These recordings were made in 1969 when Luciano Berio (1925–2003) was in the fourth year of a six-year appointment at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. During these years he taught composition and analysis, and also created the group heard on this CD, the Juilliard Ensemble.

In the late 1960s Berio’s reputation had grown to make him one of the leading figures in contemporary music, conducting the New York Philharmonic and the Swingle Singers in a performance of part of his Sinfonia. It was the large-scale and theatrical works that dominated his output later in his career, but early on he had produced some remarkable music for chamber groups. When planning this recording Berio wished to show how his music had evolved from the early Due pezzi for violin and piano of 1957, to the newly completed Sequenza VII for solo oboe, composed for Heinz Holliger.

Chamber Music for female voice, harp, cello and clarinet sets words by James Joyce, and was written for Berio’s first wife, the American soprano Cathy Berberian. Berio’s flexible and contrapuntally lucid use of the 12-tone method (a tribute to Webern and Dallapiccola) is apparent in the Sequenza III – another work composed for his wife.