Strands in 20th-Century Italian Music: 1.

Luigi Nono: A History of Belief

Author(s): Michael Gorodecki
Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 133, No. 1787 (Jan., 1992), pp. 10-14+16-17
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/966230
Accessed: 01-02-2018 11:29 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Musical Times Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Musical Times

This content downloaded from 194.27.186.96 on Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:29:40 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Strands in 20th-century Italian music
1 - LUIGI NONO: A HISTORY OF BELIEF by Michael Gorodecki

In 1959 Luigi Nono delivered a talk at the Darmstadt 'breathe' in a curious, stretched way. There is a lack
summer school entitled 'The Presence of History in decorative motion, a prevalence of long note values,
Music Today'1. His passionate plea for engagement immanent monolithic value. These characteristics
with and responsibility toward the historical moment never left Nono in the works ahead. If there is an uneas
took the form of a savage attack on the ideas of liberty tension in the music it lies in the clash between the
expressed by John Cage and his followers. Their belief expressive intensity lying behind the work and the
in a personal quest for freedom, unconstrained by deliberate, fragmentary surface in which it is cast.
musico-historical forces, was for Nono: Nono was never content to play with numbers and
structures in the orthodox Darmstadt manner. In the
same concert of premieres in 1953 the super-abstraction
the oppression which instinct exerts on reason
of Stockhausen's Kontrapunkte and Boulez's Polyphonie X
lay alongside Nono's highly atmospheric setting of
In this respect Nono could be seen to be at one with his Lorca and Neruda responses to the Spanish Civil War,
fellow post-war serialists - Stockhausen and Boulez. Espaiia en el Corazon. What impinges most on the ear is
But in reality this speech also marked the end of the the particular restraint and narrow range of the vocal
so-called holy trinity of Darmstadt, and Nono's connec- line, the mix of colours of sung and spoken text, the
tions with the avant-garde establishment. For his spirit limited use of pitches in well-defined registers to create
of humanistic reason was enmeshed in a communist harmonic bands, the heavy silences, and the extensive
credo that was to carry his music in the 60s and use70sof untuned percussion - many sizes of cymbals and
toward the enactment and promotion of his political drums - to produce a vibrating surface turbulence of
ideology, and far from the comparative abstraction sound;of raw expressive characteristics then, owing
his former colleagues. Surprise, and in manymuch cases,more to Edgar Varese than to serial techniques.
delight there came to be then in 1980, when Nono During with the 50s Nono did increasingly explore con-
his String Quartet Fragmente-Stille-An Diotima appeared struction possibilities, most particularly using sym-
to come back into the abstract fold2; to have made a
metrical number patterns in relation to duration and
volte-face from his art of commitment; to have note dis- distribution. But these calculations of density and
covered a new interiorized world of shadow, space noteandstreaming were never ends in themselves; they
silence, filled with fleeting, haunting sounds, which werehe always at the service of an expressive intent, or at
continued to explore until his death last May. But leasttostood in confrontation with it. Certainly it was out
what extent were these three artistic phases as of these apparently contradictory forces that Nono's
mutually exclusive as they have often been portrayed highly personal strength of utterance grew.
to be? Were there certain preoccupations - musical or Incontri of 1955 exemplifies the purely instrumental
otherwise - that Nono continued to develop through- expression of these tensions. Its overall structure forms
out his creative output? Did he continue to be 'com- a perfect palindrome, as do many of its smaller-scale
mitted' in the last decade of his life? rhythmic forms. The irrational rhythms on single
Nono's first acknowledged work, the Variazione pitches thrown in apparent chaotic fashion around the
Canoniche sulla serie dell'op.41 di A. Schoenberg for orchestra are based on five distinct rhythmic models
orchestra, of 1950, was premiered by Hermannwhich undergo various treatments of mirror form,
Scherchen in Darmstadt. Given the source material one diminution, and augmentation. The row [Ex. 2],
might have expected an orthodox use of serial tech- although ordered according to a Webernian model (op.
niques. But Schoenberg's row was chosen as much for 24) dissolves the trichord relationships in situ through
the anti-fascist nature of the Byron text set in op.41,its
hisslow multi-layered employment, such that the last
Ode to Napoleon, as for musical considerations. Moreover,
trichord joins? the first to create two total-chromatic
the Schoenberg is notable as one of the least strict
hexachords; motif disappears and in its place is the
works of his serial period, with many octave doublings 'bloque sonore'. Individual pitches lose their identity
and free orderings of the series. In the Variazione the and become part of a generalized, neutralized mass. But
complete row is only heard once, toward the end of the the deliberate act of will to produce these sheens of
work. Rather, throughout the work Nono uses frag- harmonic fields is quite unlike the flooding decorative
ments of the row to engender a proliferating networkmotion of of so much other contemporaneous serial
transitory melodic figures. The opening page of the music. It pulls the chromatic expanse into one focus
score [Ex. 1] illustrates these strand-like patterns. It after
also another, avoiding the serialist tendency toward
gives other clues to Nono's concerns beyond pitch information overload or entropy, directing it toward an
manipulation. He, like Schoenberg, writes octaves in expressive goal. Out of the apparent aridity of an
the harp in bs.4-5 and again in b.7. But the G , G# endless
and stream of single notes flying at each other [Ex. 3]
A octaves do not so much disturb the chromatic comes an extraordinary intensity of feeling.
equilibrium as to create particular resonant shafts In an of
interview in 19703 Nono suggested that his
light amongst the dark muted tones of low flute,
gradual ostracism by the avant-garde establishment
which took
clarinets and strings 'con sordino'. The composition of place over the 50s was in part to do with
sonority over-rides abstract rules. In additionthese very compositional techniques he developed. He
the very
slow, constantly varying tempi allow the explained:
shapes to
10

This content downloaded from 194.27.186.96 on Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:29:40 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Pointilism is contrary to my technique of sound relations Some may have seen the 'politicizing' years between
just as aleatorism is opposed to my compositional the first two operas - Intolleranza (1960-1) with its overt
process. stand against right-wing oppression of minority
peoples and the sprawling amalgamation of diverse
But his isolation nevertheless had more to do with the
revolutionary acts in history in Al Gran Sole Carico
kind of 'feelings' about society he increasingly
d'Amore (1973-4) - as a misguided deviation. And with
expressed. Nono had joined the Italian Communist
hindsight it is all very easy to smugly regard Nono
Party as early as 19524. And although it wasn't until 1960
along with other left-wing intellectuals as manifesting
that the final break came, when he totally committed
an idealistic naivit&. But Nono's subjects - Hiroshima,
himself to an active role in promoting left-wing
Vietnam, Auschwitz, worker exploitation - engendered
ideology, the seeds of his beliefs were very much alive
in the 50s. a very particular kind of musical 'solidarity' without
which the interiorized world of the final years would
not have been reached.
For Nono's dissatisfaction with the edifices of the
musical establishment, audience and concert hall took
him, in 1960, into the electronic studio. It may have been
a political act, but it was also in line with his insistence
on engaging with the historical musical moment along-
side the social one. In the studio Nono began to explore
the acoustical nature of sound, as well as the extensive
possibilities involving filters, micro-intervallic sound-
bands and tape-editing techniques of layering, over-
lapping, intercutting and collage. All this encouraged a
more plastic approach to putting music together.
Speaking about Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz
Nono described himself as a sculptor collecting a vast
pool of musical material, deriving a final image by
Luigi Nono stripping away what he did not require. The result could
be considered either as a crudification or a purification
II Canto Sospeso (1956) was at the core of his political of the sonic material. But even if the hyper-expressive
response. By setting texts of condemned prisoners-of- wailings and cries of Ricorda cosa ti piano forte in Auschwitz
war he moved much closer to an engagement with are considered to be crude, the pairing-down of
society than in other works of the decade which set material was an essential part of his development
more reflective, lyrical poetry by left-wing writers such toward the ethereal zones of the 80s.
as Eluard, Pavese and Ungarettis. Nevertheless the It shouldn't be thought that Nono completely
work was still fundamentally a response to generally rejected acoustic music in the 60s. In the first four years
acknowledged outrages in the second world war. Its he wrote two small-scale but concentrated a cappella
humanist sentiments could be safely shared by its choral workss, as well as the Canti di Vitae d'Amore (1962)
audience. What was radical was its employment of the and the (anciones a Guiomar (1962-3). Moreover the
techniques described above to respond to such texts. extensive use of crotale attacks, decays and echoes en
Nono was criticized at the time by none other than masse in the Canciones show how acoustic thinking may
Stockhausen6 for obscuring the words as a result of have influenced the kind of electronic shapes and
those techniques. And it may be argued that individual resonances he subsequently made in the studio, as well
words of a text set to music should always be heard. But as producing a percussion sound-world that looks both
in Nono's setting it is the total unity of a text (which was back to the Variazione, and ahead to the work for six
expressly made available for the audience to read) that percussionists Con Luigi Dallapiccola (1979) and No hay
receives a generalized response. If one can accept such a caminos ... hay que caminar (1987).
response, and it is one of purposeful strength, the Acoustically the most lasting presence in the 60s was
criticism starts to lack foundation. For good or for bad the solo soprano voice. It was this medium more than
Nono's choral style right up to his final opera Prometeo any other through which Nono's 'message' was com-
(1985) continued to treat the text as one more layer of municated. The long unaccompanied solo, Djamila Bou-
structure or content, not something to be projected pacha, from the Canti di Vita e d'Amore, with its wide
above or by the others. intervals, fluctuating dynamics, enormous range,
It is important to realise that the procedures them- expressionistic lyricism, enacts a poetic reaction9 to the
selves were never truly abstract. They were always death of an Algerian girl student, a symbol for the
governed by the production of a musical image or struggle for Algerian independence. But it is in La
composite of images. In retracing the path to the Fabbrica Illuminata (1964) for solo soprano and tape
experiments in sound and space of Prometeo (1985), above all other works that the voice bears most
Nono7 himself pointed to his most integrally serial emotional weight. It is the vital element of humanity
work, the Varianti for Violin solo, Strings, and Wood (1958) a score which together with the electronic part, man
for its specific kind of concrete imagery, focusing upon a pulating factory sounds, women's chorus and pu
particular pitch, coloured in all manner of articulations electronics, was an attempt to shock the workers of t
and dynamic shadings [Ex. 4]. Moreover he related it Genovese factory, for and with the help of whom th
directly to two extracts demonstrating similar concerns work was written, into a new awareness of their
in the String Quartet An Diotima of 1980 [Ex. 5]. How inhuman working conditions. The simplification of
great a distance was there between these two phases of rhythm, the greater continuity of line as opposed to the
his work? surrounding electronic discontinuities, the dynamic
11

This content downloaded from 194.27.186.96 on Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:29:40 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
c-r
h>

Ex. I Ex. 2

L. iffe0 \h~ A[VU4ITF bL'-5 - ?~jr~Th 4-I.:d"3. . P Im

l.I4. h- !1- 0
0 \

11 Ex. 3

LAA N?P 1,45 2

L~. __ __ __ _ ____,___ ______

ix ..__-_---i
_.__. - - i ?--"d_ _ . ... .. .

Oro*
------- Fit-P- --------
t ?:? -t
op _ _

4' 4s

FI

L J
, ,ca.104
iB "0- "- ?

.3- o~ - _- ___ . . . . . ... . . . .

w

e
dame, S
, v;J,
. _

;.,, -

6t .I _ _ - 71 by AnVivaVert (HY m Sahnb a mb 194

-- --
---- -ja
--- i-
m kr
.. ?I 'n -:'"" 'L( rr~ ,~m,rr~t
'nb r.'"",n- ,,, .i"!I' . . . " ,,, i. , i

-2tti~ ed"- "- " -_ T'-- d_ _ _ _ _ _ Al tC Y419 b G C I .

This content downloaded from 194.27.186.96 on Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:29:40 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Ex. 4 Ex. 5

VIM. V Leqmo tW?o-PoMte

VH. p r S' ----

-44

m7, Labr

8#' b B-. I- J O
3 _________1+ totwad
aLe.

Ex. 6

i ac flALL-
COW ACCENTI HMOCATI OFbr-
+ rC7 r A7 cz

i r

r T - cI !F
---_ - _ c
:7 ~rl L

r-Rr TA I
L-
NCA
Mal`i?`
ro
k1
r~
Fr7W

A RIA RE To cC

Ex. 7 Ex. 8

AjaV* ., I- A..V

T . v

S ." .. . I
T+-V. A1
T A -

KI

SzKIc
SI*v. A-T*-Vc

SmFI K FI

T+Os

-Ve

Al- 1h ll S,
mdcz

~ , jaz e.. .. 7.-.-

...p y- .
T-.Pa.

A contralto S = soprano
Bfl - flauto basso T = tenore
Bkl- clarinetto basso Tb = tromba
FI = flauto Pos = trombone
Kb = contrabbasso Va = viola
KI = clarinetto Vc = violoncello

13

This content downloaded from 194.27.186.96 on Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:29:40 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
shapes linked entirely to the 'drama', the concentration expressive frame to 'view'. Even the apparently
of intervals of the 4th, 5th, and tritone, all in the efforts of directed motion of the march in Como una Ola di Fuerza y
serving the 'cause', constituted a vital development of Luz ... is more like a long-term stretching process of
Nono's vocal style that was to stay with him beyond the one piece of material over many octaves. But these
'political' phase up to Prometeo. pictures, though made up of many individual frag
ments of sound on the smallest scale, were almost
Looking back over his career in 1987 Nono spoke of the always held together by rigid global structures, usually
tape piece Non Consumiamo Marx (1969) in the following symmetrical in form. It was these large-scale forces that
terms10:
were fragmented
symmetrical from were
strategies Sofferte onde serene
no longer used to..,arti-
on. Not that
Technical innovation moves, excites and shakes up the culate local actions [Ex. 6]. Nor that longer-term quasi-
reality of the emotions and vice-versa: 'thoughts are born
with language' recapitulations, or echoes of earlier material do not take
place. Contrary to what Nono himself said, they are
But though he may have also wished this in the 60s, the vital to the sense of the piece. But the rocking wave-like
radical modernity which Nono insisted on in his music rhythms and bell-calls, evoking Nono's native city of
probably did not help comprehension of his 'thoughts' Venice, take on a new significance as individual
by an audience which increasingly came from factories, moments in themselves. Moreover the crystallization of
workers clubs and unions, as well as left-wing organisa- register, whereby the opening takes on a solid identity
tions and universities. Indeed, Nono deliberately which can be recognized at any of its returns at that
camouflaged songs of solidarity, permutating the register, is analagous in terms of space to the moment-
Maoist song 'The East is Red' in Per Bastiana (1968), and to-moment rhythmical identities in time.
layering the Internationale in Ein Gespenst geht um der In Fragmente - Stille, An Diotima, then, now working
Welt (1971). Although not meant to, the procedures with the La Salle String Quartet, Nono reached not the
seem in retrospect awkwardly ambivalent. Equally the start but the realization of musical and philosophical
electronic chewing of American army war escalation preoccupations that were in embryo six years earlier.
instructions in A floresta e jovem e cheja de vida (1966), or The pause, in which sound or silence could be listened
Cuban revolutionary texts in Y entonces comprendi6 into anew, uncertainly, sometimes painfully, was an
(1966-70), for all their immediate effect as sonic material, essential constituent of Nono's sound vision. And
is much more convincing as an artistic response, neces- concomitant with that, the inverted world of pianis-
sarily oblique and complex in meaning, than the active simo whisperings on the edge of audibility, the
call to protest it was meant to be. heightened shock of each rare fortissimo outburst, the
often enormous silences between fragments, the con-
Nono's political activism culminated in the early 70s
with the Musica-Realta discussions and concerts in the sistently long note values, the preference for very slow
factories and universities of Emilia-Romagna, and with tempi, often crotchet =30, above all the constant flux
involving duration, tempo and the diverse range of
the opera Al Gran Sole Carico d'Amore (1974). But in Como
una Ola di Fuerza y Luz Nono had already begun bowing
to and pizzicato techniques to strive toward the
ideal of a 'suono mobile', or movement in sound. In the
pursue another more private course of solidarity by
forming close working relationships with individualcourse of the quartet there are half-recurrences of
half-heard sounds. Everything is incomplete. But this is
performers, composing expressly with regard to their
part of Nono's aesthetic and philosophy; and the
personal technique and style. Nono had composed
works with individual performers in mind before, but fundamental quality of fragility is reflected in the
his preparatory work with the particular sound worlds elusive poetic quotations from Hilderlin sprinkled
across the score for players to intone silently to them-
of the piano of Pollini and the voice of Lilian Poli at the
RAI Studios were now much more central to his selves. The most frequent phrase, 'Aber das weiss es
compositional preoccupations. The work isnicht' still (but that you cannot know), might be considered a
explicitly political in nature, focusing on a poem about
motto, not only for this work but for the rest of Nono's
the murdered Chilean union leader Luciano Cruz, and At its root is an attitude filled with uncertainty,
output.
structurally centred upon a graphic instrumental but'long
also a boundless quest in the search for the
march to the heights', from the bottom of the unknown; piano to musically-speaking a faith and openness to
the highest piccolo tessitura. But the dramaallequally the possible discoveries of listening and imagination
unfolds in the 'expression' of sonority, from the madepre-along the path.
The search for ever-new discoveries in sound took
cisely differentiated piano registers, to the diverse
Nono to the Heinrich Stribel Foundation Experimental
colours of Poli's voice, to the massed quarter-tone
Studio in Freiburg, Switzerland. There he involved
complexes in the orchestra, to the distant distorted
echoes in the tape backdrop. The dynamic levelhimself
may bein two main areas of research: 1) investigations
into the- extremities of acoustic sound, working very
turned outward - there is a message to be broadcast
but the piece signals a new and intense awareness closely
of with modern virtuosi - on the borders between
colour, register, resonance and musical space. note and silence, breath and tone, the fundamental and
simultaneously sounding partials, minute intonational
The crucial re-evaluation of compositional orienta-
tion began explicitly to take place in the pianodifference;
solo for 2) the manipulation of acoustic sound by live
electronics through filters, microintervallic modula-
Pollini ... Sofferte onde serene ... (1975). It concerned
above all the relationship between sound, and tions,the
signal delay, phasing, control of movement and
direction of sound diffusion, a 'gate' to control the
structures in and by which that sound was articulated.
amplitude of one instrument through another.
In 1987, Nono described the piece in terms of 'compos-
ing Pollini's touch . .. the sound manifests itself asAtmende
Das a Klarsein, a setting of Rilke fragments and
species of resonance without time'11. Nono's musicancienthadOrphic hymns for small chorus with bass flute
always been block-like, presenting one picture and liveorelectronics, was the first work to be written
14

This content downloaded from 194.27.186.96 on Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:29:40 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
after going to Freiburg. Its two main elements, the short extract from Prometeo itself may illustrate thiss5
aching slowness of the choral lines with their simple [Ex. 8]. It is taken from the last movement of the 1985
intervals creating vertical 4ths and 5ths, and the cutting Milan version, subtitled A sonar e a cantar. What the
motions from fragile harmonics to explosions of whistle extract shows is how Nono creates relationships by
and air in the flute interludes, are subtly 'treated' by re-registering the notes of two trichords to produce
microtonal modulations and varied spatial distribution. different sonorous objects, while simultaneously shad-
And the strange ethereality that results does concen- ing each aggregate with new colours. A structure
trate the ear (if one is open to it) in the discovery of each appears, not directional but meditative, a static unit
new impulse - almost as if one were following the being viewed repeatedly in different lights.
process of invention in the act of composition itself. It is To appraise Prometeo fully in this article is not
the drama in each new impulse of sound that is possible, but I must mention certain aspects of its
important, evoking the 'immesurabile momente' general nature which exemplify Nono's philosophy of
(immeasurable moments), 'ins Freie' (in freedom), of which his last years. Firstly he considered it a 'work-in-
the text speaks. progress'. It was an unfinished journey, each of its three
But what constituted this 'freedom'? Had Nono versions taking on a different formal shape with new
moved closer to Cage's life-philosophy? If music composed each time. Secondly, despite the
any one
person had been responsible for Nono's shift incommon
thoughtthread of a timeless Promethean figure in
it was his close friend the philosopher Massimo search of an unknown freedom, the collage of texts, all
Cacciari
and his brand of Italian Existentialism, 'pensiero fragmented and oblique in meaning, are presented in a
debole'. He was responsible for almost all the text of discontinuity, most of the movements
structure
collages that Nono used in the 80s, including Prometeo being termed 'islands'. Thirdly, the subtitle of the opera
and Das Atmende Klarsein. Cacciari wrote about the idea 'tragedia di ascolto' (tragedy of listening) focuses the
of freedom thusl12: nature of the work as a confrontation with the listener,
the audience not only being faced but also surrounded
The 'Freie' here is not a liberation from the world but a by and mixed in with the performers.
liberation of the world from ... the insignificance of that Prometeo may be called a tragedy. Yet its underlying
which occurs in moment following moment.
message is a tremendous hopeful call to 'attend'. And
If for Cage, then, each moment had as much or as little
each of the subsequent works continued to develop
outward forms toward concentrating this attention. A
significance as any other, for Nono and Cacciari each
Carlo Scarpa16 e Infiniti Possibili (1984) for orchestra is a
moment had to be filled with the maximum possible
particularly extreme example, with its extraordinary
significance. Through the musical framework of newly-
minimilistic microtonal meditations around just two
concentrated listening into the fragmentary and
pitches, C and E b . More typical of the period is the
incomplete, Nono continued to follow a Utopian path,
multiplication of sound sources found in No hay caminos,
actively seeking to engage and change people.
With this emphasis on concentration Nono, unlike
hay que caminar (1987) wherein seven instrumental
'choruses' pass pianissimo extremes of tessitura and
Cage, reduced evermore the material with which to
violent fortissimo eruptions from one group to another.
compose. And having made this fundamental reduc-
tion, he was himself 'free' to work in a newly intuitive
If structurally these works may be 'about' dis-
continuity, stylistically a continuity between works
fashion. In an essay of 1983 entitled Error as Necessity he
could now write13: becomes evermore striking in their grand, monumental,
stripped-clean quality, stretching right back to the 50s.
... perhaps what hasn't been chosen is more right [than Moreover the polychoral sonorities and effects of space
what was] ... stand within a centuries-old Venetian tradition - A sonar
e a cantar in its title pays explicit homage to the Gabrielis.
This apparently improvizatory approach led to works It is highly significant that Nono's first teachers in
such as Guai ai gelidi mostri (1983) for two altos, flute, Venice, Malipiero and Maderna, had concentrated as
clarinet, tuba, cello and bass, and live electronics, and A much on music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Pierre dell'azzuro silenzio inquietum (1985) for contrabass as on post-war serialism. The deep presence of music
flute, contrabass clarinet and live electronics, whose histoiy was embedded in him then, and never left his
scores are of such sketchiness and spareness that one consciousness.
may wonder where the 'music' is [Ex. 7]. For in these And as to Nono's political beliefs? It is clear that he
cases the scores become shadowy codes meant for the moved away from the open political engagement of the
performer alone, while the music is as much in the 60s and early 70s. It is also clear that the emphasis fel
sound production as in the notes on the page. Gianmario onto a notion of personal exploration. But the belief in
Borio has gone so far as to write the following about resistance to oppression never deserted Nono. Many of
Guai .. .14 the Hl61derlin fragments in An Diotima were taken from
passages referring to a new Utopian society; Guai a
... the compositional work does not concern itself with gelidi mostri contains texts that speak of the oppressio
individual notes being combined into a significant struc- of the 'monster' state"7; Quando stanno morendo (1982
ture; rather it is concerned with sound processes, possible includes a text by the exiled Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz
forms of movement of different aggregates of the sound
material. As in Prometeo, the drama takes place in the evoking a Poland far from the suffering of martial law18
sound. Prometheus is a revolutionary visionary; Caminantes...
Ayacucho (1987) refers to a region in Peru where a Maoist
But these comments may be misleading. For Nono's guerilla group is to this day fighting for the 'liberation
music did continue to be structured. However, the of their country. These sources make explicit Nono's
structure now resulted from the interaction of these ideology, but in context they are splintered, filtered
'sound processes', both on the local and global level. A
submerged to such an extent that their meaning is quit
16

This content downloaded from 194.27.186.96 on Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:29:40 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 opaque. Yet this is quite deliberate. Unlike the 60s and
early 70s, there was no longer such a strain between
material and message, form and content. For in the 80s
the disruption of the text, its becoming music, was part
of the strain constituting the total nature of the work. a degree
Nono's political beliefs were now (simply) private
beliefs. The wish to change his audience was through
the sound itself.
And this was the essential transformation. For even if
the difficulty of some of the results may still end up
alienating the listener, the contradiction between
'thoughts' and 'language' disappeared. In this unity
there was no longer a gap between desire and goal. The
motto from a Toledo mural of 1300 became, until the
end, Nono's way of life:

Caminantes ... No hay caminos, hay que caminar -

Travellers. There are no paths along which to walk, only to walk.

Notes
'Published in English in The Score 27, (1960), pp.41-5.
2Compare the articles by Luigi Pestalloza and Heinz-Klaus Metzger in Musik-
Konzepte 20, (1981).
3'A colloquio con Luigi Nqno dei Leonardo Pinzauto' in Nuova Rivista Musicale
Italiana, (1970), p.76.
4Bruno Maderna joined the Italian Communist Party at the same time as Nono.
5La Victoire de Guernica (1954): text by Eluard. La terra e la campagna (1957): text from La
BA (Hons) in Music
terra e la morte by Pavese. Cori de Didone (1958): text from La terra promessa by
Ungaretti. (Christian Liturgical Music - Major Option)
6Karlheinz Stockhausen: 'Music and Words' in Die Reihe, vol. 6, (Bryn 2nd [Engl.] ed.,
1964).
7Luigi Nono, 'Verso Prometeo, Frammenti di diari' in Verso Prometeo a cura di
Massimo Cacciari (la Biennale, Ricordi, 1984).
sSara dolce tacere (1960). Ha venido, Canciones para Silvia (1960).
9The text is the poem Esta Noche by the Argentine poet J. L. Pachego.
"oLuigi Nono, 'Un autobiografia dell'autore raccontatata da Enzo Restagno' in Autori
Vari, (Torino, 1987) p.43.
"sic. p.57. * Britain's longest established
12Sleeve-note from record of Das Atmende Klarsein, Italia ITL 70100.
'3Luigi Nono, 'L'erreur comme necessit&' in Schweizerische Musikzeitung, (1983), p.270. CLM course
14Sleeve-note from record of Guai ai gelidi mostri, edition RZ 1004.
'5Jiirg Stenzl also refers to this passage in 'Gli anni ottante' in Autori Vari, Luigi Nono,
(Torino, 1987), p.223.
16Carlo Scarpa was one of the leading architects in the post-war movement in Italy.
He was also a personal friend of Nono. * Placement in Worship
17A poem by Nietsche, fragments of Lucretius about the plague of Venice, a verse
from Pound's Cantos. assessed
'1The work also uses extracts from poems by Ady and Blok.

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
Collections Compositions for all
Nono's Writings and Critical Essays
occasions
ed. Jiirg Stenzl; Luigi Nono, Texte, Studien zu seiner Musik
(Atlantis, Zurich, 1975).
Autori Vari, Luigi Nono a cura di Enzo Restagno (Torino,
1987). * Ecumenical
Luigi Nono, Festival d'Automne a Paris, 1987 (Contrechamps,
1987).

Articles in English * Recordings of new music

Boehmer, K.: 'On Luigi Nono', Sleeve-note for the record
Wergo WER 60038, (1968).
Borio, G.: 'The region of Prometheus', Sleeve-note for record
Edition RZ 1004. * Access to post - graduate
Bracanin, K. P.: 'The abstract system as compositional matrix: study
an examination of some applications by Nono, Boulez and
Stockhausen' in Studies in Music 5, (1971), pp.90-114.
Gilbert, J. M.: Dialectic Music: An analysis of Luigi Nono's
Intolleranza, D.M.A. Composition. University of Illinois, 1980.
Hopkins, Bill: 'Luigi Nono' in Music and Musicians 14, (1966, no.
8), pp.32-5. 'Luigi Nono: The individuation of power and light'
in Musical Times 5, p.406, 1978. For further information contact:

Pone, G.: 'Webern and Nono. The genesis of a new composi-

tional morphology syntax' in Perspectives of New Music X, (1972),
pp.111-9. School of Music
Stockhausen, K.:'Music and Speech' in Die Reihe 4, (Bryn Mawr, Section M4
[Engl. ed.] 1964).
Unger, U.: 'Luigi Nono' in Die Reihe 4, (Bryn Mawr, [Engl. ed.] Sheepen Road
1960). Colchester CO03 3LL
Telephone 0206 761660

Music examples are reproduced by permission: 1-4 by Schott & Co Ltd.,

5-8 by Ricordi & Co (London) Ltd.
17

This content downloaded from 194.27.186.96 on Thu, 01 Feb 2018 11:29:40 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms