Nono staked out his “militant modernist” path in a controversial lecture delivered in 1959 at Darmstadt in West Germany, during its renowned annual convocation of composers and students, the International Summer Courses for New Music. And he staged performances and playbacks of his work in non-concert hall contexts like factories and union buildings. He put out recordings via I dischi del Sole, a Milan imprint that specialized in folk and political song, and the popular music label Ricordi. In response, Nono tried to bypass the official channels of high culture and engage directly with both student youth and the workers. The political content in Nono’s work also led to conflicts with his publishing company and disinvitations from institutions like the Prix Italia.

In 1961, neo-fascists attempted to disrupt the premiere, in Nono’s hometown Venice, of “Intolleranza 1960,” using what the New York Times stiffly described as “stench bombs,” the shouting of “unprintable names” and whistles. guerrillas in Venezuela, the Viet-Cong) or closer to home, like the workers from northern Italy’s industrial cities who inspired “La fabbrica illuminata.” In the 1968 essay “Music and Power,” Nono described composing as “something to which I am committed in a way that is no different from participating in a demonstration or a clash with the police, or, as could be the case tomorrow, in the armed struggle.”Īlthough the price he paid for his stance wasn’t anywhere near what happened to his friend, the Chilean protest singer Víctor Jara (murdered by Pinochet’s thugs in 1973), the strident statements that Nono made both in and around his work did meet resistance. Nono saw works like “Non consumiamo Marx” and “Contrappunto dialettico alla mente” as sonic acts of solidarity with all those struggling for liberation, whether on the other side of globe (F.A.L.N. The most striking example of the latter is “Non consumiamo marx,” a delirious audio-collage of fury and defiance that documents demonstrations against the 1968 Venice Biennale, regarded by student radicals as “a fortress of bourgeois art.” The piece was originally released in 1969 as one side of Musica-Manifesto N.1, an LP recently reissued on vinyl by Die Schachtel. Others feature the actual voices of revolutionary leaders or anonymous crowds of protestors. Speeches and texts by anti-colonialist icons such as Patrice Lumumba of the Congo make up the libretto of various Nono works. “Y entonces comprendió,” for instance, bore a dedication to “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guavara and all his fellow combatants in the Sierra Maestras of the world” – a reference to the high mountains in which the Cuban revolution was hatched. He was a vocal supporter of liberation movements throughout the developing world and gave many of his pieces dedications or titles in tribute to guerrilla leaders. In 1952, Nono joined the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista Italiano, or PCI). Nono was a fearless explorer of new techniques of composition with tape and electronics, first embracing them on his 1960 piece Omaggio a Emilio Vedova he was also a ferocious, life-long opponent of injustice and exploitation. The word “nono” means “ninth” in Italian, but to an English speaker, it cannot help sounding like an insistent refusal: “no, no!” That fits the composer Luigi Nono with freaky aptness, given that his life and work turned around a double negation of the status quo.

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