BEFORE NIGHT COMES: narrative and gesture in Berios Sequenza III (1966)

Janet K Halfyard (2002)

Please note: in order not infringe copyright; you will need a copy of the score
to fully appreciate the examples in the text below. References are given to the
nearest second of the piece as shown in the score.
One of the major problems confronting anyone undertaking an analysis of a piece
such as Sequenza III is that it defies conventional languages of musical discussion.
It is unaccompanied and for the most part unpitched, and the rhythmic notation is
graphic and proportional rather than exact. Finding a language with which to analyse
(and thereby better understand) extended vocal technique is one of the most
significant challenges of the genre.
Equally, the very nature of the piece and its score present a significant challenge to
the performer wishing both to grasp the mechanics of the required vocal techniques
and to present a coherent performance: the technical difficulty of the piece is such
that one may find itself sacrificed in the interests of the other. My study of Sequenza
III represents one possible manner of examining the essentially gestural nature of
this composition from mutually informed perspectives of analysis and performance.
The text of Sequenza III is simultaneously the most obvious point at which to start a
discussion and the most obscure part of the piece. Markus Kutters modular poem
reads thus:
give me
to sing
to build a house

a few words
a truth
without worrying

for a woman
allowing us
before night comes

When David Osmond Smith (1991, p65) says of these words that Berio treats them
simply as a quarry for phonetic materials, the impetus behind the quarrying is
somewhat underestimated, as there is nothing either simple or random about the use
of the various phonemes and phrases which this statement implies. Generally,
pieces of this kind are held to be dramatically non-specific: pure virtuosity removed
from the constraints of time, place, character and narrative. However, in Sequenza
III, this is true only up to a point, as is true of some of the other Sequenzas
Sequenza V for trombone, for example, has a quite specific narrative attached to it.
. The first identifiable word is sing, closely followed by to me, few and words, which
between them describe the motivation of the piece: the womans 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 this largely complete if disjointed sung form:
60
150
350
420
610

a woman
give me a few words for a woman
to sing
a truth
to build a

620
635
815
835

a few words before

to sing before night
allowing before night comes
to sing

The most significant clue to the nature of the text treatment and its narrative function
is the phrase which is entirely absent from this list and, in fact, from the piece,
namely without worrying. 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
all of which is perfectly untroubling, or would be were it not for the implications of the
final phrase: before night comes. In these three words a limit is set on the amount
of time the woman has in which to complete her task, i.e. to sing the few words
which will build the house, the protection and shelter from that impending night, and
with the direction to do it without worrying removed, there is a greater urgency and
anxiety implicit in the task.
The final phrase to emerge is, unsurprisingly, the limiting factor, the coming of night
represented by the phrase before night comes being also the point at which the
piece must end. In context, the phrase before night comes is the key to the dramatic
meaning of Sequenza III, the source of the panic which drives it forward to its
conclusion.
Gesture
A possible approach to clarify the gestural language of the piece is to turn to a
preexistent grammar of gestural analysis, namely Rudolf Labans efforts, which he
developed in the analysis of movement. This ultimately led to his system of notation,
but it can be applied to vocal production with only a small leap of the imagination. In
fact, metaphors of space, movement and physical gesture are frequently used by
singing teachers when attempting to communicate with students, the voice being an
invisible instrument, concealed within the body, and therefore often needing
metaphors to substitute for visual demonstration.
Traditional notation is designed to be most exact when dealing with pitch and rhythm;
here, Berio uses a notation which does not intend to encourage improvisation but
which often does not explicitly notate pitch and rhythm. It has a strong superficial
resemblance to standard forms, but here the character of the gestures is defined by
timbre, expression and ideas that can be related directly to Labans analysis of
gestural shape, namely the force, direction and speed of gestures.
Labans eight efforts are described as thrust, dab, slash, flick, press, wring, glide and
float, each described in terms of force or weight (firm or gentle); its relationship with
space, whether its trajectory is predictable and direct or unpredictable and flexible;
and its relationship with time, whether its duration is brief or prolonged, resulting in
gestures that are either sudden or sustained. For the purposes of this study, they can
be divided into four pairs, and where one is the stronger development of the other:

Thrust firm, sudden, direct

Dab
gentle, sudden, direct
Press
Glide

firm, sustained, direct

gentle, sustained, direct

Slash
Flick

firm, sudden, flexible

gentle, sudden, flexible

Wring
Float

firm, sustained, flexible

gentle, sustained, flexible

However, when attempting to apply this to Berios vocal gestures, it became

immediately apparent that single efforts did not always provide obvious descriptors,
because two forces were contributing to the production of each vocal sound to
varying degrees. On the one hand, there is the larynx, the main sound source; on the
other, there are the filters (mouth, tongue, teeth, lips, palates and pharynx) which
form the articulatory mechanism.
The larynx itself can sing or speak in a variety of pitch registers and dynamics. The
articulators have sustained states (such as vowel shapes, nasal and fricative
consonants); and percussive states. It is perfectly possible that the voice will be
engaged in one form of gesture, while the articulators perform another.
In the opening tense muttering of the piece, the voice is engaged in what is
basically a float: a gentle sustained vocalization where the pitch is constantly, flexibly
changing. The articulation, however, is dabbing: each phoneme being uttered is a
single, sudden, direct hit. The voice is sustained and flexible; the articulation is fast,
sudden, and direct. This potentially creates something of a dilemma a gesture is a
gesture, albeit one that might be made up of several parts, but the presence of two
different forces contributing to the gesture apparently muddies the waters about
which type of gesture this figure might be. However, this sense of there being
opposition and even conflict between articulation and pure vocalism is in fact a
characteristic of the piece on several levels. In any one figure, either the articulation
or the voice tends to be dominant, and that effort is the one which characterizes and
defines the gesture in terms of the corresponding Effort.
The following is a summary of how the efforts correspond to the material in
Sequenza III.
Thrust and dab
The thrust gesture is sudden and strong. The glottal of a (the large note head
bisected vertically by a line seen, for example at 30) reinforces the vocal thrust as t
does the plosive of to (15) and the g of gi (55). The thrust is seen without any aid
from the voice in the click figure (e.g. 20), just as the voice loses any definite
articulation in the cough (225) and the closed mouth thrust (16). All of them except
the click require a quite literal thrust from the diaphragm.

The weak counterpart is the dab, one of the predominant gestures in the piece as a
whole. A dab is a smaller, lighter gesture, the thrust with the diaphragm taken out,
and in this piece usually occurs in strings, where the thrust is isolated. In terms of
articulation, the dabs are short, unemphasised phonemes as seen at the very start of
the piece and the various phoneme strings (e.g. 100). The same idea applies vocally
- a run of individual small gestures as in a laugh with open or closed mouth (130 and
140).
Press and glide
Where the previous pair of gestures are sudden, these two are sustained, and
therefore much slower. Their relationship with thrust and dab, therefore, is that they
are slowed down, elongated versions of otherwise similar gestures. In terms of pitch,
they tend to be stationary. Because they are sustained, they tend to occur more as
sung gestures rather than articulated ones, whereas thrust and dab tend to occur
much more with articulation being the defining characteristic of the gesture. The glide
is often associated with the distant and dreamy figure (20), and also the sighs
(143). The press can be seen in the similar but more dramatic gesture (615)
These four gestures are all classified as direct: they move from A to B, from start to
finish without deviation from a single pitch trajectory, which may be all on one pitch,
or a simple slide upwards or downwards. The moment the destination of the pitch
becomes unpredictable, through the use of non-stepwise leaps, the classification
changes to flexible.
Slash and flick
These have a clear relationship with thrust and dab, but instead of being a single
sudden gesture that does not move from the point it started, the slash and flick are
single sudden gestures that measure the distant between two points. This translates
generally as changes in pitch, the main flick gesture being an appoggiatura effect
(104) while the slash is typified by a gasp (503). The slash, like the thrust, is a much
stronger movement than the ornamental flick.
Wring and float
The key word discerning glide from float is continuity. The glide is directional, either
stationary or sliding (gliding) stepwise, the float is erratic, flexible, capable of being
pushed in any direction, like a feather in an air current. It is primarily a vocal gesture
that develops out of the flick (the flick being sudden, this being a sustained
development of a similar idea (254305).
The wring is the most difficult of Labans efforts to map on to the vocal gestures in
this piece. If we look in the piece for gestures which are basically like the float, but
weightier, more aggressive, where we find them tends to be where the articulation
changes to involves elements of friction. So, we have the erratic vocal line, which
conforms to a vocal version of the wring, but the defining element of the wring is
when this is combined with tremolos and rolled consonants (e.g. 429436). The
wring is the least used gesture in this piece which is very much a consequence of
Berios gestural vocabulary in this piece rather than the lack of wring gestures that
are possible vocally: Maxwell Davies 8 songs for a mad king makes plenty of use of
wring-type gestures, with the use of varying and therefore flexible multiphonics within
sustained, firm gestures.

One of the clearest things analysis reveals is the relationships between types of
gesture. The rolled r and l and dental tremolo are all versions of the same basic
wring gesture. The cough, click and vocal stabs are all versions of the same basic
thrust gesture. These are gestural groups where the members are distinguished by
different timbral colourings, a relationship reinforced by the fact that they are often
found in groups. Having an awareness that these are same basic gesture, differently
coloured, makes the piece seem less like random vocal acrobatics and certainly
gives it more coherence from the performers point of view.
The other thing the gestures reveal that in turn reveal the coherence of the
composition is the manner in which individual gestures develop through the course
of the piece. One of the clearest is a figure usually associated with the direction
urgent (first seen at 15), which recurs throughout the piece, a series of ascending
dabs surrounded by varying numbers and types of thrust, and variously inverted,
expanded and contracted. It is always associated with the direction urgent expect
on the few occasions where it occurs during or at the end of what are primarily sung
sections: and the transition of this gesture from signifying urgency to something
lighter and more positive plays an important role in the narrative of the piece and the
sense of resolution when the task is completed.
This process of development can also be seen with other gestures, such as the
vowel flicks, which develop from appoggiaturas to more expansive floating melismas
in the central section before reducing back to the simple appoggiatura flicks of the
opening.
Something else which becomes apparent is that the differences and the tensions
between gestures of the voice and the articulation are significant in terms of the
pieces narrative. The sections where the articulation dominates focus on ideas of
language and of 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; and the voice, therefore, represents music, communication in
more abstract and emotional terms, and seems to be somehow inward looking,
reflective, apparently far less bothered about the urgency of the task. Even more
specifically, the articulation appears to correspond to the ideas of panic, inspired no
doubt by the seemingly impossible task of making sense out of the deconstructed
phonemes it is having to deal with; and the voice corresponds 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 in the piece are numerous and fast changing, but can be
divided into roughly five character types, where A and B are dominated by
articulation-based gestures and C, D and E tend to be primarily sung gestures.
A
tense

B
bewildered

C
witty

D
distant

E
noble

urgent
nervous
intense

whimpering
whining
anxious

giddy
ecstatic
coy

dreamy
impassive
wistful

joyful
Serene
tender

gasping

excited

languorous

Perhaps, 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, which perhaps reflects the composers point of view,
that music is a more effective means of communication than words could ever be on
their own
There is an obvious contrast between the opening and the ending of the piece: at the
start, the predominant gesture is muttering. Here, the articulation is dominant, a
stream of dabbing phonemes, but underneath it we have the voice in a continual
minimal float. Again, this is where a recognition of the gestural nature of the piece,
and the tension between articulation and vocalization becomes apparent. At the
close (800 to the end), the float underlying the dab from the opening is still present,
but the articulation, the dab gestures are almost completely still and are in fact
physically superimposed over the vocal gesture, by means of the fingers of the hand
tapping the mouth. The few words have been uttered and what remains is pure
song, pure voice. The first and last clear word is sing. The tension between the two
gestural forces appears to have been resolved or rather, music and calm appear to
have won out over the panic of language.
In Two Interviews (Berio, 1985, 96), Berio describes Sequenza III as a three part
invention - text, gesture and expression. Each element has its own progression
through the piece: the text gradually reveals itself; the vocal gestures expand,
contract and transform; and the expression maintains a level of frenetic variety until
the very last moments when, the task complete, it becomes tranquil, all urgency
gone. A generation on, it remains one of the outstanding and continually challenging
pieces in the vocal repertory.

A bold submission, but listen to Sequenza III and I defy you not to believe that most
Italian singing before Berio was limited in terms of emotion. Grand Opera, written by
Puccini or Verdi, albeit brilliant, was about themes no more developed than their
Greek predecessors, 2300 years before. It was the big love theme, the comic
buffoon or the tragic fate that dominated such works. Likewise, most songs, or
lieder, were about love, nature or situations.
What Berio has done in Sequenza III, is to internalise the song. When hearing
Berio, we are invading the mind of the singer. The music is about the abstract
expressions of fragility, nervousness, excitement, hope or insecurity; the singer
baring her soul privately through her voice. She is not singing to tell the world. She
would almost certainly stop singing if she knew we were listening. A girl in a
womans body.
Berio emphasises this by using only nine brief phrases throughout the work, such as
Give me a truth or without worrying. This means that it is not the words that
create the music. The words are incidental and often unrecognisable, as the singer
breaks them up into tiny pieces or speeds through them at pace. This is music at its
most pure, a genuine song without words, and without the constraints of a narrative
text.
A second point of note is that this is a very feminist work. I also defy you to imagine
a man singing the same tune as Luisa Castellani, the soprano. It is not possible.
This highlights the intimacy of the work; the music being so personal to the singer
that the vocal part cant just be alternated with or handed over to another singer, a
pianist or a violin section, as would have happened in traditional song, with a melody
being passed around and developed by each section.
Quite simply, this is some of the most remarkable music you could hear and the
performance and technique involved are not just innovative, but breathtaking as well.
For highlights, listen to the scampering excitement (123) followed by contentment
(136). Or be amazed at how quickly Berio can make the singer move from nervous
laughter (438) to slight anguish (442) to playfulness (446) to panic (451). This
level of dramatic change, at thought-like speed, is something that could never have
been expressed by traditional forms of writing, or by melody. Listen and hear a new
world being opened up to you.