Luciano Berio's Sinfonia (1968-1969) premiered in its initial four-movement version under the composer's direction in 1968; Berio later added the fifth movement as a summation. Dedicated to Leonard Bernstein, this work was commissioned on the occasion of the 125th anniversary season of the New York Philharmonic. The vocal parts in Sinfonia were composed for the Swingle Singers, famous for their a cappella renditions of many instrumental classics. Sinfonia is the first of Berio's pieces to directly engage the ghosts of music history, exemplified by Gustav Mahler, whose Second Symphony Berio's appropriates. Sinfonia uses a large, relatively traditional orchestra, and the eight voices of the Swingle Singers. Berio's use of the Mahler Scherzo and other appropriated material (including music of Bach, Boulez, Berg, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and many others), does not, as the composer makes it clear, amount to the technique of collage. For example, the Mahler movement forms the philosophical and structural armature for the third movement of Sinfonia, at least partly as a basis for commentary on music history in general. Specifically, the distinctive characteristics of the Scherzo serves as catalysts for the proliferation of musical references with similar traits. The depth and extent of interconnectivity among these references parallels Berio's use of Beckett's narrative The Unnameable and the threads spun off from that text. One can hear Beckett throughout the movement, just as one can hear Mahler—blurred or momentarily obliterated by other sounds, other meanings, but always returning.

The first movement of Sinfonia begins with a wash of sound from a tam tam followed by an open chord in the voices. The vocal texts come primarily from structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss' Le cru et le cuit (The Raw and the Cooked). The piano plays an especially prominent role in this movement. The second movement demonstrates a technique of harmonic construction common in Berio's work from this period onward. Clearly stated is the initial, whole-tone-based chord that only in retrospect seems to grow in complexity as the movement progresses. Berio modified the harmonic density of this work in order to bridge the first and third movements. Once again, Berio manages to tie together a purely musical process and an extramusical reference. The sung text consists of syllables of the phrase "O Martin Luther King," which, in addition to honoring the human rights leader, allows Berio to use every vowel sound as an individual sonic element. The building up of the semantic entity of the phrase via the basic cells of language mirrors the similar process of generating harmonic cohesion from a basic collection of notes. The fourth movement disperses the energy of the third movement. The sung text centers on the phrase "Rose de sang" (rose of blood), a transformation of the text found in the fourth movement of Mahler's Second Symphony. Berio became convinced of the necessity of the fifth movement only after Sinfonia's initial performances. The complex fifth movement acts as a commentary on the entire piece, much as the third movement "analyzed" the Mahler Scherzo. Sinfonia also contains an encyclopedic store of technical and philosophical approaches to the problems of late twentieth century music. Not only does Sinfonia function effectively as a way to approach the music of the past, but it also seems to illuminate the future.

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