Sequenza II is a composition for unaccompanied harp by the Italian composer Luciano Berio. Written for and premiered by the French harpist Francis Pierre in 1963 (who also recorded it twice), it has since been performed and recorded by Emily Laurance, Frédérique Cambreling, Susan Jolles, and Claudia Antonelli, among others.
As with most of the Sequenze, Berio sought to explore the timbral and expressive capabilities of the harp in the hands of a virtuoso musician. Because of this, Sequenza II defies many of the stereotypes associated with the harp. In the liner notes of the 1999 Ensemble InterContemporain recording, Berio wrote of Sequenza II, "French impressionism has left us with a rather limited version of the harp, as if its most obvious characteristic were that of lending itself to the attention of loosely robed girls with long blond tresses, capable of drawing from it nothing more than seductive glissandi." Sequenza II has its share of glissandi, but also calls for harmonic tones and extended techniques such as percussive effects (on the wooden body of the harp), as well as a virtuoso amount of pedal-shifting and an extreme sensitivity to rapid dynamic changes.
Sequenza II is built from the decorative figurations, glissandi, octave effects, and other characteristic devices of the harp, working with rather than against the instrument's inherent limitations. Its structure involves the interaction of two musical characters, the linear (i.e. melody, counterpoint) and the vertical (i.e. chords, percussion), with the second gradually superseding the first. It begins with a single, repeated note. This expands into a single melodic line, then turns to two-part counterpoint and accelerates into a series of rapid melodic ostinati contrasted with glissandi and seven-note tone clusters. The chords gradually become more differentiated and the last remnants of the original melodic style disappear .
In 1964, Berio composed Chemins I by adding an orchestra to Sequenza II.