Luigi Nono

Luigi Nono (1924-1990, born in Venice) occupies an important position in the history of 20th–century music.

Born into a family of artists, Nono took an interest from an early age in cultural history and art. He studied composition with Malipiero at the Venice Conservatory, and his experience of the Nazi occupation and the Resistance during World War II was fundamental to his general development, while Maderna and Scherchen were fundamental to his musical development. From 1950 Nono took part in the Summer Courses for New Music, in Darmstadt, as a student and later as a teacher. The Darmstadt Summer Courses confirmed Nono’s leading position and, together with Boulez and Stockhausen, he became a key figure in the European musical avant-garde.

From 1960, his work profited from his experiences with new technologies at the electronic studios in Milan (RAI) and later in Freiburg (SWF) and the exchange of ideas and experimentation with technicians and performers (including instrumentalists, singers and actors). In the 1980s, thanks to the advances in electronics, Nono developed his ideas of moving sound within a given space, reinterpreting the old principle of the polychoral music of St. Mark’s in Venice, which had always inspired him. He confronted many of the most salient questions of musical language of his time, and in so doing, opened up new horizons in composing, listening and in design for new performing places.

Nono’s work reflects his intense involvement in the social issues of his time, his insatiable curiosity for other artistic disciplines, his necessity of expressing human suffering, whether individual or collective: his art reflects the totality of human experience.