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.

Initially, the text is heard as phonemes - to, co, for, us, be. Gradually, words
and then complete phrases emerge. 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

a woman

150

give me a few words for a woman

350

to sing

420

a truth

610

to build a

620

a few words before

635

to sing before night

815

allowing before night comes

835

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

firm, sustained, direct

Glide

gentle, sustained, direct

Slash

firm, sudden, flexible

Flick

gentle, sudden, flexible

Wring

firm, sustained, flexible

Float

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 nonstepwise 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 (254-305).
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. 429-436). 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
B
C
D
E
tense
bewildered
witty
distant
noble

urgent
whimpering
giddy

dreamy
joyful
nervous
whining
ecstatic
impassive
Serene
intense
anxious
coy
wistful
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.