Sequenza III for solo voice

In some ways it is difficult to write anything definitive about Luciano Berio’s Sequenza III for solo voice (1965), since it forcefully and unerringly straddles the fuzzy boundary between concert music and avant-garde theater. From the very beginning Berio obscures the formality of the conventional performance, as he indicates in his notes to the interpreter: “The performer (a singer, an actor or both) appears on stage already muttering as though pursuing an off-stage thought. She stops muttering when the applause of the public is subsiding.” On the other hand, the Sequenza eschews so many expectations that one could fill a volume with flights of fancy about its structure, meaning, and significance. Where, indeed, to begin?
A likely point of reference—the text by poet Markus Kutter—hardly helps clarify the matter, for Berio takes an already fragmentary message and further evaporates its fragile cohesiveness:

Give me a few words for a woman
to sing a truth allowing us
to build a house without worrying before night comes.

The composer builds gradually from the smallest levels, rapping on phonemes like [to], [co], [for], [us], and [be], until he reaches the level of complete words. To pull this piece off requires incredible vocal agility and maturity, as well as a thorough command of all the voice’s sonic capabilities—from sung pitches, both closed and open mouth, to trilled nonsense syllables, laughter, sighs, and coughing. The paradox, of course, is that what may appear on first hearing as a chaotic jumble of Dadaist vocalizing is actually notated with insane precision by Berio. The composer recorded many of his own reflections on this piece, which make for insightful reading. As he puts it:

The voice always carries with it an excess of connotations…. In Sequenza III I tried to assimilate into a musical process many aspects of everyday vocal behavior, trivial ones included…. [E]mphasis is placed on the sound symbolism of vocal gestures, on the “shadows of meaning” that accompany them, on the associations and conflicts to which they give rise. Because of this, Sequenza III can also be seen as a study in musical dramaturgy whose prime concern is, in a certain sense, the relationship between the interpreter and her own voice.

(c) Jason Stell