ABSTRACT
For a moment it seems as if Berio's commentary upon Mahler is to continue, for the fourth movement opens with the d♭ and e♭, with which the vocalist enters at the start of the fourth movement of the Second Symphony. But there the similarity ends, for Berio, seeking a measure of symmetry around his central movement, engages upon a quiet, slow expansion from those two notes to four eight-part vocal chords that become increasingly invaded and enriched by instrumental additions. Berio's choice of instruments is fastidious – a re-assertion of his own sound-world after the parade of ancestral ghosts in the previous movement. Berio accordingly turns back to the verbal materials of the first movement, and proceeds to complete the processes initiated there. But again, what on a conceptual level implies a sense of ending on a practical, auditory level offers an open-ended stream of images only part-comprehensible at best.
