Luigi Nono

Luigi Nono (1924-1990) is name-checked on the cover of "Freak Out!" (1966) under the heading "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them".

Contemporary classical composer, born in Venice (Italy), January 29, 1924, where he also died on May 8, 1990. He studied at the Venice Conservatoire under Gian Francesco Malipiero and Bruno Maderna, with whom he and Luciano Berio helped to establish Italy in the forefront of contemporary music. He worked for a time at the electronic studio "Ferienkurse für neue Musik" in Darmstadt (where he met composers such as Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen), and became a leading composer of electronic, aleatory, and serial music. He married Arnold Schoenberg's daughter Nuria in 1955. Integral serialist until 1960. Member of post-Webern school. Communist sympathizer. A strongly politically committed artist, "Il canto sospeso" (1956, "The Suspended Song"), based on the letters of victims of wartime oppression, brought him to international notice. Wrote also puzzle canons. Wrote an anti-American piece called "A Floresta". His other works include "Intolleranza" (1961, "Intolerance") and "Canto per il Vietnam" (1973, "A Song for Vietnam"). Pointillist.

Together with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, Karel Goeyvaerts and Mauricio Kagel, Luigi Nono belongs to that handful of composers that provoked a landslide in the music of the fifties and sixties of the past century, that has remained unparalleled up to now.