Sequenza XII (author's note)

Sequenza XII
for bassoon (1995)

Sequenza XII is a kind of “meditation” based on the fact that the bassoon, perhaps more than any other wind instrument, possesses contrasting personalities, especially in its extreme registers: it is marked by different morphologies, different possibilities of articulation as well as different characters of timbre and dynamics. Sequenza XII has a circular structure: again and again, it covers the distance between the extreme registers of the bassoon, always in different time spans and often with extreme (very slow or very fast) tempi; recurrent figures point out the succession of the different registers’ ranges.
The frequent transformation of the strongly idiomatic image of the instrument is always obtained through a limited number of articulation procedures which are an organic part of the musical process (I make no use of multiphonics). For instance, the quick alternation of distant registers (real tremolos) brings forth sometimes a new and complex timbre resulting from the fusion of all the acoustic and harmonic characters activated in that particular moment.
Sequenza XII was written in 1995 for Pascal Gallois.

Luciano Berio

Note d'autore: informazioni generali | Author's note: general info