic experience involving everybody in our society. Individuals

belonging to a group sometimes go away and find themselves without their usual
defences. In order to survive they have to develop new defences in this unknown land,
atmosphere, climate, situation. If they return with some traces of adaptation in the new
field, they will contribute to the development of the group. The same thing happens in
music ... Certain individuals leave the main path, find themselves alone in a new
situation and develop new means of survival. At first, when they return, they may be
8
This differs from the integral serialism of Babbitt and Boulez where each element
follows its own serial path. Berio’s music does not rely on serial procedures to develop
material, and thus the individual elements of music (such as pitch, duration, timbre, texture)
may sometimes work together to achieve a unified climax for a composition.
9
The sketch is reproduced in Thomas Gartmann, ‘“Una frattura tra intenzioni e
realizzazione?” Untersuchungen zu Luciano Berios Sincronie für Streichquartett’, in Felix
Meyer (ed.), Quellenstudien II: Zwölf Komponisten des 20 Jahrhunders (Winterthur, 1993),
p. 90.
10
Timbre (morphological variation) / Intensity (or dynamic variation) / Frequency
variation (or complexity of the articulation) / Tempo / Synchronization (or homogeneity of
the contrary values).
258 Mark D. Porcaro
slightly out of focus in relation to the group, but the focus is eventually restored, through
mutual adjustment.11
Some of the sections of Sequenza XI are out of focus with the group, but with time,
they develop characteristics of the group and come into focus with the whole. By
conflating Berio’s statements about tension and focus, we see that they share points
on the same continuum, with maximum tension being the out-of-focus areas and
minimum tension representing focus. For clarity, I will continue discussing the
levels of tension in terms material being ‘in focus’ and ‘out of focus’.
Although each of the four sections in Sequenza XI derives its material from the
tuning of the guitar, one sees a distinction between the sections by the type of
textural or gestural material that they contain. The four sections are:
1. a four- to six-voice chordal texture in which at least three pitches of every

chord are open strings (unfretted strings);
2. the most identifiable section – because it has the only literally repeating
material – comprising a mixture of chordal and linear textures;
3. linear arabesque gestures that equally divide the twelve-tone aggregate into two
hexachords;
4. two-part counterpoint which creates a climax on the highest pitch of the piece,
B#5.
Each section develops its own path of tension by means of being in or out of focus.
As the level of tension heightens in a section, the structure becomes out of focus.
When Berio creates static or low-tension structures, the section comes into focus.
In this analysis, I examine not only the role that levels of focus play within each of
the four sections, but also the interaction of levels of focus within the whole of the
composition.
Section one: six-voice chordal texture
Berio begins section one, and the work, with the six pitches of the open strings of
the guitar.12 The open strings are tuned by successive perfect fourths, with a major
third between the third and second strings,13 which creates the pitches E2, A2, D3,
G3, B3 and E4. These pitches not only belong to the sound world of the guitar, they
also guide the progress of the pitch, timbre and the intervallic content in this work.
11
Simon Emmerson, ‘Luciano Berio’, Music and Musicians, 24 (1976): 26–8.
12
Although this is described as a six-voice texture, six voices are not always present.
The chords consist of between four and six voices. Each voice part holds its own linear
space. Therefore, when the texture thins, this is analogous to a resting voice part in six-part
harmony.
13
The first string of the guitar is the highest sounding string; by analogy, the sixth
string is the lowest sounding pitch.
Berio claimed that the perfect fourth and the closely related augmented fourth are
important elements in Sequenza XI. The augmented fourth, or tritone, acts as ‘the
passport between the two far-flung harmonic territories’14 of the perfect fourth
tuning of the guitar and a ‘different’ harmony of Berio’s design. Of all of the
intervals in this work, the tritone and the perfect fourth are the most noticeable.
The first chord of the work moves from an open-string chord (which, by its
nature, consists of stacked fourths) to a second chord that, because of three
common tones – all open strings – and similar voicing, resembles the first chord
(Ex. 14.1). However, there are no perfect fourths in the second chord; instead Berio
uses an augmented fourth (C–F) and a perfect fifth (G–D). The third chord retains
three tones from the second chord, only one of which is an open string, while
reintroducing two other open strings.
Example 14.1 First four chords of Sequenza XI
With three open strings the third chord now contains one of the original perfect
fourths (D–G) and the single major third (G–B), and one augmented fourth (C–F).
Although this chord progresses away from the idiomatic voicing of the guitar, it
retains enough identifying traits to reference the open-string sonority. By the fourth
chord, there are again three open strings – all tones in common with the third chord
– but here Berio adds a tritone from E# to A, and in the uppermost voice introduces
E5, the highest pitch in this section. Although this E belongs to a pitch class
idiomatic to the guitar, the pitch itself represents a registral shift, and thus arguably
does not belong to the same pitch world as the open strings.15
By taking out the non-corresponding sections, we see that each new entrance of
section one continues where the last section left off (Ex. 14.2). The basic design of
this section shows an interest in moving from a state of flux – harmonic instability
or a state of being out of focus – to stasis or being in focus (Fig 14.1).
At the beginning, section one is in a state of flux with somewhat chaotic
activity. When the section reaches harmonic stasis on page five, then there is focus.
However, Berio does not end this part of section one with a point of clarity. After
obtaining focus, the music quickly goes out of focus until even the constituent
elements disintegrate, creating glissando chords that have little in common with the
six-voice block chords in this section. Later, on page nine, Berio brings back and
14
Berio, Sequenzas, CD liner notes, p. 20.
15
It is not the highest pitch on the guitar, but it represents the halfway point of the first
string.
260 Mark D. Porcaro
develops similar material from page two. Thus the overall form of section one is in
three parts: pages one to four, pages five to eight and page nine. In the first part
Berio presents the building materials and moves toward a focused area. In the
second part he moves from medium to maximum focus, but then ultimately moves
out of focus. The final part mirrors the first by moving from an out-of-focus area to
a moderately focused area, thus concluding this section.
Example 14.2 Sequenza XI: section 1, beginnings and endings of segments
Note: Dashed lines indicate breaks in the section. As this work has no barlines,
here and elsewhere the first number represents the page followed by the system
number. Thus 1.1 indicates page one, system one.
Fig. 14.1 Form diagram for section 1
Note: In this and other form diagrams, level of focus is measured as: in focus (top), medium
focus (middle tick line), and out of focus (bottom)
Berio’s development of section one shows the polyphony of independent focal

points and a tight compositional plan. When one chord moves to another in this
section, Berio retains almost always three common tones and/or three open strings.
In fact, this section never employs chords that do not contain at least one open
string. Although the guitar can perform six-voice chords that do not use open
strings, Berio never uses such chords. Because of this every chord, whether four or
six voices, shares at least one common tone with every other chord.
To summarize, section one consists of six-voice chords that are related to the
open string chord that starts the work, either by content or similar intervallic
structure, and this chord and its structure help to establish a cohesion within this
section. In addition, the inner voices move from one chord to the next either by
common tones or by moving to open strings. Berio’s concern for logical voice
leading is evident mainly in the inner voices where one traditionally looks for well
thought-out voice leading.
The outside voices, however, leap to what seem at first to be random pitches.
Upon closer inspection we see that Berio exhibits great control on the outer voices
and employs only a limited number of pitches. Berio’s harmonic fields relate to
specific pitches, and those pitches are often fixed in register. Thus, when Berio
uses a pitch, he does not always take advantage of the octave equivalents that
belong to the pitch class. For example, in section one, he uses all of the pitch
classes (Table 14.1) but excludes specific octave occurrences of G and B. Only
open strings G3 and B3 are used (Berio does not use G2, B2, G4 or B4) and, given
their resonant quality, these open strings resonate perceptibly throughout the
texture.
Table 14.1 Pitches used in section 1, arranged chromatically
E2 F2 F2 G2 A2 B#2 C3 C3 D3 D3

E3 f3 F3 G3 G3 A3 A3 B3 C4 C4 D4 D4
E4 F4 F4 G4 a4 B#4 C5 C5 d5 e#5
E5
Note: Italic letters indicate the open strings, lower case indicates pitches rarely used. Pitches
f3, a4 and eb5 are only played once each; d5 is only played twice.
Berio exhibits the same care for pitch in the outer voices (Ex. 14.3). The top voice
plays seven specific pitches16 and the bottom voice plays eight specific pitches. In
addition, within the first four chords, Berio defines the boundaries of each voice:
the bass voice moves from E2 to D3, and the top voice moves from E4 to E5.
Within what I call the ‘presentation’ part of section one – that is, where the
material is initially laid out – Berio establishes the pitch material and boundaries of
16
I do not include the rarely used pitches, A4 and E#4, and D4, which are only used
once and twice, respectively.
262 Mark D. Porcaro
each voice. In essence, he defines the rules here at the beginning that he will
adhere to in this section for the rest of the composition.
Example 14.3 Sequenza XI: pitch boundaries of the outer voices in section 1
Note: In the top system, notes without stems are rarely used. 1x and 2x indicate the number
of times a specific pitch is used.
Section two: the mixture of chordal and linear texture
The second section of Sequenza XI at first seems closely related to section one in
that it continues with four- to six-voice chords. Unlike section one it employs short
linear passages in addition to chords. With the entrance of section two we hear the
‘polyphonic type of listening’ at work.
As noted earlier, section two is the most readily identifiable section. It contains
some of the most tranquil and slowly moving music in the work, and it also has the
only literally repeating material: material presented on the second page returns
later with minor changes on pages 11 and 12. By excising the other sections, it is
evident that section two slowly comes into focus and later returns in focus.
Within the presentation of section two there are three parts, X, Y and Z.17 Berio
initially presents three fragments of part X on page one (1.1, 1.2, 1.6), before
giving a full presentation of parts X, Y and the beginning of part Z on page two
(2.4–2.7; see Ex. 14.4). Each of these three parts concludes with a cadence on the
trichord D4–C5– G5. This is not only the first chord not to use an open string but
also the highest pitch of the work so far (Ex. 14.5). Each part (X, Y and Z) centres
largely on the alternation of two chords, α and β (Ex. 14.6). In both X and Y, Berio
interjects short linear passages in the lowest register between alternations of α and β.
Part Z is slightly different: although it also makes use of chords along with
short, low-register linear passages, it does not just alternate two chords. It uses the α
17
By analogy the return section contains the same three sections.
Example 14.4 Sequenza XI: section 2, parts X, Y and Z (2.4–3.3)

264 Mark D. Porcaro
chord and cadences with the same three-note chord as the other two sections, but
contrasts with X and Y in the introduction of new harmonies, the insistence on the
pitch classes E, B# and B, and the presentation of a new timbre by the use of
open-string harmonics.
Example 14.5 Sequenza XI: section 2 cadence chord (2.4)
Example 14.6 Sequenza XI: α and β chords in section 2 (2.7)
Following the full presentation of parts X, Y and partial presentation of Z (2.4–

2.7), Berio immediately gives a varied repetition of X and Y followed by the first
real presentation of Z (2.7–3.3). Once Berio has a full statement of all of the parts,
or in other words brings the section into focus, he leaves section two until page 11,
where it returns with minimal changes from the initial presentation (11.6–12.2).
In section two we see also Berio’s concern for differing levels of tension or
focus. When he begins the section, he slowly presents information interspersed
with parts of other sections or what seem to be improvisatory gestures. This is
especially apparent at the end of page one where, after an arpeggiated α chord,
Berio proceeds to repeat material from system two, but then suddenly includes a
quick linear gesture that seems not to relate to the other material in this section
texturally, rhythmically or harmonically. On page two, when the section seems to
be in focus, Berio interrupts the forward motion of the material with a slightly
varied repetition. Once at the cadence of Z, the section moves quickly back out of
focus as segments of the section appear juxtaposed with elements from another
section.
When Berio returns to section two on page 11, he uses one chord not previously
used (Ex. 14.7) as a means of suddenly pulling the music back into focus. After the
full ‘recapitulation’ of parts X, Y and Z, Berio breaks down the material into small
remnants of section two.
With the second section, Berio seems to draw a circle around the music; it
begins near the start of Sequenza XI and ends about three systems from the end.
Unlike section one, section two gradually moves towards clarity, then quickly
becomes out of focus, only to return much later completely in focus, at which point
it disintegrates into a collection of out-of-focus fragments (Fig 14.2).
Example 14.7 Sequenza XI: new chord at 11.6
Section three: linear hexachords
The third section in Sequenza XI consists of linear arabesque gestures that equally
divide the twelve-tone aggregate into two hexachords: a (with the pitch classes C,
C, F, F, G, B) and b (with D, E#, E, G, A, B#). Berio almost always groups these
tones in their respective hexachords; however, he does mix one or two notes in
order to blur the boundary ever so slightly between the two hexachords. Often
Berio arranges the hexachords so that a tritone forms between every other pair of
pitches (Ex. 14.8).
Although in the other sections Berio often used pitches fixed in register, here he
uses pitch classes wherein register is not as important. Interval inversions are
therefore treated as equivalents – augmented fourth is the same as the diminished
fifth, the perfect fourth as equivalent to the perfect fifth – and thus are used
interchangeably, as demonstrated in three separate passages which use the a
hexachord (Ex. 14.9). In the first passage, Berio arranges the pitches to create
alternating diminished fifth and perfect fourth intervals. The second passage uses
alternating augmented fourth and perfect fifth intervals, whereas the series of
266 Mark D. Porcaro
intervals in the third passage is diminished fifth–perfect eleventh–augmented

eleventh–perfect eleventh–diminished twelfth. Each of these segments provides
evidence that Berio purposefully ordered the pitches in section two to create a
maximum number of tritones and perfect fourths and fifths, or their displacements.
Example 14.8 Most common arrangement of hexachords in Sequenza XI
When we first encounter hexachord a at 1.4, all six pitches appear as a single
figure (Ex. 14.9). At the second entrance Berio adds one pitch from the other
collection, E4, and duplicates one pitch, B3, to create an eight-note figure (1.5). He
follows this with a full statement of hexachord b grouped in an odd assortment of a
four-note ascent, a three-note trill and a four-note descent that includes two pitches
from section two.
Example 14.9 Sequenza XI: arrangement of the pitches in hexachord a

At the point where we first hear section three, we are in the midst of the two other
sections. Because of this, section three can only interject a few small segments of
its development at a time, but by the third page, section three is able to pursue its
development with minimal interruptions. Here, Berio presents various linear
gestures which may contain only the six pitches of one hexachord, or may use the
six and borrow one (or sometimes two) pitches from the other hexachord. For
example, on the third system of page three, we see a collection of six pitches, all
belonging to hexachord a. However, the target note of this six-note figure is E4
from hexachord b. Afterwards, hexachord a asserts itself but is soon lost in the
remnants of the disintegration of section two.
Several parts of this section clearly show that Berio was intentionally grouping
pitches in hexachords. For example, in the middle of the third page (Ex. 14.10)
Berio uses hexachord a, G, F, C, C, F and B (labelled a1 in Ex. 14.10), followed
by a trill on three of the pitches: B, C, C (a2), which then leads into a new gesture
that repeats the pitches of hexachord a in a new order (a3). Immediately following
this, Berio uses hexachord b for the next six-note figure (b1). He completes this
passage with an eight-note gesture that uses the last two notes of b (b2) followed
by four notes of a (a4).
Example 14.10 Sequenza XI: pitch groupings based on hexachords (6.6)
In section three, Berio slowly brings the music into focus by showing a clear
division between the hexachords. The first focal point comes in the middle of page
four when the hexachords present their respective pitches so that each has three
prominent tritones (Ex. 14.11).
Example 14.11 Sequenza XI: alternating hexachords (4.5–6)
After page four, the section loses focus again as the hexachords fragment into two-
or three-note groups and freely mix pitches from the both hexachords. On page
five, section three appears to come back into focus when the guitar plays
hexachord b as a single tremolo gesture (5.4). The next passage of upwardly
268 Mark D. Porcaro
expanding three-note trills loses focus and, soon after, section three is violently
interrupted by a return to section one. Across pages six to nine, sections one and
three enter a dialogue, sometimes interrupting one another, sometimes quietly
waiting for a chance to speak. Section three comes to the foreground in the
dialogue each time but it is not completely focused until the second system of page
ten. Here, Berio alternates hexachords with almost no interruptions, segmentation
or mixing until the return of section two on page 11 (Ex. 14.12).
Example 14.12 Sequenza XI: alternation of hexachords a and b (10.2–4)

The tension of focus in this section is best understood as a swell that begins to rise
to two small crests followed by a long crashing wave in which the alternation of
hexachords disintegrates, leaving us in the coda with only fragments of each
hexachord (Fig 14.3). As we see from the graph, Berio develops this section
differently from the previous sections by saving the most focused material for the
very end.
Section four: Two-part counterpoint
We do not encounter section four until page seven (7.6). This is the only section in
which Berio explicitly writes two-part counterpoint: section three used linear
tremolos with a single note sounding as a pedal against a moving line, but there
were never two simultaneous voices with their own linear identity. By using two-
voiced counterpoint in section four and by reaching B#5, the highest pitch of the
piece,18 Berio creates a climax in two ways, through both pitch and a dramatic
change in texture from the chordal textures and single-voice linear gestures of the
rest of the piece.
Example 14.13 Sequenza XI: section four divided into three voice parts by
range (7.6)
18
In this passage, Berio also reaches the highest pitches on the guitar. The top voice
comes to a stop on B#5, a semitone down from the highest possible fretted pitch, B5.
270 Mark D. Porcaro
When we disentangle the two written voices, the top voice itself seems to imply
two voices: the highest voice ascends chromatically from C4 to B#5, and the lower
voice ascends chromatically from E4 to E5, with one added lower C4 at the
beginning (Ex. 14.13). By the fifth highest pitch, F4, Berio creates a sequence in
the strictly defined music–theoretic sense: a melodic pattern successively repeats at
different pitch levels in the upper written voice (in Ex. 14.13, both voice 1–1 and
1–2 participate in the sequence).
Section four develops one strand or voice at a time toward the end of Sequenza
XI. Halfway through page seven we first encounter a fragmented version of the
upper voice of the section (Ex. 14.14). Between iterations of this material, Berio
interjects bits and pieces of the other three sections, thus disguising the appearance
of the newest and last section. This presentation lasts for only a brief moment,
ending on the last system of page seven (7.9).
Example 14.14 Sequenza XI: voice 1 fragmentation (7.6–9)
At almost exactly the same place on the next page (8.6), Berio resumes the
presentation of section four (Ex. 14.15). Here, he introduces the bottom voice of
the section with fewer interruptions than the top voice. Like the top voice, Berio
ends the presentation of the bottom voice on the last system of the page before
moving on to material from other sections (8.9).
Once Berio has completed the presentation of both voices in this section, he
then combines the two voices in the middle of page nine (9.5). By the last system,
the material has broken down into a highly out-of-focus state. At this point all that
is left are two pitches, B and B# – the pitches that started the passage (9.4) – which
oscillate from one tone to the other until section three reappears on page ten.
This section represents yet another way for Berio to organize the presentation
and development of material (Fig 14.4). It begins out of focus, with the listener
unaware that a new section has begun, but soon becomes more focused as this new
material builds to a climax at the end of page seven. Section four disappears
quickly; when it returns on the next page the material seems familiar in its
structure, but different in the pitches and range. Like the page before, we sense a
feeling of a developing climax as the lower voice of the two rises higher and
higher, which creates the feeling of moving more into focus. Finally, the two
sections emerge to present the most in-focus version, which quickly becomes out
of focus in that hardly any of the material of the two voices is left.
Example 14.15 Sequenza XI: voice 2 (8.6–9)

272 Mark D. Porcaro
Conclusion
Within Sequenza XI each section behaves and develops at its own pace (Fig 14.5).
Even though we can separate Sequenza XI into four distinct sections, Berio unites
them by using a small amount of basic material. By comparing the four sections,
we see two sections with vertical elements (sections one and two) and two with
linear elements (sections three and four). The two vertical sections share some
common pitch material, as do sections three and four, which makes each section
seem like part of the same whole. For example, at the beginning of Sequenza XI
there are several chords that I have classified as belonging to section one, but at the
same time they resemble the α and β chords that appear in section two (Ex. 14.16;
see also Ex. 14.6). In this figure, we see that both sections share similar chords:
discounting octave transpositions, the second and third chords of section one
resemble the α chord of section two. In fact, this same chord begins section two
every time that the X material appears (see the earlier discussion on section two).
Ultimately, however, the apparently common materials behave and develop in
different ways, and for this reason can be considered as separate sections instead of
the same section.
Fig. 14.5 Form diagram for all sections
Another element that helps unify the entire composition is that nearly every
sonority, whether vertical or linear, contains at least one open string. Because
Berio asserts that a composition should be idiomatic to the given instrument, he
allows the open strings of the guitar to take a prominent role in the composition.
One of the most interesting idiomatic passages in the work occurs on page eight
where Berio added a short section for the guitarist to retune if necessary.
According to Fisk, this tuning passage was included after the initial performance
for practical reasons because the guitar had gone out of tune.19 Berio said of the
ruined tuning, ‘I was horrified! How could this have happened? Little did I know
about the fragile nature of the guitar’s tuning. All I could think of was: I have to
come up with something!’20 Because Berio used the tuning of the guitar (and its
weakness) to help unify the composition harmonically, this tuning passage fits
easily within the harmonic language of the work.
Example 14.16 Sequenza XI: similarity and overlap between sections 1 and 2
(1.1)
I have argued that Sequenza XI fits within the Sequenza series because it utilizes
three elements common to the series as a whole: virtuosity, idiomatic writing and
polyphony. We see virtuosity most clearly on the surface of the music because of
the speed of the passages and the difficulty of the various gestures and chords. To
see the other two elements we have to dig a little deeper. We see the idiomatic
nature of the writing when we notice the use of open strings and the way in which
all of the sonorities share common tones, or when Berio finds a solution to a
guitaristic problem. As for polyphony, it has shown itself in different ways:
through actual polyphony or through quasi-polyphony – when one voice represents
two distinct registers, as seen in section four – or through polyphony of the
different elements.
In this study, I have only touched on the polyphony found in the structure or
morphological aspect of the work. It is possible for one to find further examples of
polyphony in different elements such as pitch, dynamics, rhythm and so forth in
Berio’s compositional process. Furthermore, it is evident from Berio’s comments
that he creates compositions with a polyphony of the different modes of action.
Although polyphony or multiple sections of meaning may be inherent in every
19
Gerd Wuestemann, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XI per Chitarra Sola: A Performer’s
Practical Analysis with Performance Edited Score (DMA dissertation, University of
Arizona, 1998), p. 42.
20
Ibid.
274 Mark D. Porcaro
composition,21 it is particularly important in Berio’s works in general, and

specifically in Sequenza XI. An awareness of the varying ways in which Berio uses
polyphony is necessary in understanding this work, if not all of his works.
21
Laurence Bitensky addresses multiplicity in Berio’s music in his PhD dissertation,
Multiplicity and the Music of Luciano Berio: An Introduction to Critical and Analytical
Issues (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1995).
Chapter 15
…and so a chord consoles us: Berio’s

Sequenza XIII (Chanson) for Accordion
Thomas Gartmann
Starting in 1958, Luciano Berio composed the series of solo portraits of the most
important Western instruments and of their soloists that are the Sequenzas,
contemporary portraits of traditional instruments that reflect an awareness of genre
and tradition and that play with the customary images of the instruments while, at
the same time, differentiating themselves from them, drawing up new images of
the instruments. Berio has never been interested in one-dimensionality.1
The focus is on the sound of each instrument and the ways in which it is played,
both idiomatic and atypical. Sound and ways of playing are explored to the limit
and beyond, partly as a true recherche musicale, and usually in close collaboration
with the soloists in each case. Many of the pieces are therefore also portraits of
their interpreters. Berio wrote each piece for a virtuoso performer, not for ‘elegant
and rather diaphanous [men] with agile fingers and an empty head’2 but for
musicians with a broad perspective, who are masters of both the classical repertoire
and avant-garde music. As well as particular technical skills, swift changes using
both conventional and contemporary playing techniques call for a mental virtuosity
of artistic sensitivity and intelligence:
Virtuosity often arises out of a conflict, a tension between the musical idea and the
instrument, between concept and musical substance. … Anyone worth calling a virtuoso
these days has to be a musician capable of moving within a broad historical perspective
1
This essay is a reworking of the author’s contribution to the international accordion
week in Biel in March 1999 as part of the CHAIN project, and is translated here by Zenda
Nash. A short version was published in German as ‘...und so tröstet uns ein Akkord. Zu
Berios Sequenza XIII (Chanson) for accordion’, Das Akkordeon, 23 (1999): 5–17. The
author is very grateful to Teodoro Anzellotti for several observations, hints and explications.
2
trans. and ed. David Osmond-Smith (New York/London 1985), p. 90.
276 Thomas Gartmann
and of resolving the tension between the creativity of yesterday and today … I’ve got no
interest in, or patience for those who ‘specialize’ in contemporary music.3
The soloist who was Berio’s first model was Severino Gazzelloni, a protagonist in
both the Vivaldi revival and in the avant-garde: in Sequenza I for flute, Bach is as
near as Darmstadt.
In each piece, Berio is looking for the character, the soul of the instrument,
sometimes in its specific expression, but also indirectly, by using it in a non-
idiomatic way. This is often done with playful handling, not unlike a child tapping
at its toys to see what illegitimate uses they might have, pushing the instrument and
its player to their limits but without actually altering the instrument as such or even
preparing it, in the manner of a composer such as Cage:
Musical instruments can’t really be changed, destroyed or invented … a musical

instrument is in itself a piece of musical language. … The composer can only contribute
to the transformation of musical instruments by using them, and trying to understand
post factum the complex nature of the transformations … [I]n all of my Sequenzas, I
have never tried to alter the nature of the instrument, nor to use it ‘against’ its own
4
nature.
However, Berio has time and again enjoyed broadening the image of the
instrument, in particular eliciting polyphony – explicitly and implicitly – from
typically monophonic instruments by means of rapid changes of main and
secondary notes, of registers, of sounding and expression, and also through
multiphonics on wind instruments. With instruments that are already capable of
playing chords, such as the harp or the piano, he creates a polyphony in the
metaphorical sense: a polyphony of gestures, resonances and layers of sound.
Often symbolic accessories create a level of their own: the mute of the trombone,
which gets its own notated part in Sequenza V; vibrating columns of air triggered
by trumpet blasts in Sequenza X; the diapason of the oboe Sequenza.
Until 1995, the Sequenza series dealt with orchestral instruments: the four
woodwind instruments, trumpet and trombone, violin, viola, violoncello and harp,
and also piano, guitar and the human voice.5 A Sequenza for percussion had long
been planned, whereas the composer showed no interest in the French horn. Apart
from this series, Berio wrote solo works that usually emphasized only one central
aspect of the instrument, which also gave such works their titles: these include
Rounds (1965) for harpsichord, Gesti (1966) for recorder, and Lied (1983) for
clarinet.
3
Several times, Berio argued in this way in both programme notes to his Sequenzas
and in his conversations with Dalmonte. See Berio, Two Interviews, pp. 90–1.
4
5
Although these latter three, guitar and voice most particularly, are not standard
orchestral members, they all have a firm role in orchestral music of the twentieth century.
Sequenza XIII (Chanson) for Accordion 277
Sequenza XIII (Chanson) for accordion (1995), falls somewhere between these
two groups of works: it is a Sequenza, but the only one originally composed with a
subtitle. Other works in the series have titles associated with them in other guises,
such as the Chemins series and Corale, the extended version Sequenza VIII for
violin (1976–77), but as a Sequenza, Chanson is unique in this respect.
Chanson’s title refers to the aforementioned Lied for clarinet. Like the clarinet,
the accordion falls between the different instrumental blocks, an instrument for
both so-called serious and light music, a much-played instrument but not a
common orchestral one. There is therefore a similarity to Sequenza XI for guitar
(1988), which plays with the tension between classical and flamenco style and
makes use of certain rasguado (strumming) and tamburo (drumming) techniques.
Elements of light music can also be found in other Sequenzas, such as in the
clowning of Sequenza V for trombone (1966), and in Sequenza III for voice (1965–
66) which, in Berberian’s performance especially, owes something to the Pop Art
and comic strips that inspired her own Stripsody (1966). Berio was always
convinced that it is an indication of musicality if one can master the art of light
music too,6 something he himself proved most elegantly in his adaptations of songs
by the Beatles and Kurt Weill, as well as in pieces of his own.
The stylistic ambivalence starts with the dedication. Like the Sequenzas for
trumpet and trombone – which honour both the interpreter and also, respectively,
Ernest Fleischmann, the general director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the
musical clown Grock – Chanson carries a double dedication: ‘scritta per Teodoro
Anzellotti e dedicata a Gianni Coscia’. It is written, therefore, for – and with – a
leading soloist, who has developed contemporary accordion playing and has played
a considerable part in shaping composition for this instrument; and dedicated to
one of the leading jazz, Klezmer and tango accordionists, the poet of an almost
forgotten Italy – and former lawyer.
Pitch, theme and layering
All the ambivalence that makes the instrument so fascinating is, in fact,
immediately obvious in the opening theme (Ex. 15.1). This is a remarkable
melody, in descending fourths against a counterpoint of fifths and fourths –
conceivably an archaic-seeming bicinium. The counterpoint is a bass line (Ex.
15.2) which outlines nothing less than the complete cycle of fifths. The
associations are obvious: an étude, a school work, but also Mozart’s Symphony
No. 40, K.V. 550.7 These associations also lie literally in the hand, in the fifths’
fingerings on the accordion. At a later, virtuosic point (Ex. 15.3), Berio follows the
fingering precisely, formally writing out the tablature: the sound material that
6
Personal communication with the author.
7
Specifically the first movement, bars 101–34.
278 Thomas Gartmann
unfolds is borrowed from the mechanics of the instrument, in a way similar to how
the pitch of the guitar’s strings shaped the material of Sequenza XI.
Example 15.1 Sequenza XIII: opening theme
Example 15.2 Sequenza XIII: reduction of the bass line, page 1, system 1–3
Example 15.3 Sequenza XIII: virtuosic passage, page 3, system 3
Here we have, for the length of one bar, the caricatured, distorted world of
idiomatic accordion playing: dancing fingers, apparently empty figurations rattling
away in a brash, noisy way, mechanical chord links – although these are broken up
with ironic swirls full of tritones in the treble, and a sudden return to the peace and
simplicity of the beginning, whose thin texture is underlined by the four-foot

register in the left hand.
In this section (page three, third system), Berio uses the second manual with its
fixed chord couplers: this is the standard bass manual that we know almost
exclusively from light music. Using this traditional chord manual, harmonies are
produced with a button joining the individual notes into major, minor, seventh or
diminished seventh chords. From the point of view of playing technique, using this
manual does not at first appear very inviting, since the chords are preset for concise
accompaniments and are physically arranged to make execution easier in a
traditionally diatonic context. On the other hand, it is technically an extremely
complicated matter to use unusual chord sequences or to break out of the
standardized harmony, which sets Berio a specific challenge. With particular
layerings and combinations of the set chords – only possible with the accordion –
unexpected shadings, interfering swings and sound processes with new tone
colours are unleashed, roughly comparable to the resonances that Berio used in his
Sequenzas for piano and trumpet where, respectively, the sostenuto pedal and the
piano’s resonance are used to hold a metaphorical discourse at a secondary level.
At the same time, the mere use of this manual automatically symbolizes ‘light
music’ and an imaginary dialogue of cultures is initiated. This manual, which has
only a range between E2 and D4, produces a predominantly soft middle register
tonality, in which the precise dividing lines between the chords become
increasingly blurred.
This blurring of dividing lines can also be observed in the theme itself, where a
chromatic middle line is fitted in between the two contrapuntal lines and from this
a chord is built up, organically (Ex. 15.1). This kind of chord construction is found
frequently in the piece, with increasing numbers of notes, some of which Berio did
not add until well into the process of composition. He uses large spans – on the
button accordion one can span up to three octaves – and creates sounds that are
only possible on this instrument. This often makes real mixtures of colour develop,
where the added high notes occasionally also join together to form their own
chromatic lines and hence their own layers.
These extended positions give a neutral, unspecific affect. Neutral, almost
reserved, the delicate sound with the soft eight-foot register and broad legato
arches is also specifically indicated in the score’s opening instruction, sempre ppp
e lontano, one of Berio’s favourite expressions when he is alluding to distant, alien
worlds. In Rendering (1988–89), his response to the fragments of Schubert’s tenth
symphony, a whole realm of the imagination appears like this, larded with both
real and ‘imaginary’ quotations.8 Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference:
in Rendering such passages are marked non cantando, with three exclamation
marks, whereas the subtitle of the Sequenza is, conversely, Chanson. The
8
See also Thomas Gartmann, ‘Konfrontation zweier Musikwelten. Luciano Berios
Annäherung an Sinfoniefragmente Schuberts’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 11–12 August 1990:
60; Thomas Gartmann, ‘...dass nichts an sich jemals vollendet ist.’ Untersuchungen zum
Instrumentalschaffen von Luciano Berio, second edition (Berne, 1997), pp. 127–56.
280 Thomas Gartmann
Sequenza’s metric division into clear, well-rounded phrases is song-like, although

these phrases overlap. Bar lines appear only rarely, normally only where a new
tempo begins and occasionally where the registration changes. Even without
marked bars a sense of pulse can be maintained, if not always in minims, then in
the crotchets of the given metronome marking, which are usually arranged into
virtual four- and eight-bar groups. This contrasts completely with the non cantando
sections of Rendering, which are expressly senza tempo. It is also in contrast to the
other Sequenzas, which often play with their rhythmic and metric openness, and
which gave Umberto Eco the impetus for his poetics of the Open Work. The later,
strictly metricized, rhythmically exact renotations of the Sequenzas for flute and
oboe still thrive on the ambiguity achieved through an excess or deficit of notes in
the score in relation to the implied metre.9 However, Sequenza XIII differs in this
as well: it is a Chanson. Even if no duration of note is repeated in the extremely
complex rhythmic structure of the theme – though Berio dispenses with a serial
order – and the many suspensions and anticipations point to strict contrapuntal
rules, the rhythm is more reminiscent of gently swinging, syncopated light music.
The striding (‘marching’) tempo, MM 66, ma flessibile, is suited to these
sequences of descending fifths and fourths, a harmonic field being paced out. If the
material is reduced to its pitch-classes (independent of the actual octave position),
a strictly symmetrical pattern is revealed, with which, in fan-like pairs of minor
seconds, the music strives towards chromatic completeness (Ex. 15.4). It breaks
off, however, after the eleventh note, a pattern that Berio previously used thirty
years earlier in the versione provvisoria of Sequenza VII for oboe.10
Example 15.4 Sequenza XIII: pairs of pitch-class minor seconds in the

opening theme
9
See also Thomas Gartmann, ‘Das neu erschlossene Kunstwerk: Luciano Berios
Überarbeitungen der Sequenza’, in Kathrin Eberl and Wolfgang Ruf (eds), Musikkonzepte –
Konzepte der Musikwissenschaft. Bericht über den Internationalen Kongreß der
Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Halle (Saale) 1998 (Kassel, 2001), vol. 2, pp. 611–17; and
Gartmann, ‘Das offene Kunstwerk – neu erschlossen. Zu Luciano Berios Überarbeitung der
Sequenza’, in Antonio Baldassarre, Susanne Kübler, and Patrick Müller (eds) Musik denken:
Festschrift Ernst Lichtenhahn (Berne, 2000), pp. 219–34.
10
See Gartmann, ‘...dass nichts an sich jemals vollendet ist’, pp. 60–67. (In this
scheme, notes in parentheses are either sustained notes which then form part of a second
pairing, or repetitions of notes heard earlier in the scheme.)
While the F2 of the opening is hidden in a sequence of thirds (now F4), the starting
point for the next chromatic fanning out processes is the missing C of the first,
now the bass note of both treble and bass chords (Ex. 15.5). At the same time, it
functions as a melodically chromatic note leading in both directions. The missing
note in this second 11-note sequence, E#, then takes on special significance in the
next section (Ex. 15.6) because of its prominent position, often right on top of the
chord. The complementary note to the 11-note unit, therefore, clearly functions as
a hinge. This chain-like construction method, linking harmonic fields together by
means of a complementary element that takes on a prominent shaping function in
the following field, can be traced back as far as the 1970s in Berio’s work: in the
orchestral work Still (1973), this harmonic process was one if its defining
characteristics.
Example 15.5 Sequenza XIII: second 11-note sequence, page 1, system 2
Example 15.6 Sequenza XIII: prominent E# in the third fanning-out

sequence, page 1, systems 2–3
When the first 11-note sequence is completed, culminating in a four-note chord as

the melodic line of fourths comes to the end of its phrase, this completion is
emphasized by a vibrato and an accented A4 in the bass that is at the same time the
upbeat for the next overlapping phrase (see Ex. 15.1). The vibrato here has several
functions: structurally, it marks the end of the phrase; it also disturbs the calm
marching and the beautiful sound; and symbolically, it references light music’s use
of the vibrato. By plainly adding on vibrato, Berio is also commenting upon it, and
the abruptness of its interruption suggests he is denouncing it.
282 Thomas Gartmann
As the piece continues, the varied repetitions adopt the model of melody–
counterpoint–pedal, descending fifths and fourths and chromatic middle voices,
creating emphasis and disturbance using both vibrato and accent. The number of
voices in the opening theme steadily increases from one to four and then expands
to a seven-note chord in the middle of the second system (see Ex. 15.4), this
fanning-out supported by a crescendo to mezzo forte. In the final system of page
one, an eight-note chord in close position is reached, and is shaken up with vibrato.
After this, the opening theme is heard again, now moving more quickly. A
crescendo brings the piece swiftly to another full-hand fingering at the end of the
first page, this time somewhat bitonal with the conflict of D minor against E major
with an added F. The accent and vibrato now appear earlier, and in the stretched
ending of this passage (Ex. 15.7) the increase in tempo to MM 104 is an integral
part of the composition, with a halving of the note values and an accelerando to
almost double the speed.
Example 15.7 Sequenza XIII: restatement of theme, Sequenza XIII, page 1,

system 4
It is not only in Sinfonia that Berio’s music is strongly rooted in music history,
playing around with its outstanding works and repeatedly inviting us to make
musical associations. This accelerando – with its upswings, upbeats, notes built up
into dense chords, suspended notes, leading note chromaticism, with its insistent
pushing forward and its refusal to reach a resolution of its promise – calls to mind
the prelude to Tristan und Isolde, especially the entry in the hard eight-foot register
at the second accelerando marking, when yet more vibrato is added (Ex. 15.8)
This leads into a thoroughly broad gesture as a series of chords characterized by
minor thirds is presented, introduced with rapid, sailing arpeggios and hurled out
fortissimo, accentuated and with a thick vibrato. Preceded by the transitional notes
in the bass, B#–G#, the already familiar 11-note field of the beginning (without C)
returns again at this point.
This third iteration of the theme leads into stereotypical accompaniments, the
type that is idiomatic for the accordion – or could be felt to be so – and at a lively
tempo. However, the seemingly banal formula proves to be rigorously derived, the
accompanying figure prepared from the point of view of theme and motif, the
rising fourths a response to the theme’s descending fourths, with the adding
passing note E#, all of this anticipated with thematic weight in the right hand by a
gradual accelerando (Ex. 15.9). As soon as the various figures of the music
become established, Berio begins – as he did in Sequenza II for harp – a two-tier

game, passing the figure from one hand to the other, each time putting something
weightier in the other hand as contrast. As an additional difficulty, the bellows still
have to be operated with the left hand. Then Berio suddenly switches to the second
manual and indulges in pure figure and effect, with fixed seventh and minor chords
and chord tremolos on top of one another, then breaking off the rattle again at the
first rest and disappointing any expectations there might be of a virtuoso
continuation.
Example 15.8 Sequenza XIII: page 2, systems 1–2
Example 15.9 Sequenza XIII: development of accompaniment motif on page 2
a) system 2, bar 3
b) system 3, end of bar 1
c) system 3, beginning of bar 2
d) system 6, bar 2
284 Thomas Gartmann
Then, straight away, he piles three chord couplings on top of one another, and
shows in what a complex way a manual that is actually quite crude can be handled
(Ex. 15.10a). A second chord is added to the first, and often then a third, even a
chord tremolo that can only be produced on this instrument. Above this the treble
indulges in virtuoso figures, leading into a loud bellows tremolo (Ex. 15.10b) and
more extremely difficult virtuoso passages, which require very intricate playing.
Wide position interval tremolos form one layer – ninths, sixths, fifths and thirds. In
parallel to this the chord tremolos in the left hand compress into a trill (Ex. 15.10c).
As a third layer, the high note B#6 sounds above this and is later chromatically
raised further to B6, also having the effect of an organ mixture stop.
This combination of gestures and layers, which creates a secondary discourse,
is already familiar from the Sequenzas for harp and piano. However, here the
layers appear much more closely related to each other. So, for instance, one chord
link is mirrored by the coupling of four-foot and eight-foot registers, connected
with a tremolo in thirds (Ex. 15.11).
Example 15.10 Sequenza XIII: gestures and layers, pages 2–3
a) Three chord couplings, page 2, system 4
b) Bellows tremolo, page 2, systems 5–6

c) Chord tremolo and trill, page 3, systems 1–2
Example 15.11 Sequenza XIII: page 3, system 4
Number games
The ambiguities of the piece are also reflected in the tempo. The tempo primo MM
66, ma flessible, which corresponds to a classic tempo giusto, is contrasted with a
tempo of MM 104, reached each time with accelerando and crescendo, for the
virtuoso sections; the tempo primo which appears again subito is conveyed as a
motif with overlapping phrases or emphasized individual notes. Through the
roughly whole number ratio of 3:5 the two tempos clearly relate to one other.
Between them the tempo MM 84 is brought in abruptly, like a change of register,
initially for passages consisting predominantly of chords. Here, too, a whole
number ratio can be determined, 4:3 to the base tempo. In fact, in this thirteenth
Sequenza, all sorts of number games can be demonstrated. As in a rondo, the
opening theme is heard, like a refrain, thirteen times; not always synchronous with
this, the tempo primo also returns thirteen times; and the complementary tempi of
MM 104 and MM 84 are found eight and five times respectively, thirteen times in
sum. Whatever does not move within this numerical framework stands out: the
only extended bellows tremolo is combined with a single ritardando just below the
286 Thomas Gartmann
tempo primo at MM 64 (see Ex. 15.10b). Three times in all the upper tempo limit
is breached, accelerating to MM 112 (an exact doubling of the tempo primo) and
interestingly, always connected with the broad sweeps of B4–D#6, wide position
chords, both hands acting independently of each other, and with loud dynamics
(see, for example, Ex. 15.12). There then follows the only compromise, where the
tempo can only be whipped up to MM 92, and the return to the resting points, once
to MM 54 with a fermata, and then to MM 50, both towards the end of page six,
and at the very end on page seven. However, these are not ‘stations’: one must
remain alert. The Chemins series of compositions, which put the Sequenzas in an
orchestral setting, fills these pauses with commentary and vitality in the form of
‘orchestral cadences’. Berio’s fermatas, the duration of which he always indicated
to the exact second in later years, are also extremely important as dividing
caesurae and as brakes.
Example 15.12 Sequenza XIII: B4–D#6 leap associated with the MM 112
tempo, page 4, end of system 4
Berio consciously chose the English term ‘accordion’, not the Italian fisarmonica.
He wanted ‘chord’ as the root of the term in the title itself – but Berio evades our
expectation by building up chords but then using them contrapuntally, not as
accompaniment. The result is polyphony instead of chordal music, an imaginary
chanson in fourths with a very serious handling of the material.
There is an obvious comparison in Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, with its
unavoidably tonal twelve-tone sequence, where the opening passage is likewise
genuinely produced from the mechanics of the instrument, the violin’s open
strings. This comparison can be carried still further with other parallels: in Berg’s
concerto, strictly original melody is combined with dodecaphonic development,
strict counterpoint with a homage to Bach’s chorale Es ist genug on the one hand,
and on the other, the first notes of a Ländler melody – ‘Wie aus der Ferne’ – in the
third movement. With these allusions to the Berg concerto, another classical work
which switches between the light and the serious side of music, Berio seems to
have intended to focus attention on the heights to which he aspires: the
ennoblement of the accordion.
Little by little Berio felt his way around this instrument, which also played a
part in his own biography: in his youth, he financed his studies at the conservatoire
in Milan by working as a drummer in an accordion band. It therefore had
associations for him with that time, but is equally associated with his grandfather,
Adolfo, who played the accordion. This might explain the prominent role of the
accordion in Berio’s late work. He made use of the accordion’s tone colour in Un
Re in Ascolto (1979–84) and after he got to know Teodoro Anzellotti, he used it
increasingly: always on the move in the birthday trio for Mauricio Kagel with
violin and trombone, very loudly with runs and figures in Chemins V (1992), which
grew out of Sequenza XI for guitar – here, again, another connection is made
between Chanson and the Sequenza for guitar – and finally as tone colour in the
opera Outis (1995–96). These other compositions indicate his route towards the
creation of a substantial piece in which the soul of the accordion might be
fathomed:
I had already used the accordion on a variety of occasions, ‘hidden’ within instrumental
groups and as a timbre mediator between different families of instruments. But the
encounter with Teodoro Anzellotti persuaded me to approach the accordion as a solo
instrument, and therefore to come to terms with the popular experience in which it is
rooted, and whose identity is determined by the way it is made: I’m thinking of the
accompaniment to songs sung during trips to the country, and to the songs of the
working classes, of night clubs, Argentinian tangos, and jazz … But with Sequenza XIII
I certainly didn’t pose myself the problem of paying a unifying homage to all these
precedents. Chanson only aspires to a spontaneous expression (an improvisation, a
rondo) of my relationship with the accordion: ‘a memory looking to the future’ (as Italo
11
Calvino would say) of this instrument in continuous growth.
The piece arose spontaneously in a short time. Berio got Anzellotti to play him the
whole sound palette of the instrument; the creative involvement of the interpreter,
apostrophized by Eco for earlier Sequenzas, is in this case fully integrated into the
compositional process. Together, they carried out the search for material and the
testing of technical and sonic possibilities. Later Berio had everything played back
to him and always made certain that it remained practicable. As Anzellotti reports,
the sonic outline of the whole piece was written down perfectly. Then like parcels,
big sections were switched: what is today the middle of the piece originally came
before the 6-second pause on the second half of the last page, while the first half of
page seven was originally placed in the middle of the piece. Substituted endings
and reshuffles of whole passages en bloc are frequently to be found in Berio’s
work – as with Stravinsky – but are surprising when we later observe the work’s
final organic character. All the cuts are concealed: connections and transitions were
revised or replaced; arpeggi, overlaps and joins created continuity.
In response to the world première in Witten for which the Sequenza was
originally written, Berio reworked the piece under quite remarkable circumstances,
prior to it being recorded. Three months after the first performance and entirely
from memory, having no copy of the original score to hand, he revised the piece,
11
Luciano Berio, Sequenzas (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998), CD liner notes, p. 22.
288 Thomas Gartmann
making the harmony richer and adding whole lines to it.12 We should also note
passages of thirds at the midpoint of the piece – which make almost unfeasible
technical demands – interrupted by a 6-second rest intended more to increase the
tension rather than to act as a respite. Further mixtures of stops and the
demonstration of how, starting from the same note, the different chords are linked
together, plumb the depths of their sonorities. The entries of the theme that follow
are almost drowned out, enveloped as they are in virtuoso figure work.
Berio apparently hated the complaint: ‘I don’t like loud accordion playing that
sounds like [it does] in a railway station.’13 Much new repertoire for solo accordion
is reminiscent of the circus or variety show. Certainly Berio also depicts this
superficial world, exposed as a cliché and caricatured, but he sets against this
stereotypical world another one that is sensitive, distant, lontano, consciously set in
a traditional soundworld, in a beautifully flowing legato, which is precisely what
makes the first page so extraordinarily difficult. Against the clichéd sound he sets a
very fine bass sound in the soft eight-foot register, intended to point the
accordion’s music in a new direction. Berio favours soft, finely shaded sounds and
cultivates subtle nuances. Extroverted virtuosity is not to the fore; on the contrary,
flexible tonality and virtuosic but precise control of the instrumental gestures are
demanded of the player.
Nor is Berio looking for avant-garde style. Noise, empty air, existential gasping
do not interest him – not here, not even the squeezing sffzp that was so crucial for
the oboe and trumpet Sequenzas. Instead, Chanson presents itself more like a song-
like Sequenza for clarinet, and breathes the gentle undertone of Neapolitan songs
and French chansons, as an accordionist such as Gianni Coscia so masterfully
conveys. Luciano Berio, who comes from the Imperia province of Italy, not far
from the French border, liked this sound, this echo of a fine melancholy, and he
wanted to envelop the piece in this specific musical milieu:
I’m not an ethnomusicologist, just a pragmatic egoist: so I tend to be interested only in

these folk techniques and means of expression that I can in one way or other assimilate
without a stylistic break, and that allow me to take a few steps forward in the search for
14
a unity underlying musical worlds that are apparently alien to one another.
His sophisticated arrangement of the Folk Songs was an important step; the viola
concerto Voci, with reminiscences of folk music fused into it, goes even further.
The last page of Sequenza XIII, which was not originally planned as the final one,
creates a synthesis of the two worlds (as does page five, which was originally
intended as the ending), a linking of the mentioned ‘railway station’ of light music
with a more serious, contrapuntal style, creating a mirror of the beginning, slowly
dismantling the material that has been fanned out. A simple arpeggio chord builds
12
Personal communication with Anzellotti, February 1999.
13
This comment was reported by Anzellotti in conversation with the author.
14
up the eleven-tone field with the end-tone C, in complement to the harmonic field
of the beginning (Ex.15.13). A tremolo of minor thirds prepares for the schematic
minor chord link of the second manual. As the hard and soft eight-foot registers are
coupled together, the theme is heard again with notes that have switched position
(Ex. 15.14a). No chromatic notes are put in meanwhile, and no chord is
constructed; instead, the two lines of the treble are reduced to one single one,
which then chromatically breaks into a long trill marked with a fermata,
accompanied by rigid chord links (Ex 15.14b). The theme is ever-present. It begins
a thirteenth, final time, unaccompanied, rising chromatically to a point, reduced to
the soft eight-foot register, slowed down by a tempo taken back to MM 50 and by
added rests and another fermata (Ex. 15.15). The composition’s first four notes, F–
E, B–C, sound for the last time as separate, widely displaced voices: and still new
territory is uncovered. If Berio had saved the high note G#6 until the last page, now,
with F1, the lowest note possible sounds as if from an abyss. Vibrato and the wide
position into which C3 is added open up another world yet again; the C in the
middle sounds like an organ mixture, into which the phasing out of the material
and the quietening of the tempo merge organically.
Example 15.13 Sequenza XIII: 11-tone field from the final page
Example 15.14 Sequenza XIII: altered forms of the theme on the final page
a) Theme with notes in altered positions, system 2
b) Trill with fermata, system 3

290 Thomas Gartmann
Example 15.15 Sequenza XIII: final appearance of the theme
From Edoardo Sanguineti, Berio derived a poetic motto for Chanson that alludes
precisely to this ending, and to the emotions the piece evokes:
…and so a chord consoles us, gently enclosing us, commonly:

15
the catastrophe is within, in our hearts: but it remains confined, entrenched.
15
Edoardo Sanguineti in Luciano Berio, Sequenzas, CD liner notes, p. 22.
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Sequenza and Chemins scores
The dates as shown on the scores are given in the list of scores below. Where two
dates are given, the first is the date of the composition as given by the publisher
and the second the date of the publication of a new edition or transcription.
Sequenzas
Sequenza for flute (1958), Suvini Zerboni (ESZ5531).

Sequenza I for flute (1958/1991), Universal Edition (UE19957).
Sequenza II for harp (1963), Universal Edition, (UE13715).
Sequenza II for harp (1963/1985 ), Universal Edition (UE18101).
Sequenza III for female voice (1966), Universal Edition (UE13723).
Sequenza IV for piano (1965), Universal Edition (UE13724).
Sequenza IV for piano (1965/1993), Universal Edition (UE30137).
Sequenza V for trombone (1966), Universal Edition (UE13725).
Sequenza VI for viola (1967), Universal Edition (UE13726).
Sequenza VII for oboe (1969), Universal Edition (UE13754).
Sequenza VIIa for oboe (1969/2000), ed. Jacqueline Leclair, Universal Edition
(UE31263).
Sequenza VIIb for soprano saxophone (1969/1993), ed. Claude Delangle, Universal
Edition (UE30255).
Sequenza VIII for violin (1976), Universal Edition (UE15990).
Sequenza IXa for clarinet (1980), Universal Edition (UE15993).
Sequenza IXb for alto saxophone (1980/1981), Universal Edition (UE17447).
Sequenza IXc for bass clarinet in B#(1980/1998), Universal Edition, ed. Rocco
Parisi (UE31234).
Sequenza X for trumpet in C and amplified piano resonances (1984), Universal
Edition (UE18200).
Sequenza XI for guitar (1988), Universal Edition (UE19273).
Sequenza XII for bassoon (1997), Universal Edition (UE30264).
Sequenza XIII (Chanson) for accordion (1995), Universal Edition (UE30377).
Sequenza XIV for violoncello (2002), Universal Edition (UE32914).
Sequenza XIVb for double bass (2002/2004), Universal Edition, ed. Stefano
Scodanibbio (UE33071).
Chemins
Chemins I (su Sequenza II), for harp and orchestra (1965), Universal Edition
(UE13720).
Chemins II (su Sequenza VI), for viola and nine instruments (1967), Universal
Edition (UE13740 ).
Chemins IIb for orchestra (1970), Universal Edition (UE14948).
Chemins IIc for bass clarinet and orchestra (1972), Universal Edition (UE14948).1
Chemins III (su Chemins II), for viola and orchestra (1968/1973), Universal
Edition (UE16654).
Chemins IV (su Sequenza VII), for oboe (or soprano saxophone) and 11 strings
(1975), Universal Edition (UE16616).
Chemins IV (su Sequenza VII), for oboe (or soprano saxophone) and 11 strings
(1975/2000), Universal Edition (UE31268).
Chemins V (su Sequenza XI), for guitar and chamber orchestra (1992), Universal
Edition (UE30539).
Corale (su Sequenza VIII) for violin, 2 horns and strings (1981), Universal Edition
(UE17545).
Kol Od (Chemins VI) for trumpet and chamber orchestra (1996), Universal Edition
(UE30946).
Récit (Chemins VII) for alto saxophone and orchestra (1996), Universal Edition
(UE30963).
1
Chemins IIb and IIc share a score: the bass clarinet part of Chemins IIc is ad lib.
Discography
Selected discography for Luciano Berio
Berio/Boulez: Folks Songs, Sequenza VI, Dérive, Luisa Castellani, Sabrina

Giuliani, Contempoensemble (Arts Red Line, 1997).
Chamber Music, Ensemble Avantgarde (Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und
Grimm, 1998).
Circles, Sequenza I, Sequenza III, Sequenza V, Aurèle Nicolet, Cathy Berberian,
Vinko Globokar (Wergo, 1991).
The Complete Sequenzas and Works for Solo Instruments, Ensemble Modern
(Mode Records, 2006).
Corale (Sequenza VIII), Chemins II (Sequenza VI), Chemins IV (Sequenza VII),
Ritorno degli Snovidenia, ‘Points on the Curve to Find ...’, Jean Strauch, Jean
Sulem, Laszlo Hadady, Ensemble InterContemporain (Sony, 1991).
Coro, Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra/Berio (Deutsche Grammophon,
1980/2002).
Duetti, Sequenza VIII, Due Pezzi, Corale, Carlo Chiarappa, Byzantine Academy
(Denon, 1992).
‘Points on the Curve to find …’, Folksongs, Sequenza VII, Laborintus II, Heinz
Holliger, Swiss Italian Radio Orchestra, Ensemble Contrechamps (Ermitage,
1995).
Requies, Voci, Corale, Carlo Chiarappa, Aldo Bennici, London Sinfonietta/Berio
(RCA, 1990).
Sequenza III & VII, Différences, Due Pezzi, Chamber Music, Cathy Berberian,
Heinz Holliger, Julliard Ensemble (Philips, 1990).
Sequenza VI, Chemins II, Chemins III, Walter Trampler, Julliard Ensemble,
LSO/Berio (RCA, 1971).
Sequenzas, Ensemble InterContemporain (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998).
Sequenzas I, IV, VIII, IXa & XIV, Due Pezzi, Musica Leggera, Les Mots sont Allés
…, Lied, Ex Nova Ensemble (Black Box, 2006).
Index
acting, 3, 101–104, 107–8, 110 Chemins IIc, 125, 130, 184n37

Alienation, see Verfremdung Chemins III, 8, 119n6, 123–5,
analysis, 183–5
performance, 11–12, 19–34, Chemins IV, 7, 75, 80–1, 125–8,
60–61, 75–81, 239, 254 134
set, 68–9, 197–200 ‘Chemins V’ (withdrawn work),
sonic object, 211–32 8, 118–19, 130, 134–5, 153,
Anderson, Claudia, 19n24, 29, 36, 161–6, 167–70
207 Chemins V, 8, 119, 130–32,
Anhalt, Istvan, 100, 104, 106 134–5, 287
Anzellotti, Teodoro, 277, 287 Cinque Variazioni, 192, 196
Circles, 42, 44, 49, 120, 138
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 6, 84–5, 90, Compass, 118, 134
113, 128, 275, 286 Concerto II (echoing curves),
violin Partitas, 6, 90, 148–9, 233 123–4, 130
Baker, Buddy, 100nn2–3 Continuo, 130
Baron, Samuel, 19, 36–7 Corale, 119, 127–30, 132n15,
Barthes, Roland, 151 134–5, 173, 178–82
Bartolozzi, Bruno, 44 Coro, 127, 128
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 96, 233 Cronaca del Luogo, 99, 166n10
Berberian, Cathy, 100n1, 103–4, Différences, 42, 121
105n14, 106, 108–10, Epifanie, 196
194n17, 196, 277 Esposizione’, 111
Stripsody, 277 ‘Essay’, 100–101
Berg, Alban, Folk Songs, 288
Violin Concerto, 286 Formazioni, 130
Berio, Luciano, Gesti, 276
Accordo, 133 Kol Od (Chemins VI), 7–8, 119,
A-Ronne, 99, 118 132–5
Bewegung, 178 La vera storia, 8, 99, 118, 133–5,
Call, 133 153, 166–170
Chamber Music, 42, 196 Laborintus II, 95, 99, 111
Chemins I, 8, 42, 49–50, 120–22, Leaf, 53–4, 59, 60, 62–66
124, 126, 128 Lied, 276–7
Chemins II, 2, 7–8, 119n6, 122– Melodrama, 103
6, 130, 178, 182–7 Nones, 192, 196
Chemins IIb, 8, 124–5, 130, Ofanìm, 130, 166n10
184–7 Opera, 99
Outis, 99, 166n10, 196, 287 Sequenza XIV, 109, 112, 119
Passaggio, 99, 111 Serenata I, 15, 128
‘Points on the curve to find…’, Sincronie, 257
117, 123, 125, 128 Sinfonia, 7, 99, 122, 128, 138,
Quartetto, 15 196, 282
Récit (Chemins VII), 8, 119, Six Encores for Piano, 62
134–5, 153, 169 Solo, 117
Recital I (for Cathy), 103 Sonata, 53–4, 60, 62, 64–6
Rendering, 279–80 Still, 281
Ritorno degli Snovidenia, 109 Study, 194
Rounds, 276 Tempi Concertati, 120
Sequenza I, 1–2, 7, 11–37, 120, Thema (Omaggio a Joyce), 138,
171–5, 178, 191–208, 256, 196
276 Un re in ascolto, 99, 138, 287
Sequenza II, 2, 8, 16, 39–52, Visage, 99
111–12, 120–22, 276, 283–4 Voci, 117, 130, 288
Sequenza III, 2–4, 100, 103–8, Bezaly, Sharon, 19n24, 25, 33–6
110–12, 118, 166, 209, 277 Bledsoe, Helen, 19n24, 36
Sequenza IV, 2, 7, 53–66, 118, Boffard, Florent, 55
132, 209–32, 276, 279, 284 Boisselot and Sons, 54
Sequenza V, 5, 83, 100–103, Bondanella, Peter, 141, 144, 152
107–8, 110–12, 166, 202n30, Boulez, Pierre, 41, 115, 192–5, 233,
209, 231, 248, 276–7 244, 246
Sequenza VI, 2–3, 8, 111–13, Dialogue de l’ombre double,
119n6, 122–5, 128, 130, 118n5
175–8, 182–7, 233–54 Notations, 115
Sequenza VII, 6–7, 67–81, 83, ‘Schoenberg is Dead’, 193–4
112, 125–8, 132, 134, 173, Brecht, Bertolt, 3– 6, 110
276, 280, 288 Die Dreigroschenoper, 3–4
Sequenza VIII, 6–7, 112, 127–9, Brook, Peter, 111
132n15, 134, 137–52, Brown, Clifford, 85, 88
178–82, 277 Burge, David, 55, 209
Sequenza IX, 2, 7–8, 118–19,
134–5, 153–70, 288 Cage, John, 193–5, 276
Sequenza IXb, 8, 118–19, 133–4, Aria, 104, 107
153, 167 Music of changes, 194
Sequenza X, 3, 7, 83–96, 112–13, Calvino, Italo, 287
118, 118n5, 119, 130, 132–3, Carvalho, Jocy de, 209
276–7, 279, 288 Cassone, Gabriele, 83n1, 94n13
Sequenza XI, 2, 4, 8, 113, 130, Chemins series, 7–8, 117–38, 173,
134, 255–74, 277–8, 287 178, 184, 277, 286
Sequenza XII, 4, 112 chronology of compositions, 7–8,
Sequenza XIII, 4, 112, 119, 118–19, 162, 169, 187
275–90
Index 303
relationship with Sequenzas, 7–8, Eco, Umberto, 6, 13, 137–42, 144,

117–19, 178–87 150–52, 171–4, 194–6, 205,
Cherrier, Sophie, 22, 24–5, 27, 33–5 280, 287
Chuang Tzu, 3n4 Foucault’s Pendulum, 137–41,
commentary techniques, 7, 120, 168, 143–4, 150–52
173, 178, 187, 286 The Name of the Rose, 144n21
compositional process, 72–3, 117, The Open Work, 173, 177
119, 120–38, 155, 161–6, A Theory of Semiotics, 138–9,
172–3, 201–3, 217, 256–7, 141, 150–51
279, 287–8 El Ahmadi, Abdessadek, 239, 241,
onion metaphor, 125, 182–3 244, 246
reworkings of compositions, 7, electroacoustic composition, 42,
117, 153, 162, 166, 168, 118–20, 122, 137n17,
171–88 161–6, 234
transcription, 119, 172, 187 Ellington, Duke, 87
constellations of works, 8, 153, Ensemble Intercontemporain, 55,
169–170 239
Copland, Aaron, expressivity, 234–7, 246, 248–9,
Piano Variations, 54 251–4, 276, 287
Coscia, Gianni, 277, 288 extended techniques, 4, 49, 64–5,
counterpoint, 2, 43, 59, 234, 258, 80n29, 86, 88, 110–12, 209,
269, 277, 282, 286; see also 276
polyphony extramusical associations, 39, 44,
Crumb, George, 54, 55 101, 153, 166, 178
Makrokosmos I, 54
Makrokosmos II, 54 Fabbriciani, Roberto, 19n24, 22, 24,
Cumming, Naomi, 236, 237 27, 29, 33–5
Ferneyhough, Brian, 12
Dallapiccolla, Luigi, 192 Fisk, Eliot, 255, 272–3
Darmstadt, 15, 104, 115, 192–4, 196, flamenco, 277
276 Fleischmann, Ernest, 86, 277
David, Vincent, 134n16 Flynn, George, 242
Davies, Miles, 85, 91 Folio, Cynthia, 191n1, 191n3, 203
Davies, Peter Maxwell Sonata, 86
Debussy, Claude, 41, 233 Gallois, Pascal, 4
Syrinx, 13, 191 Gartmann, Thomas, 13, 14n11,
Delangle, Claude, 134n16 171n6, 172–3, 257n9
Deliège, Irene, 239, 241, 244, 246 Garzuly, Anna, 11n125, 34–5
Dempster, Stuart, 100–101, 108–9 Gay, John, The Beggar’s Opera, 5
Desjardins, Christophe, 239 Gazzelloni, Severino, 12–13, 15,
Dick, Robert, 14, 19n24, 25, 27, 34–5, 74, 191, 194, 209, 276
33–6 gesture, 4–6, 44–6, 83–4, 87–8,
Dörner, Axel, 85 94–5, 110–13, 142–3, 154,
Dorough, Aralee, 207 163, 178, 234, 236–7, 242,
255–6, 258, 264–5, 267, 269, 147–9, 154, 177, 233–4, 254,
273, 284 275–6
Gestus, 3–7 International Phonetic Association,
Gillespie, Dizzy, 85, 94 161n7
Globokar, Vinko, 100–101 intertextuality, 6, 128, 132, 145–6,
golden section, 72, 74 148–9, 279, 282
Graf, Erich, 19n24, 24, 34–6 IRCAM, 13, 161
Graf, Peter–Lukas, 34–5
Grisey, Gerard, jazz, 2n2, 85–6, 88–9, 91–2, 94–5,
Prologue, 95 209, 277
Grock, 100–103, 108, 277 Joyce, James, 138, 195–6, 207
Grotowski, Jerzy, 111 Finnegans Wake, 1, 195–6
Hadady, Laszlò, 68, 75–81 Kagel, Mauricio, 287

harmonic fields, 68, 69n6, 210, Kandyan drum, 109
281–2; see also pitch Kutter, Markus, 105
organization
Heiss, John, 18, 19n24, 36 language, 105–8, 170, 196; see also
Henze, Hans Werner, 86 linguistics
Sonatina, 86 Leclair, Jacqueline, 67, 68, 72–5, 77,
Hermann, Richard, 55n4, 173, 201 81
Holliger, Heinz, 67n2, 68, 75–80 light music, 277–81, 287–8
Hopkins, Nicholas, 12n4, 72–4 linguistics, 161–2, 165, 170, 202
listening, 238, 239–42, 244–51,
improvisation, 162–3, 195, 287 255–7, 262, 271
Incontri Musicali, 171
indeterminacy, 67, 147, 163, 171, Maderna, Bruno, 115, 119
194–5 Magnani, Francesca, 13n6, 201–2,
instruments, 204
cultural and historical perception, memory, 146, 153, 177, 180–82,
4, 7–8, 39–43, 52, 83–6, 187, 287
94–5, 128, 142–3, 145, modernism, 171
147–9, 154, 177, 233–4, 254, Mozart, W. A., 95, 277
275–6 musique concrète, 120
idiom, 4, 83, 95, 130, 133,
146n23, 209, 255, 258–9, 261 narrative, 99–107, 112–13, 137–8,
272–3, 275–6, 278–9 143–4, 150–54, 170, 232
technique, 4, 42–4, 46, 52, 53– Nicolet, Aurèle, 13, 14n11, 17, 22,
66, 73, 80n29, 83, 87–8, 24, 26, 28, 32–3, 35
111–15, 120, 122, 130, 209, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 41
234–5, 249, 256, 283–4
timbre, 4, 7–8, 39–43, 52, 83–6, O’Connor, Tara, 19n24, 35
94–5, 128, 142–3, 145,
Index 305
open work, 13, 171–80, 182, 186–7, Schliermacher, Steffen, 55

194–6, 205, 280; see also Schoenberg, Arnold, 250, 253
Eco, Umberto Pierrot Lunaire, 192
Osmond-Smith, David, 11n1, 105–6, Schuab, Gale, 207, 250, 253
138, 166n11, 175, 177n27, semiotics, 6–7, 42, 137–9, 141–4,
178, 234, 238, 246n37 150–4, 169–70
Owens, Dewey, 41 Sequenzas series,
form and structure, 44, 72–4, 84,
Paganini, 128, 148 89–90, 95–6, 100, 117, 128,
Paul Sacher Stiftung, 12n4, 72–4 133, 137–9, 142, 154, 159,
perception, see listening, 161, 163, 182, 184, 191, 196,
performance, psychology of, 235–6 203–7,
performers, 210–11, 217, 220–32,
and gender, 39–41, 100, 108 237–56, 258–260, 262–5,
historical and cultural perception, 267–72, 281, 285–6
43, 46, 50, 110–11, 233–4 influence of performers, 4, 12,
Pierre, Francis, 41 41, 86–7, 100–101, 108–9,
polyphony, 34, 44–5, 54–5, 68, 88, 134n16, 209, 275, 277, 287
90, 112, 113n29, 118, 128, notation, 11–37, 55, 59, 62,
154–7, 163, 165, 211, 64–5, 67–81, 120, 126n10,
230–31, 238, 240–42, 249, 172–3, 178, 191, 208n45,
255–7, 261, 273–4, 276, 284, 235– 7, 239, 252, 280
286; see also counterpoint performance, 4–5, 13–15, 19–34,
Pop Art, 277 43, 45, 50, 56, 61, 74–81,
postmodernism, 153 83–4, 94–5, 108, 175, 191,
Priore, Irna, 2n1, 15n16 234–7, 272–3
proliferation, 178, 180, 182, 187 pitch organization, 2, 4, 106,
126–8, 130, 134–7, 236, 244,
quotation, see intertextuality 249
melody, 154–5, 159, 166,
Ravel, Maurice, 41 169, 210, 242–4, 280–82
redundancy, 154, 159, 161 pitch-class, 69n7, 211, 259,
rhizomatic structure, 184, 187 261–7
Roberts, Paul, 8, 15–16, 16n17 in Corale, 181
in Sequenza I, 196–208
Saint, David, 113n31 in Sequenza II, 43, 46–7, 49
Salzedo, Carlos, 48, 51 in Sequenza IV, 210, 214–32
Sanguineti, Edoardo, 5–6, 8, 49–50, in Sequenza VI, 176–7
290 in Sequenza VII, 68–72
Saram, Rohan de, 109, 209 in Sequenza VIII, 137,
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 138, 141 139–40, 142, 145, 150,
Scelsi, Giani, 179–80
Quattro Pezzi per Tromba Sola, in Sequenza IX, 154–6, 159
86 in Sequenza X, 88–94
in Sequenza XI, 256–7, Subotnik, Morton,
259–60, 263–7, 269–70 After the Butterfly, 88
in Sequenza XIII, 277, Suvini Zerboni, 11, 15
279–82
in La vera storia, 167 Tempo Reale, 164
proportional notation, 12, 13, Terry, Clark, 87
15–17, 19, 27, 29, 33–7, 68, theatre, 3–4, 39, 43, 99–116, 166,
72–5, 120, 125–6, 171–2, 191 168
temporal structure, 12–14, time, perception of, 2, 6, 28–9, 240,
19–34, 67–71, 74, 80n28, 250
84n2, 108n22, 111n28, Trampler, Walter, 239–40
119–20, 182
Serialism, 2, 15, 115, 192–6, 202–3, Varèse, Edgard, Density 21.5, 13,
208, 237, 257n8, 286 191
Sollberger, Harvey, 19n23–24, 26, Poeme Electronique, 85
32–3, 35, 207 Verfremdung, 3–4, 110
song, folk and traditional, 287–8 vibrato, 235, 246, 249, 252–3,
sostenuto pedal, 46, 53–66, 84, 132, 281–2, 289
209, 211, 220, 279 virtuosity, 3, 41, 43, 48–9, 72–3, 75,
Stamp, James, 88 77–8, 81, 84–6, 94, 113–16,
Stevens, Thomas, 83n1, 86–8 117, 138, 142, 145, 148–9,
Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 192–5, 233 191, 208, 233, 255, 273,
Hymnen, 132 275–6, 284–5, 288
Klavierstück X, 209, 210n5, Vyner, Michael, 62
210n8
Klavierstück XI, 13, 173, 194–5 Wagner, Richard,
Licht, 103n8 Tristan und Isolde, 282
Sirius, 86 Webern, Anton, 253
Stoʀanova, Ivanka, 72, 74, 100 Weisser, Benedict, 12–13, 15,
Stravinksy, Igor, 233, 256, 287 16n19, 33, 67n1, 74n17
The Firebird, 41
Symphony in 3 Movements, 41n3 Zimmerman, B. A.,
Orpheus, 41n3 Nobody Knows de Trouble I See,
Strehler, Giorgio, 39, 175 84, 86
Studio di Fonologia, 3, 194 Zöller, Karlheinz, 33, 35

Berios Sequenzas Essays On Performance, Composition and Analysis (Janet K. Halfyard (Editor) )

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BERIO’S SEQUENZAS

With an Introduction by David Osmond-Smith

Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2007 Janet K. Halfyard

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 9780754654452 (hbk)

List of Music Examples vii

Part 1 Performance Issues

1 Rhythm and Timing in the Two Versions of Berio’s Sequenza I

Part 2 Berio’s Compositional Process and Aesthetics

6 Provoking Acts: The Theatre of Berio’s Sequenzas 99

7 The Chemins Series 117

Part 3 Analytical Approaches

11 Vestiges of Twelve-Tone Practice as Compositional Process in

13 The Nature of Expressivity in Berio’s Sequenza VI for Viola 233

1.1 Sequenza I: the 1958 edition, phrase 1 16

2.1 The opening bars of Sequenza II 45

3.1 Sequenza IV: bars 109–16 56

5.1 Sequenza X: segments 1–3 89

7.1 Chemins I 121

8.1 Phrase structure in the opening of Sequenza VIII 140

9.1 Main pitch-field of Sequenza IX 154

10.1 David Osmond-Smith’s outline pitch structure of Sequenza VI 176

11.1 Opening of Sequenza I 197

12.1 Sequenza IV: A-category chord objects, including

13.1 Opening of Sequenza VI 234

14.1 First four chords of Sequenza XI 259

15.1 Sequenza XIII: opening theme 278

1.1 Segment locations 20

4.1 Line durations in seconds 69

6.1 Complete sung phrases in the score of Sequenza III 106

10.1 Relationship between structures of Sequenza VI, Chemins II 185

12.1 The piano’s registers categorized according to acoustic criteria 213

13.1 Textural and gestural structure of Sequenza VI 242

14.1 Pitches used in section 1, arranged chromatically 261

1.1 Contour graphs of the first phrase for each performer 30

4.1 First and last pitch-fields in normal form 69

9.1 Vowel matrix for ‘Chemins V’ 162

11.1 Seven interpretations of the formal structure of Sequenza I 206

12.1 Evolution of Q and A weights in the B matrices 219

13.1 Plan of Sequenza VI 241

14.1 Form diagram for section 1 260

Patricia Alessandrini is a PhD candidate in composition at Princeton University,

Amanda Bayley is Reader in Music at the University of Wolverhampton. She

Alexander R. Brinkman holds a PhD from the University of Rochester, and

Cynthia Folio is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Temple University, where

Thomas Gartmann is a musicologist and violinist, and is an assistant at the

Janet K. Halfyard is a senior lecturer at Birmingham Conservatoire, a faculty of the

Eugene Montague is an assistant professor of music theory at the University of

Marcílio Fagner Onofre is a composer, pianist and theorist. He studies composition

David Osmond-Smith (1946–2007) was Research Professor of Music at the

Mark D. Porcaro completed a PhD in Musicology at the University of North

Irna Priore is currently Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of

Edward Venn is Lecturer in Music at Lancaster University (UK). His research

by meditative relaxation. Sequenza VI is an evident case in point, and Jonathan

are juxtaposed in a vertiginously compressed manner, mutually alienating one

Sequenza VIII makes sense as Gestus; the individual quixotic ‘incidents’ of

incipit sequentia sequentiarum, quae est musica musicarum secundum lucianum

Rhythm and Timing in the Two Versions

Background: the two versions of Sequenza I

Differences: real and psychological