Berio's Sequenzas
Essays on Composition, Performance, Analysis and Aesthetics
with an introduction by David Osmond-Smith
edited by Janet K. Halfyard Ashgate, 2007
Between 1958 and 2002, Luciano Berio wrote fourteen pieces entitled Sequenza, along with several versions of the same work for different instruments, revisions of the original pieces and also the parallel Chemins series, where one of the Sequenzas is used as the basis for a new composition on a larger scale. The 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.
This volume compromises fifteen essays by authors from Europe, North and South America, with an introduction by David Osmond-Smith, who passed away just as the book was going to press, and to whom the volume is dedicated. The essays investigate the Sequenza series under three main headings: (1) Performance issues; (2) Berio's Compositional Processes and Aesthetics; (3) Analytical Approaches. It forms part of Ashgate's Twentieth Century and Contemporary Music series.
The essays bring together a range of approaches to 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 comparable series of works in the output of any other 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 the variety of instruments for which Berio composed. The varied approaches taken by the writers in discussing the pieces demonstrate the richness of this repertoire and the many levels on which Berio and these landmark compositions can be considered.
The book ameliorates the serious lack of published work on Berio in the English language. Thus far, David Osmond-Smith is the only author to have published a monograph on Berio, which complements his two other publications, both from 1985, a short volume on Sinfonia and a translation of a series of interviews that Berio gave around 1981. There are other, individual journal articles and interviews, but compared to a figure such as Stockhausen, surprisingly little has been written about Berio in book form, and a collection of essays such as this is a significant contribution to the existing body of work devoted to Berio's music.