Berio's Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis (review)

Between 1958 and 2002, Berio wrote fourteen relatively short works, each called Sequenza. As a collection of pieces for single instruments, or single instruments in combination with other sound sources, they provide a temptingly concise repertory of materials for musicologists eager to pin down the essence of Berio's compositional thought, as it evolved over time, and which is so dauntingly complex and elusive in his major orchestral and dramatic works. So it is no surprise that the first major English-language publication on Berio since his death in 2003 should focus on the sequence of Sequenze.

It might be thought appropriate that the diverse nature of the pieces should be reflected in the book's multi-author format, as well as in the varied if not actually contradictory approaches they adopt. The symposium format has familiar, endemic drawbacks, especially when contributors are not given the chance to study the other essays before finalizing their own. Impractical though such interaction is for publishers, raising as it does the prospect of an infinitely regressing series of cross-references and amendments, they might expect the volume's editor to mediate, pointing out clashes and anomalies to authors, and ensuring that duplication between the different essays is kept down to what seems unavoidable and constructive. It's not possible to be sure whether or not Janet Halfyard saw her role in this light—there could have been more overlapping repetitions than remain—and her comment in the Foreword that discussion of certain Sequenze is missing because of 'the simple fact that no proposals were made regarding these pieces' (p. xxi) doesn't make clear whether she actively solicited such contributions or not. But completeness for its own sake is not an inevitable virtue in any case: better to have wide-ranging coverage of a representative cross-section than a superficial survey of all fourteen.

Dividing the contributions into three categories—'Performance Issues', 'Berio's Compositional Process and Aesthetics', and 'Analytical Approaches'—cannot guarantee that cross-border forays won't be made by some if not all of the writers. But the book is at its best when the author in question, as performer/ analyst, illuminates an experience of the music by revealing how the interaction of process and character functions, in that endless interplay between what is written down and what is (or can be) heard in performance. What can be heard becomes an immediate issue in the first chapter, a study of Sequenza I (flute) by Cynthia Folio and Alexander R. Brinkman, since this spends much time and space documenting performance details (especially duration) derived from recordings—some of the 1958 edition, some of the 1992 revision.

Even those for whom the hackneyed metaphor of the butterfly broken on a wheel comes to mind must concede that there is much fascination in exploring the give-and-take between what written notation suggests, or requests, and what individual interpreters appear to do. It might be a pity that the extensive tables and charts setting out the analytical details take up so much space, when their overall results, rather than the myriad of point-to-point fluctuations they contain, are what concern most readers: and there's a tetchy disclaimer from Ashgate in the preliminary matter declaring that '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' (p. xii). All in all, however, Folio and Brinkman deserve credit for incorporating and encapsulating so much striking material, including letters between Berio and performers, 'coal-face' reactions from several players, and other pertinent documentary sources.

The Folio and Brinkman essay is complemented in Part III by Irna Priore's essay on 'Vestiges of Twelve-Tone Practice as Compositional Process in Berio's Sequenza I'. The wider context features prominently here, including Joyce as well as Eco, Boulez as well as Cage. Though not...