Thursday, September 09, 2004  

Yes, yes, y'all: Luigi Nono

Luigi Nono, "Io, Frammento Da Prometeo [section 8: bass flute, contrabass clarinet]"
from Io, Frammento Da Prometeo / Das Atmende Klarsein (Col Legno, 2003)

The four of you who regularly read this site know I like to post music from whatever place I've been fortunate to visit recently. Since my travels have been, mostly, because of work, it's been easy to find pop / folk music from Jamaica, South Africa, and Norway, or music related to events in, say, Montreal, Chicago, and Michigan. But since my trip to Italy was 100% personal (though for wifey-poo, it was for work initally), and Venice isn't exactly a pop paradise, how do I honor the Queen of the Adriatic? I mean, we could rock some Vivaldi MIDI files and chat up the life of the red-headed priest, but all of you have The Four Seasons already, right? If not, trip across a budget version of it next time you're at Tower; it'll be the finest $5.98 you spent since lunch.

But a visit to a merchant of Venice produced Luigi Nono for me, a man I had read about in relation to Schoenberg, Boulez, and Stockhausen but had never heard. Somehow, during my five minutes of modern-classical mania in 1995, I never gave in and bought one of his CDs (or 25-cent LPs from the library). Shame, because I like him more than all those other dudes combined.

Here's what I picked up:
--Arditti Quartet, Luigi Nono: La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura (Montaigne, 2000)
--Andre Richard, conductor; the Experimental Studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation, electronic realization: Io, Frammento Da Prometeo / Das Atmende Klarsein (Col Legno, 2003)
--Sinfonieorchester Basel; Mario Venzago, conductor; Mark Kaplan, violin: Luigi Nono: Variazioni canoniche; Varianti; No hay caminos, hay que caminar; Incontri (Con Lego, 2001)
--Orchestra Works & Chamber Music: Due espressioni; Fragmente - Stille, an Diotima; Post-Prae-Ludium (Col Legno, 2000)

Since classical compostions are usually long and sound like ass when compressed to 192kbs---plus, much of Nono's later music is just this side of audible---it's kinda futile to post a track. But futility is what The Suburbs are all about, so ahead we push like Sisyphus behind the wheels of steel. If you have any interest in Nono after hearing this out-of-context excerpt in lo-fi audio, by all means pick up the CD it came from---in fact, it's an SACD, so it's really tite.

Based on the four CDs I own, it sounds like some of Nono's work may have informed Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack to the Planet of the Apes (1968): rumbling tympani mixed with slowly rising violin squeaks followed by outright explosions. But maybe the two classical boyz I read---Lindy & Ross---can weigh in and let me know if Lu No influenced Jer Jer.

(Speaking of the Apes soundtrack, the first time I went to NYC was in summer 1994, several months after I moved to DC. I entered the Apple with the Searing sibs, and we were blasting the Planet of the Apes soundtrack as we cruised through the city, the big buildings and the tiny peeps coming to life in a way that actually lived up to all the images I had seen in movies and mags. It's still one of the highlights of my life.)

Nono was a deeply political chap (a commited communist---a party that is still very active in Italy; pix to come) whose music started off being heavily influenced by the serial theories of his father-in-law, Arnold "12 Notes, Gotcha Row Rite Hurrrr" Schonberg, and ended up more melancholic, more electronic-tinged, more about small sounds and textures interacting quietly across various sound stages. If you liked the Akira Rabelais stuff I posted, or still remember the isolationism genre from about 10 years ago, or like Radian, Microstoria, Trapist, and other bands that sound like they're moving furniture, you'll like Nono.

Also, I suggest listening to Nono from time to time not on headphones but rather in the way that Brian Eno ended up hearing 18th-century harp music as described in the liner notes to Discreet Music. At work, with the air conditioner running like a Hemi, the phone chattering away like a manic cockatiel, and the mail being delivered with far too mucho gusto, my Nono CDs would frequently fade into nothingness. It was beautiful.

Big Linka
Nono World
Luigi Nono archive
Nono's by all means yes-yes works
Symposium on Nono
Music Web on Nono
Hay que caminar score (premier mouvement, esquisse complete)
Il Prometeo: A Revolutionary's Swansong
Downtown Music Gallery's got yer Nono
The Experimental Studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation

Posted by CP | Link |

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