Imaginative Ears

"I am against tradition and habits in sex," says Italian Composer Luigi Nono. "I am against repetition every time you make love. I apply this also to my music."

Nono has applied his philosophy of nonrepetition so adroitly that, at 38, he is one of Europe's most respected avant-garde composers—and one of the hardest to classify. Although he dabbles in electronic music, he is not primarily a member of the electronic school; although he has written twelve-tone music, he is now convinced that "the twelve-tone serial no longer exists." Nono's greatest gift is for choral works—some of them so formidable that on paper, at least, they seem un-singable. But in the concert hall, they often emerge strong and compelling—as they did at the Venice Contemporary Music Festival last week in first-rate performances of two of Nono's newest and best works.

Strange & Haunting. In the 13-minute unaccompanied chorale Chorus of Dido, Nono as usual used the voice as a musical instrument, at times calling upon performers to jump two octaves, insisting that consonants as well as vowels be stressed, introducing a kind of staccato syllabification that somehow managed not to obscure the text. What gave Dido its strange and haunting power was the deft balance of the vocal writing—so carefully calculated that all 32 choristers were able to sing together without destroying the work's flexible texture.

To achieve such balance, Composer Nono wrote at least one dynamic marking over every note and word in the score. His other work on the program, She Has Come: Songs for Silvia (a first birthday present to his daughter Silvia), had the same wild leaps and a score instructing the soloists when to have their mouths wide open, when barely open, when closed.

For all that, She Has Come was, like Dido, notable for its clarity and continuity. The crowd gave Nono an ovation.

No Bombs. Nono, who regards the voice as "the perfect instrument," is not worried about overburdening singers ("Only composers like Mascagni ruined voices—because they did not understand vocal problems"). Son of a wealthy Venetian engineer, Nono studied music and law simultaneously, was greatly influenced by the works of Composer Arnold Schoen-berg—whose daughter, Nuria Schoenberg, he later married. Now living in Venice, Nono turns out a steady two or three works a year, often calculating their complex connections in algebraic equations.

Many of his themes deal with social protest. A forthcoming opera, on injustice, will deal with Russian and American bombs ("I am against all bombs"); a tone poem about Hiroshima will be introduced at Edinburgh this summer.

Nono either captures his audiences or enrages them. He rarely leaves them bored. Wrote the London Times in a thumbs-down review of another of his Venice concerts: "All this being said, there can be no doubt that Nono has two of the most imaginative ears for sound in the world."