Sequenza XII - Unaccompanied Bassoon

This piece requires enormous virtuosity, if only because the player must employ circular-breathing technique throughout; the result is a work sounding for 19 minutes without breaks or pauses for breath. The work was tailor-made for French bassoonist Pascal Gallois, who added the special annotations to the score.

Berio calls Sequenza XII “a meditation on the circumstance that the bassoon – perhaps more than any other wind instrument – seems to have oppositional characteristics in its personality – differing profiles, differing articulation options, differing characteristics of timbre and dynamics.”