ABSTRACT
Of those composers whose works are widely known today, few have written piano music that calls for extensive use of the sostenuto (middle) pedal. 1 Luciano Berio, as is evident from his Sequenza IV (1965–66), Leaf (1990) and Sonata (2001), is an exception to this trend. While originally the sostenuto pedal was used primarily to sustain bass notes underneath material that featured clashing harmonies (and that could not be sustained using the damper pedal), Berio’s three pieces employ the middle pedal in order to manipulate the listener’s perception of rhythm and harmony. By obscuring attack points and revealing hidden contrasting harmonies within one another, the sostenuto pedal, in Berio’s hands, becomes a kind of acoustic envelope generator, lengthening the release time of chords while simultaneously creating ‘phantom’ attacks. In this essay, I explore how the use of the sostenuto pedal affects the listener’s perception in these three works; graphic notational methods one might use in an analysis in order to account for the pedal’s sophisticated effects on attack and decay times; and how Berio’s use of the pedal varies between the three pieces. Before proceeding to the analysis of its use in these works, however, a short explanation of the sostenuto pedal’s mechanics is necessary.
