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34

Luciano Berio's Sonata per pianoforte solo .

Or
The Disclosures of a Sketch Page

Reinhold Brinkmann

Luciano Berio's Sonata per pianoforte solo, premiered on Juli 1, 2001 in Zurich by An-
drea Lucchesini, is a wqrk of ambitions. Unlike the majority of Berio's works for piano
solo, the six pieces composed between 1965 and 1990 which are now published together
as Six encores for piano, or Rounds ( 1967), the Sonata was from the beginning planned
as a major work--outdoing even the Sequenza for piano solo. The genre as title already
indicates the presence of the great sonata tradition, in particular the 19th-century sonata
from Beethoven through Scriabin. And the audiences as well as the critics in Zurich,
Cambridge/Mass., New York ... perceived Berio's work as being of grand dimensions,
the New York Times even thought that here a new canonic piece had been added to the
repertory. After the Zurich premiere the composer made a handful of major revisions.
Target was not the vertical dimension but the work's form, the revisions focused on the
regrouping of entire sections rather than on single pitches or rhythms. This revised ver-
sion was finished on July 12, 2001; it has been published as Universal Edition no. 31873.
Manuscript and sketches are part of the Berio Collection at the Paul Sacher Foundation in
Basel.

*
Before I can look at the sketches a few words ate needed about the Sonata as a composi-
tion, 1 and about Its beginning in particular. The Sonata is in one movement as are the late
sonatas by Scriabin. A single tone B~, constantly repeated, sounds from beginning to end
(a technique Berio uses in a different way also in his Sequenza VII for oboe solo). Its
function is either to serve as unifying factor and hold the piece together, or to form a
dramatic opposition to the events surrounding it. A second long-term strategy is the grad-
ual usurpation of the piece through thirty-second notes (chords as well as extremely fast
repetitions of single notes). Thus performances are feasts of virtuosity. The composer
wrote _on February 1, 2001: "I have been very busy, trying to finish on time a huge and
almost unplayable piano work." And a third feature should be mentioned, it concerns the
482 Brinkmann

textures the piece displays. That the major revision of the first version concerned mainly
regroupings of entire sections indicates that these sections are virtually independent in
themselves and that their internal consistency is stronger than the connections to other
formal entities. Therefore the sections are more "field-like" and not thematically organ-
ized.

*
Turning to the first page of the score, different elements or layers of a musical text
are discernible. First observation: the alternation between 2 and 3 staves with an · addi-
tional line underneath for the sostenuto pedal. That gives space for the placement of the
repeated B ~, here sounding in quarter notes like a soft bell as a distant background, "lon-
tano e immobile." And the first chord held with the sostenuto pedal lasts for 11 measures,
the pedal selects 9 pitches for the specific open sound, notated in pointed brackets at the
beginning of the staves.
The page shows the piece in statu nascendi. To the single ostinato tone B~ chords are
added, pppp, the first three form a little syntactical unit, and the next three, after a long
rest, correspond with almost the same durations . Then the density is slowly increasing;
chordal dynamic outbursts, marked "violento," occur, and then the chords are broken into
successive thirty-second notes, set in contrary motion. This kind of extremely fast figure
will become a very important feature in the center of the work. Another compositional
strategy concerns connections between the various chords after they have been exposed.
For example: chord n·o. 2, the last one in m. 4 is partly identical with chord no. 3, the first
one in m. 5- chord 2 has an E that does not occur in chord 3, the latter has two pitch
classes, D and F that are not in chord 2. From m. 5 on the G-major triad plus its raised
lower note G ~ appears again and again in different relations. For this quite general com-
positional orientation one other characteristic of the harmonic world of this Sonata may
suffice. Three of the chords exposed immediately after the beginning are well-known
representations of their historical era, avant-guardists of three generations of harmonic
discoveries (and the fact that they can be quoted in an act of memory refers them to the
realm ofhistory).
The first chord in m. 6 is the Tristan chord F-B-'-E~-A~, already at the second appear-
ance in the same measure the chord is substantially enlarged. In m. 10 a combination of
the E-major triad and the E~-major seventh chord appear in the right and the left hands
together; that is Stravinsky's archaic world of his Sacre du Printemps compressed into
harsh dissonances. And immediately following Stravinsky we have as C-F-F~-B the
chord ofthe hundreds of repetitions from Karlheinz Stockhausen's K/avierstiick 9.

*
There is a surprisingly large number of sketch leaves for Berio's Sonata for pianoforte
solo. The amount of work invested in this compositional process underscores the impor-
tance of the piece for the composer. The bundle of sketch leaves at the Sacher Stiftung
currently attached to the manuscript of the Sonata has still to be identified and cata-
logued. Single sketches, however, demonstrate their importance at a first glance and one
such important source is the following page (Facs. 34.1 ).
For our limited purpose let me label this page Ski.
 Be rio 's Sonata per pianoforte solo 483

Facsimile 34.1 Sketch page Ski, Collection Luciano Berio, Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel, used by
permission

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The sketches on Ski can easily be divided into two different categories. The left part from
top through th~ middle contains three sketches using a horizontal sequence of tones (or
intervals), upward and downward, each beginning with the same sequence B~-E-F~­
A ... The first sketch concerns the sequence itself and gives an incomplete order; the
second sketch attempts at extracting a secondary order of notes by counting with multi-
ples of a fixed number. {This is obviously reflecting on Berg's method of deriving secon-
484 Brinkmann

dary sets in his opera Lulu). The third sketch applies a note-against-note counterpoint to
the basic order. The lower part of page Ski contains two attempts at verticalization of
hexachordal groups, most likely also derived from a horizontal order.
These are procedures characteristic of Berio's compositional method in general. The
first decisive step is the determination of a horizontal order of pitches.2 This is a distant
reminiscence of the construction of a row, but this is no longer twelve-tone composition
or serialism though it keeps the serial experience as a background. One could call it sim-
ply the horizontal ordering ofbasic material. In sketch 1 of our page Ski the (incomplete)
sequence of pitches counts 14, including 9Ldifferent pitch classes. On another sketch leaf,
let me label it for here Skll, the extended sequence counts 36 pitches, by no more than 8
different pitch classes. (The verticalization of this long order defines tetrachords.) A
heading on top of the sketch page calls this operation "distrib.[ uzione] statistiche." The
connection between our two pages, the link between the short and the long order of
pitches is formed by the seven-note group in the middle of stave I of our first leaf Ski: E-
B~-A~-A-F#-B-E-[B ~]. This seven-digit group of pitches is also a re-ordering of the
"secondary order" ofsketch no. 2 on the same page Ski.
Whereas the left side of our sketch page does not ~each the final version, the notes
and words in the upper right comer of page Ski are establishing conclusive decisions
which Berio indicates through words. There are three important stipulations.
The first concerns the pitch content of the chord(s) held by the sostenuto pedal. A
first sketch appears in staves 2 and 3 to the right from the middle of the page, verbally
identified as "sost. ped." My, reading is that the sketch encompassesJwo versions for the
sostenuto chord with a verbal i 'opp." between the versions, that is, Berio notates a choice.
But before the final decision is being made, that is, circled and okay'd, also the melodic
gesture in stave 4 [B~-E-F#-A-D-(high G)] is written down with a bracket to the left and
the two explanatory words "Inizio Sonata." Apparently the first version of the sostenuto
chord was not suitable. The composer chooses the alternative version, circles it (the circle
crosses with its lower side the bracketed high G and confirms that the high G was there
before the circle for the sketch was added) and "signs" the document with his "ok." As a
last step (staves 5-6) the notes for the sostenuto pedal are written as chords and an addi-
tional note G is eliminated. One correction is made later than the version this page repre-
sents. The lowest note of the left-hand chord will be changed from A to A~. thus eliminat-
ing the octave between right and left hands. This all results in the chord of nine pitches
that we will later find at the beginning of the score. Thus the remark "Inizio Sonata" is
absolutely correct.
The second important observation relates to a specific feature of the sostenuto chord .
Its upper part (right hand) is a verticalization of the melodic line of stave 4 (with the ex-
ception of the D which will in the chord become a C). Certainly, the melodic gesture is
part of the whole beginning but specifically (again with the exception of the D) it is the
"second theme" or lyrical episode ofmm. 26ff., the B ~ being delegated as the pedal note.
The third important stipulation is represented by the advice "INIZio col B ~ ." This in-
troduces the B ~ that resonates permanently throughout the Sonata and indeed does it from
the very beginning, the Sonatd "comes out" of B~ repetitions (and disappears into B ~). A
sketch on the lower part of another leaf shows a first attempt at realizing this "coming out
of B~." To the left of this sketch Berio wrote the words 3 "riprendere fini inizi [?] ," mean-
ing to take the en'd from the beginning. And the sketch reads as follows (Ex. 34.1 ):
 Berio 's Sonata per pianoforte solo 485

Example 34.1

The tempo (J =54) is exactly that ofthe final version; the pulse of the repeated notes was
obviously firmly connect~d to the idea of the opening. The final beginning with a longer
Bb,fortissimo and then following the natural dynamic decline of all piano sounds is, how-
ever, still not part of this version. Revealing is the first entry of chords and their relation-
ship to the sustained Bb. Whereas their place, their rhythmic position, their ornamental
character as "grace chords" all are there, the pitch content of the chords is still missing.
The important conclusion: this is a music where gesture is more important than pitch and
harmony. The specific shape of the "inizio" is the dominating factor, the concrete "fill-
ing" remains secondary.
· This observation confirms that the central formal category which ·governed Berio's
vocal and theatrical writing: gesture, is also a key to the understanding of his mature in-
strumental music.

NOTES

I . Berio research has greatly benefited from the writings of David Osmond-Smith, in particular his Be rio
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Thomas Gartmann should also be mentioned with his
study ''dass nichts an sich jemals vollendet ist. " Untersuchungen =um lnstrumentalschaffen von Luciano Berio
(Bern a.O.: Paul Haupt, 1995). And there is Norbert Drel3en's dissertation : "Sprache und Musik bei Luciano
Berio" (Regensburg, 1982).
2. Osmond-Smith discusses "pitch fields" for Epifanie A (Berio, 25-26), a "pitch series" for Nunes (17-
18); Garthmann gives a detailed analysis of selecting and pre-ordering the material for Sincronie ( Untersuchun-
gen, !5 ff.). ·
3. Thanks to Bernard Rands for helping me decipher this passage.