Luigi Nono’s two passions were the music of the avant-garde and Marxism; these interests came together in compositions that were emotionally affecting and of broad appeal despite their atonality and unconventional instrumentation.
Nono was born in Venice, Italy, on January 29, 1924. Both his parents were amateur musicians, and his first teacher was his grandmother. As a child, Nono listened to the organ at the cathedral of Saint Mark, and studied scores in the church library. His early attempts at piano study were a failure because he became bored with the routine of technical exercises. However, Nono studied composition with Malipiero at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice and graduated in 1941. Malipiero grounded Nono’s studies in the compositions of l6th-and 17th-century Italy, particularly those of Monteverdi, but also included the theoreticians of that period.
A determined anti-fascist, Nono joined the resistance in World War II and fought with the Partisans. After the fall of Mussolini, he went to Padua and took a law degree at the university. At that time, Nono met the Italian modernist Bruno Maderna, who was to have a decisive influence on Nono’s musical life. Following Malipiero’s recommendation, Nono began studies in 1948 with the theorist and conductor, Hermann Scherchen, and became Scherchen’s assistant in Zurich. By 1950, he was attending the summer sessions at the Darmstadt School. Nono found himself an outsider at the avant-garde music school, but had his first compositional success there with a serial work, the Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell’ Op. 41 di Arnold Schoenberg (based on SCHOENBERG’S Ode to Napoleon).
Following Variazioni canoniche, Nono’s connection with Schoenberg was cemented by his marriage to the composer’s daughter, Nuria. Nono’s best known composition, an Epitaph for Garcia Lorca, for voices and orchestra, was in memory of the Spanish poet who was murdered by Fascists during the Spanish Civil War. The piece combined 12-tone technique with elements of folk song and liturgical music. His use of the tone-row differed from that of the BERG-WEBERN-Schoenberg group in that he began to use “total serialism” where all the aspects of the music were determined in advance, including, for example, dynamics and duration. He also explored a different approach to vocal music, being interested in the pure sound quality of voices, and made some singers responsible for the consonants only, while others intoned the vowels.
At Darmstadt, Nono became so impressed by the potential of electronic music that he began composing in the medium from the 1950s onward, pursuing technical studies at Musique Concrète in Paris, with his friend Karlheinz STOCKHAUSEN in Cologne, and in Milan. But, along with his interest in technique, he remained committed to the artist’s social responsibility, and among his tape-based compositions was a group of “portable” works that he took to factories to play for the workers there.
Nono was a member the Italian Communist Party and became a member of its Central Committee in 1975. Many of his works have texts written by prominent communist figures such as Karl Marx and Che Guevara. Nono lectured in the Soviet Union, where he was welcomed even though avant-garde music was officially disparaged. His support of leftist guerrillas in Peru earned him a short sabbatical—in jail—from teaching duties at the University of Lima, where he was a guest lecturer. Nono died in Venice on May 8, 1991.
Jane Prendergast
SEE ALSO:
DARMSTADT SCHOOL; ELECTRONIC MUSIC; SERIALISM; VOCAL AND CHORAL MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Morton, Brian, ed., and Pamela Collins. Contemporary Composers (Chicago, IL: St. James Press, 1992).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Canti di vita e d’amore; Das atmende Klarsein; Orchestral music selections; Sofferte onde serene.