Structuring in Luciano Berio’s Sequenza IV
Creators: name: Pauls, Cheryl Irene
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2009

description: This paper explores structuring in Luciano Berio's sequenza IV. The analytic inquiry draws on the methodology of music theory, on Berio's writings (which generally take the form of philosophic reflection), and on the physical necessities and traditions of piano playing. Issues of form - as presented in segmentations of similar durations, syntactic relations, and gestural language - inform discussion of the place of the player in tracing, interpreting, and forming the music's structure and statement. The form of sequenza IV is created most explicitly through the gestures of playing the piano, specifically, those of playing the piano's most idiomatic expression, chords. Chords fragment and reform into various types that provide a tangible means of distinction throughout the piece. Chords are the typical expression of harmony, and accordingly Berio constructs the piece from specific harmonies. Harmonies also fragment and reform into particular sonorities; however, the correlation typical of chordal gestures and harmonic content is continually disengaged and reformed. Harmonies thus become decontextualized, assimilated into the texture rather than providing distinct contrasting entities within the form. Despite the continual redefining of distinctive harmonies, the listener is constantly aware of multiple events and processes, that is, of a form constructed in polyphonic layers. Polyphonic layering is introduced into the piece tangibly through the timbral distinguishing of material sustained in the sostenuto pedal from surface material, that is, from material with dry articulation. However, the capacity of the sostenuto for harmonic expansion through sympathetic resonance draws these timbrally distinct elements together and causes this aspect of formal distinction also to be continually in flux. The following analysis presents several approaches to defining the structure of sequenza IV. Firstly its form is described in reference to traditional idiomatic expressions and formal devices applied to essentially similar pitch materials. Secondly, form is explored as a linear structure of both sections and phrases according to chordal types, symmetric proportion, and cadential gestures. These general descriptions treat pitch only insofar as it supports the delineations between phrases. Graphs of individual parameters represent the piece's structure according to independent and accumulated intensity levels. Thirdly, pitch content is addressed and defined as a polyphonic layered structure. A tendency is observed for these layers to assimilate each other's characteristics, which suggests that pitch structure can also be understood as a comprehensive shape with varying registral and pitch densities. Graphs portray both this structure and that of the acoustic resonance of pitch content in local sostenuto harmonies. The role of that complicity throughout the piece is then discussed in local contexts so as to define the structure dramatically. Each chapter thus presents a way of structuring sequenza IV, and each is in itself a layer of a multiple-layered construction.