Luigi Nono (Italian: [luˈiːdʒi ˈnɔːno]; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian composer known for his innovative work in classical music.
Biography
Nono, born in Venice, was part of a wealthy artistic family. His grandfather was a well-known painter. In 1941, Nono began music lessons with Gian Francesco Malipiero at the Venice Conservatory. There, he learned about the Renaissance madrigal tradition and other musical styles. After graduating with a law degree from the University of Padua, Bruno Maderna encouraged Nono to compose music. Through Maderna, Nono met Hermann Scherchen, who was Maderna’s conducting teacher. Scherchen taught Nono and supported his musical development.
Scherchen introduced Nono’s first recognized work, Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell'op. 41 di A. Schönberg, in 1950 at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. This piece was based on Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone series, including a section called the "Ode-to-Napoleon" hexachord. It showed Nono’s strong opposition to fascism. The work also used a six-element rhythm pattern. Nono had joined the Italian Resistance during World War II. His political views connected him to some composers at Darmstadt, like Henri Pousseur and Hans Werner Henze, but set him apart from others, such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Despite these differences, Nono and Boulez and Stockhausen became leaders of New Music in the 1950s.
Several of Nono’s early works, including Tre epitaffi per Federico García Lorca (1951–53), La Victoire de Guernica (1954), and Incontri (1955), were first performed at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. La Victoire de Guernica was inspired by Picasso’s painting and criticized wartime violence. Liebeslied (1954) was written for Nono’s future wife, Nuria Schoenberg, daughter of Arnold Schoenberg. They married in 1955. Nono, an atheist, joined the Italian Communist Party in 1952.
The world premiere of Il canto sospeso (1955–56), for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, brought Nono international recognition. Critics praised how he combined avant-garde techniques with emotional and moral expression. This work honored victims of fascism and included farewell letters from political prisoners. Musically, Nono used a balance between voices and instruments and fragmented words into syllables, creating unique sounds. He compared this to Schoenberg’s "Klangfarbenmelodie" technique. Nono emphasized his focus on lyrical expression in an interview. However, Stockhausen once claimed Il canto sospeso used phonetic text treatment, which Nono disagreed with.
Il canto sospeso is often described as an "everlasting warning" against the idea that writing poetry after the Holocaust is "barbaric," a claim made by philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. Nono returned to anti-fascist themes in works like Diario polacco; Composizione no. 2 (1958–59) and Intolleranza 1960, which caused a riot at its premiere in Venice in 1961.
In 1958, Nono coined the term "Darmstadt School" to describe the group of composers, including himself, Boulez, Maderna, and Stockhausen, who shaped music in the 1950s. He compared their influence to the Bauhaus movement in art and architecture. In 1959, Nono gave a lecture with his student Helmut Lachenmann criticizing chance-based music, which was popular at the time. This led to a disagreement with Stockhausen, ending their friendship until the 1980s.
Intolleranza 1960 is considered the peak of Nono’s early style. It tells the story of an immigrant facing exploitation, protests, political arrest, and torture. The work used large orchestras, choirs, tape recordings, and theatrical techniques. It was dedicated to Schoenberg. The premiere in Venice caused a riot because of political tensions in the audience.
In 1960, Nono began exploring electroacoustic music with Omaggio a Emilio Vedova. This allowed him to create unconventional works, such as La fabbrica illuminata (1964), which used factory sounds and was performed in factories to comment on worker exploitation. Nono’s music in the 1960s addressed nuclear dangers, capitalism, and Nazi war crimes.