1 Luigi Nono's Il canto sospeso (1955–6) was premièred under Scherchen in Cologne on 24 October 1956. The concert also included Webern's Pieces for Orchestra, opp. 6 and 10, as well as Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden, op. 13.Google Scholar

2 Adorno, Theodor W., ‘Das Altern der neuen Musik’, broadcast April 1954, first published in Der Monat, 80 (1955), 150–8, expanded in Dissonanzen: Musik in der verwalteten Welt (Göttingen, 1956), 136–59; ‘The Aging of the New Music’, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor and Frederic Will, in Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert (Berkeley, 2002), 181–202.Google Scholar

3 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Musik und Sprache’, lecture delivered at Darmstadt (1957), published in Darmstädter Beiträge, 1 (Mainz, 1958); revised version broadcast on SWR, published in die Reihe, 6 (1960), 36–58, and in Stockhausen, Texte, ed. Dieter Schnebel, ii (Cologne, 1964), 58–68, 149–66.Google Scholar

4 In Intolleranza 1960 the fourth movement of Il canto sospeso links the ‘Interrogation’ and ‘Torture’ scenes (Act 1, scenes iv and v). It follows a chilling quotation from the book La question (1958) by Henri Alleg, a personal account of the practice of torture in Algerian detention camps with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. The book was seized by police in France as soon as it was published. Nono used a quotation from Sartre's preface in the ‘Torture’ scene.Google Scholar

5 Massimo Mila, ‘La linea Nono’, La rassegna musicale, 30 (1960), 297–311 (p. 311). Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.Google Scholar

6 Henceforth abbreviated as ALN. Many thanks to those at the Archive who made my working environment a most pleasant one. My wholehearted thanks also go to Angela Ida De Benedictis, whose careful reading of this text led to substantial improvements.Google Scholar

7 Kathryn Bailey, ‘Work in Progress: Analysing Nono's Il canto sospeso’, Music Analysis, 11 (1992), 279–334; Wolfgang Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck (Saarbrücken, 1996); Laurent Feneyrou, Il canto sospeso de Luigi Nono (Paris, 2002).Google Scholar

8 Nono, letter to Paul Dessau (1956), ALN: ‘in meinem Werk nie von Publikum eine solche Spannung gehört! Spannung als totale silenzio, während der Aufführung kein Lärm, nichts.’Google Scholar

9 Herbert Eimert, ‘Uraufführung von Nonos Canto sospeso in Köln’, Melos, 23 (1956), 354.Google Scholar

10 Adorno, ‘The Aging of the New Music’, 185.Google Scholar

11 Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza europea, ed. Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli with a preface by Thomas Mann (Turin, 1954). This first edition of 1954, which Nono must have used, is not found among his books, only the second edition of 1964. I will therefore refer to this second edition. An anthology of letters by Italian resistance fighters was compiled by the same editors two years earlier: Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza italiana (8 settembre 1943–25 aprile 1945) (Turin, 1952).Google Scholar

12 As cited in the score, trans. Peter Owens (London, 1995), 89.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 90–1. More overtly communist ideals are articulated in some of the texts that were later discarded, e.g. a letter of the Bulgarian communist Nicola Botušev, who asks his family to ‘search for the meaning of life in the struggle’, or the letter of the Austrian communist Oskar Klekner, written to his brother shortly before their decapitation by the Gestapo in Vienna on 2 November 1943: ‘Now … it is our turn. We, too, will go to the gallows with heads high and hand over the flag of liberty to those who will be fortunate enough to experience the hour of freedom.’ Lettere di condannati, ed. Malvezzi and Pirelli, 61, 119.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 794.Google Scholar

15 The term ‘cantata’ is found among the earliest sketches, ALN 14.02.01/04 (current catalogue marking). Mila speaks of a ‘messa della libertà, che non può concedersi la gioia sfolgorante del Gloria’ ('a freedom mass that does not allow for the radiant joy of the Gloria'). The analogy is taken further: the orchestral introduction is regarded as the Kyrie, the first a cappella chorus (no. 2) as the Credo, the tenor and soprano solos (nos. 5 and 7) as the Benedictus and Agnus dei, and no. 6 for chorus and orchestra as the Dies irae. Mila, ‘La linea Nono’, 302–7.Google Scholar

16 Thomas Mann, preface to Lettere di condannati, ed. Malvezzi and Pirelli, repr. as ‘Vorwort zu dem Buche Briefe Todgeweihter’, Mann, An die gesittete Welt: Politische Schriften und Reden im Exil, ed. Peter de Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 812–19 (p. 816).Google Scholar

17 The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was ousted from government by the Christian Democrats in 1948. Card-carrying communists were excommunicated by Pope Pius XII in the bull Avviso sacro of 1949. Few communist activists, therefore, were practising Catholics. The PCI, however, never defined itself as explicitly anti-Catholic or anti-clerical. On the PCI and the Catholic Church see Shore, Cris, Italian Communism: The Escape from Leninism (London, 1990), 38.Google Scholar

18 Mann, ‘Vorwort’, 817–18.Google Scholar

19 Lettere di condannati, ed. Malvezzi and Pirelli, was translated into German and published under the title Und die Flamme soll euch nicht versengen (Zurich, 1955).Google Scholar

20 Il canto sospeso, score, p. 89.Google Scholar

21 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Lettere dalla casa della morte, trans. Renato Nicolai and Giuliana Orlandini, Attualità politica, 5 (Rome, 1953). The Italian translation replaces the original title of the poem, If We Die, with the beginning of the third stanza, Lavorate e costruite, figli miei (Work and Build, my Sons), thus giving it a slight communist touch.Google Scholar

22 Ethel Rosenberg, If We Die (24 January 1953), The Rosenberg Letters (London, 1953), 6. This British edition includes letters of protest by Albert Einstein, Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Aragon among others. Rosenberg's poem is mentioned by Mila in ‘La linea Nono’, 306. No reference is given by Mila, and the German translation of this article in Jürg Stenzl, Luigi Nono: Texte, Studien zu seiner Musik (Zurich, 1975), 380–93 (p. 388), provides the wrong reference to Lettere di condannati, ed. Malvezzi and Pirelli.Google Scholar

23 Mann, ‘Vorwort’, 814.Google Scholar

24 Adorno, ‘The Aging of the New Music’, 183.Google Scholar

25 Nono, ‘Un'autobiografia dell'autore raccontata da Enzo Restagno’ (1987), Scritti e colloqui, ed. Angela Ida De Benedictis and Veniero Rizzardi, Le sfere, 35 (Lucca, 2001), ii, 477–568 (p. 511).Google Scholar

26 In addition to the analyses by Bailey, Motz and Feneyrou already cited, much has been written on individual movements of Il canto sospeso. On no. 1: Wolfgang Motz, ‘Konstruktive Strenge und kompositorische Freiheit im ersten Satz des Canto sospeso’, La nuova ricerca sull'opera di Luigi Nono, ed. Gianmario Borio, Giovanni Morelli and Veniero Rizzardi, Archivio Luigi Nono: Studi, 1 (Florence, 1999), 53–66. On no. 2: Stockhausen, ‘Musik und Sprache'; Jonathan Kramer, ‘The Fibonacci Series in Twentieth-Century Music’, Journal of Music Theory, 17 (1973), 110–49 (pp. 126–30); Erika Schaller, Klang und Zahl: Serielles Komponieren zwischen 1955 und 1959 (Saarbrücken, 1997), 112–25; Angela Ida De Benedictis, ‘Il rapporto testo musica nelle opere vocali di Luigi Nono: Studio filologico-analitico con particolare riferimento a Canti di vita e d'amore’ (Laurea in musicologia, University of Pavia, 1996), 235–47. On no. 4: Gianmario Borio, ‘Sull'interazione fra lo studio degli schizzi e l'analisi dell'opera’, La nuova ricerca, ed. Borio, Morelli and Rizzardi, 1–21 (pp. 15–17); Matthias Herrmann, ‘Das Zeitnetz als serielles Mittel formaler Organisation: Untersuchungen zum IV. Satz aus Il canto sospeso von Luigi Nono’, Musiktheorie: Festschrift für Heinrich Deppert, ed. Wolfgang Budday (Tutzing, 2000), 261–75. On no. 6: Nicolaus A. Huber, ‘Luigi Nono: Il canto sospeso VI a, b’, Luigi Nono, ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, Musik-Konzepte, 20 (Munich, 1981), 58–79. On no. 8: Gianmario Borio, ‘Tempo e ritmo nelle composizioni seriali, 1952–56’, Le musiche degli anni cinquanta, ed. Gianmario Borio, Giovanni Morelli and Veniero Rizzardi, Archivio Luigi Nono: Studi, 2 (Florence, 2004), 61–115 (pp. 112–14). On no. 9: Angela Ida De Benedictis, ‘Gruppo, linea e proiezioni armoniche’, ibid., 183–226 (pp. 204–5).Google Scholar

27 Adorno, Theodor W., ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’, Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (London, 1967; repr. Cambridge, MA, 1981), 17–34 (p. 34). ‘Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft’ (1949) was first published in the Festschrift Soziologische Forschung in unserer Zeit: Leopold Wiese zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Karl Gustav Specht (Cologne, 1951), and later included in Prismen (Frankfurt am Main, 1955), 7–31.Google Scholar

28 Eimert, ‘Uraufführung von Nonos Canto sospeso in Köln'.Google Scholar

29 Ibid.Google Scholar

30 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Music and Speech’, trans. Ruth Koenig, die Reihe, 6 (1964), 40–64 (pp. 48–9), and Morag Josephine Grant, Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics (Cambridge, 2001), 203. Stockhausen may have been searching for a serialization of vowel sounds in this movement, but this is not present.Google Scholar

31 Ludwig Wismeyer, ‘Wider die Natur!’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 118 (1957), 136–7. This review is discussed in Grant, Serial Music, 198. For further reviews in this vein see Karl Amadeus Hartmann und die Musica viva, ed. Renata Wagner (Munich, 1980), 136–7.Google Scholar

32 Stockhausen, ‘Music and Speech’, 57.Google Scholar

33 Stockhausen himself is a typical example. His own mother, a victim of the Nazi euthanasia programme, had been ‘officially put to death’ in 1941. His father was shot in battle in April 1945. And yet Stockhausen states: ‘I simply accepted it as given, not as an injustice, a challenge, that's my way.’ Stockhausen, ‘About my Childhood’ (1971), Stockhausen on Music, ed. Robin Maconie (London, 1989), 15–23 (pp. 20–1).Google Scholar

34 Thomas Mann, ‘Die Lager’ (1945), An die gesittete Welt, ed. de Mendelssohn, 698–701 (p. 699). Throughout the 1940s Mann regularly addressed the German people with appeals to act against the Nazi regime. Once a month an eight-minute message was recorded on disc, transmitted by phone to London and then broadcast by the BBC. The broadcasts are published under the title ‘Deutsche Hörer!’, ibid., 473–625. Mann's broadcast on the camps and its effect on German listeners was later mentioned by Primo Levi in The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (London, 1988), 161.Google Scholar

35 Theodor Adorno, Minima moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London, 1974), 143–5. Nono owned the first Italian edition, Minima moralia, trans. and ed. Renato Solmi (Turin, 1954).Google Scholar

36 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London, 1990), 362.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., 365.Google Scholar

38 Hans Werner Henze, Bohemian Fifths, trans. Stewart Spencer (London, 1998), 244. ‘Saluto a Henze’, the letter Nono wrote in support of Henze, is included in Scritti, i, 254–5.Google Scholar

39 Heinz-Klaus Metzger, ‘Das Altern der jüngsten Musik’ (1962), Musik wozu: Literatur zu Noten (Frankfurt am Main, 1980), 113–28 (pp. 120–1).Google Scholar

40 Mila, ‘La linea Nono’, 300–1.Google Scholar

41 Mila (ibid., 310) quotes a similarly scathing passage from Metzger, ‘Ecksteine neuer Musik’, Magnum, 30 (1960). In this passage Metzger accuses Nono of ‘having succumbed to the slogans of the Prague Manifesto’ with ‘a return to tonality, speaking choruses, arioso opera clichés, popular dance rhythms and Gregorian chant’ in his Lorca trilogy.Google Scholar

42 Mila, ‘La linea Nono’, 311.Google Scholar

43 This information was kindly provided by Nuria Schoenberg-Nono. Nono's future brother-in-law was an important communications person in the resistance.Google Scholar

44 Angela Ida De Benedictis mentions this radio programme in her book Radiogramma e arte radiofonica: Storia e funzioni della musica per radio in Italia (Turin, 2004), 15. Also see Romito, Maurizio, ‘I commenti musicali di Bruno Maderna: Radio, televisione, teatro, II’, Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 36 (2002), 79–98 (p. 79).Google Scholar

45 Joachim Noller, Engagement und Form: Giacomo Manzonis Werk im kulturhistorischen und musikkritischen Zusammenhang (Frankfurt, 1987), 90.Google Scholar

46 Other works by Fellegara, who also briefly attended the Darmstadt courses in 1955 and 1956 and adopted serialist practices in the late 50s, demonstrate thematic closeness to Nono's work. These include Epigrafe per Ethel e Julius Rosenberg (1955) for speaker and five instruments, two major works that set texts by F. García Lorca (Requiem di Madrid (1958) and Dies irae (1959)) and two chamber works on texts by Paul Eluard, Epitaphe (1964) and Chanson (1974).Google Scholar

47 Maderna, letter to Nono (14 February 1953), ALN. Parts of this letter, the texts and their sources are published in Nicola Verzina, ‘Tecnica della mutazione e tecnica seriale in Vier Briefe (1953)’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 34 (1999), 309–45 (pp. 321–2), and idem, Bruno Maderna: Étude historique et critique (Paris, 2003). ‘Cantata Krakaka’ refers to the work's subtitle: Kranichsteiner Kammerkantate.Google Scholar

48 Shore, Italian Communism, 35.Google Scholar

49 Nono's library contains a large selection of Gramsci, including the first Einaudi edition of the prison letters and notebooks. The volume of Gramsci's Lettere dal carcere (Turin, 1947) is annotated.Google Scholar

50 Shore, Italian Communism, 71.Google Scholar

51 On the ‘legge truffa’ and Mussolini's Acerbo law see Ginsborg, Paul, A History of Contemporary Italy (New York, 2003), 142–3.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 143–5.Google Scholar

53 Nono, ‘Musica e Resistenza’, questionnaire set by Luigi Pestalozza, Rinascita, 20/34 (7 December 1963), Scritti, ed. De Benedictis and Rizzardi, i, 144–7 (p. 144).Google Scholar

54 Ibid., 145.Google Scholar

55 Verzina, ‘Tecnica della mutazione’, 319–45. The song Fischia il vento uses the melody of the Soviet song Katyusha (text: Michail Isakovsky, music: M. Blantér, 1939), probably known to Italian soldiers since their retreat from Russia in the winter of 1942. The Italian version, of which there are many variations, was written by Felice Cascione, a partisan commander whose brigade fought in the region of Imperia. The song was widely known and sung by almost every brigade. See Canti della Resistenza italiana, ed. Giorgio Solza and Mario de Michelis (Avanti, 1960), 163 (ALN), and Philip Cooke, ‘The Resistance Movement: 1943–1945’, The Italian Resistance: An Anthology, ed. Cooke (Manchester, 1997), 3–17 (p. 9).Google Scholar

56 On the use of Bandiera rossa in ‘La Guerra’ and the original movement, ‘Lenin’, which it replaces, see Borio, ‘Tempo e ritmo nelle composizioni seriali’, 71–3.Google Scholar

57 Mamita mia was written by Ernst Busch to a Spanish folk tune. It is an ironic song, making fun of four fascist generals. The title ‘my dear mother’ refers to Madrid. On links between the Italian Resistenza and the anti-fascist struggle in Franco's Spain and its importance to Italian post-war composers see Pestalozza, Luigi, ‘La guerra civile spagnola e i musicisti italiani del dopoguerra’, Federico García Lorca nella musica contemporanea, ed. Antonio Trudu (Milan, 1990), 12–23.Google Scholar

58 On Manzoni's Cinque Vicariote and the influence of Il canto sospeso on this work see Noller, Engagement und Form, 95–105.Google Scholar

59 Togliatti contributed to the debate under the pseudonym Roderigo di Castiglia and published various statements in support of Italian neo-realism in Rinascita.Google Scholar

60 Manifesto published in the art journal Forma I (15 March 1947), signed by the artists Dorazio, Perilli, Accardi, Attardi, Consagra, Guerrini, Sanfilippo and Turcato. Cited in Nicoletta Misler, La via italiana al realismo: La politica culturale artistica del P.C.I. dal 1944 al 1956 (Milan, 1976), 39.Google Scholar

61 Nono, ‘Intervista di Philippe Albèra’ (1987), Scritti, ii, 415–29 (p. 417).Google Scholar

62 ALN 08.03, fol. 10v.Google Scholar

63 Maderna, letter to Nono, 11 March 1955 (ALN).Google Scholar

64 Nono later admitted: ‘After all, at a certain point in time La victoire de Guernica represented a flirtation’ and ‘a reaction against all that happened in Darmstadt: more and more repetitive and sterile formulas, supreme exaltation of unifying “rationality”'. Nono, ‘Un'autobiografia’, 514.Google Scholar

65 In a letter of 9 May 1953 Stockhausen criticized Nono heavily for lack of attention to the serial organization of dynamics and duration, but also to the ‘significance of register proportions'. The correspondence between Nono and Stockhausen is discussed in Veniero Rizzardi, ‘Karlheinz Stockhausen e Luigi Nono: Teoria e invenzione musicale 1952–1959’, Diastema, 3/7 (1994), 37–40.Google Scholar

66 Nono briefly analysed this piece for his first Darmstadt seminar: ‘Sullo sviluppo della tecnica seriale’ (1956), Scritti, i, 9–14 (pp. 13–14). Annotations to Stockhausen's Klavierstücke I–IV are also found in Nono's copy of the score (ALN).Google Scholar

67 The series is classified as the ‘basic chromatic form’ of all-interval series in Herbert Eimert's Lehrbuch der Zwölftontechnik (Wiesbaden, 1950), 25. Nono briefly discusses this row, though not in very clear terms, in ‘Sullo sviluppo della tecnica seriale’, 14. For further discussions of the nature of this row see Benedictis, De, ‘Gruppo, linea e proiezioni armoniche’, 204; Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 22–8, and Bailey, ‘Work in Progress’, 281.Google Scholar

68 See Borio, ‘Sull'interazione tra lo studio degli schizzi e l'analisi dell'opera’, and Rizzardi, ‘La “Nuova Scuola Veneziana” 1948–1951’, Le musiche degli anni cinquanta, ed. Borio, Morelli and Rizzardi, 1–59. In his research on Maderna, Verzina uses the term ‘tecnica della mutazione'. An excellent analysis of Maderna's use of this technique is Christoph Neidhöfer, ‘Bruno Madernas flexibler Materialbegriff: Eine Analyse des Divertimento in due tempi (1953)’, Musik und Ästhetik, 9/33 (2005), 30–47.Google Scholar

69 Wolfgang Motz, ‘Konstruktive Strenge und kompositorische Freiheit im ersten Satz des Canto sospeso'; Borio, ‘Sull'interazione tra lo studio degli schizzi e l'analisi dell'opera'.Google Scholar

70 Nono, ‘Un'autobiografia’, 502. Also see Borio, ‘La tecnica seriale in Studi per “Il processo” di Franz Kafka di Bruno Maderna’, Musica/Realtà, 32 (1990), 27–39.Google Scholar

71 Maderna, letter to Nono, Rome, January/February 1953 (ALN).Google Scholar

72 Maderna, letter to Nono, Hamburg, 23 November 1954 (ALN).Google Scholar

73 As mentioned by Rizzardi, the technique had already been used to derive the 21 series which underlie the Monodia of Nono's Polifonica–Monodia–Ritmica (1951). The first work to incorporate the actual method of permutation in the composition itself, however, is the Composizione per orchestra n. 1 (1951–2). For details see Rizzardi, ‘La “Nuova Scuola Veneziana”’, 29–30, 50–4.Google Scholar

74 See Decroupet, Pascal, ‘Nono: Lorca-Epitaphien, Incontri’, Im Zenit der Moderne, ed. Gianmario Borio and Hermann Danuser (Freiburg, 1997), i, 340–4; and Borio, ‘Tempo e ritmo nelle composizioni seriali’, 74, 77.Google Scholar

75 See Borio, ‘Tempo e ritmo nelle composizioni seriali’, 98–104.Google Scholar

76 The original sketch and transcription were first published by Motz, ‘Konstruktive Strenge und kompositorische Freiheit im ersten Satz des Canto sospeso’, 53–4. Examples 1–12 are printed at the end of the article.Google Scholar

77 Ibid., 55.Google Scholar

78 With the exception of the double basses, sounding an octave lower. The expressive use of register is one of the most fascinating aspects of Il canto sospeso. As Motz states at the end of his analysis of the first movement: ‘It almost seems as if the extremely high and delicate sounds of the strings attempt to go beyond the boundaries of musical space, like blades of grass breaking through tar. The conscious use of high registers for a utopia that is in contrast with dismal reality pervades the whole of Il canto sospeso and becomes a hallmark of Nono's music right up to his last compositions.’ Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 43.Google Scholar

79 This was brought to my attention by Angela Ida De Benedictis.Google Scholar

80 The fact that Nono later condemned the term ‘pointillist’ as a derivative coined by ‘illustrious German aesthetes’ which is ‘passively taken up by many who are incapable of really reflecting and studying music’ should not prevent the use of the term pointillism in this context. After all, in terms of serial organization Il canto sospeso is still ‘punktuelle Musik’, and Nono was to move on to group composition later. See Nono, ‘Una testimonianza di Luigi Nono’, Scritti, i, 331–5 (p. 333).Google Scholar

81 This has been pointed out to me by Angela Ida De Benedictis, who very generously allowed me to publish this table.Google Scholar

82 Heinz Joachim describes the mood as follows: ‘With its floating flageolet sounds and subtle dots of colour, this movement almost conjures up a vision of cosmic rapture (“Entrückung”). Nono here achieves a purification of expression which artistically enhances the sinister image.’ Heinz Joachim, ‘Luigi Nono: Il canto sospeso’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1957), 103, cited in Motz, Konstruktion and Ausdruck, 72.Google Scholar

83 Nono, ‘Testo–musica–canto’ (1960), Scritti, i, 57–83 (p. 73).Google Scholar

84 Sketches 14.05/01, ALN.Google Scholar

85 Very occasionally, a pitch is also replaced by a rest, e.g. at the beginning of layer 1 (ten.) in Part I (bar 180).Google Scholar

86 Nono marks in the sketches: ‘chi canta con archi – [?] altri fiati’ ('those who sing with strings –all others wind') and ‘dove canta armonie con archi – dove non solito fiati’ ('where there is song, harmonies with strings – where there isn't, only wind'). ALN 14.13/20 R dx sup.Google Scholar

87 See Motz, ‘Konstruktive Strenge und kompositorische Freiheit im ersten Satz des Canto sospeso’, 56.Google Scholar

88 This is explained in more detail ibid., 56–63.Google Scholar

89 Nono, ‘Un'autobiografia’, 510. The technique was first used by Nono in Incontri (1955). Stockhausen, too, spoke of the independent use of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ durations, stating that the idea goes back to Boulez. While composing Schlagtrio (1952), Stockhausen wrote to Goeyvaerts: ‘Very useful to me was something he [Boulez] once told me: he uses “positive” and “negative” rhythmic values, i.e. sounding ones and rests – both as “series”. At the beginning of the work I am telling you about [Schlagtrio], the rests and the rhythmic series for the pitches are identical – they are therefore only to be realized as “silence”, to remain unreal. Then there is a gradual displacement of the two principles and at the end they converge again – the “negative” absorbs the “positive”, moving back to unreality. In the course of the displacement of the sounding structure, rests and sounding values alternate and do not coincide, maintaining their identity – obviously.’ Stockhausen, letter to Goeyvaerts (18 May 1952), as cited in Pascal Decroupet, ‘Développements et ramifications de la pensée sérielle: Recherches et oeuvres musicales de Pierre Boulez, Henri Pousseur et Karlheinz Stockhausen de 1951 à 1958’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tours, 1994), 59.Google Scholar

90 For further details on composition and form see Motz, ‘Konstruktive Strenge und kompositorische Freiheit im ersten Satz des Canto sospeso’, and Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 35–43.Google Scholar

91 For duration factor and pitch distribution see Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, Example 19, p. 45, and De Benedictis, ‘Il rapporto testo musica nelle opere vocali di Luigi Nono’, 235–7.Google Scholar

92 Bailey's term: ‘Work in Progress’, 289.Google Scholar

93 The most detailed analysis of Nono's use of text in this movement is that by De Benedictis, ‘Il rapporto testo musica nelle opere vocali di Luigi Nono’, 235–47.Google Scholar

94 On the serial organization of dynamics see Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 47–50, and De Benedictis, ‘Il rapporto testo musica nelle opere vocali di Luigi Nono’, 238. With the emphasis on quiet dynamics, the series contains six simple and six compound dynamics (ppp, p, mp, mf, f, ppp / ppp–f, f–ppp, ppp–mf, mf–ppp, p–f, f–p). The series is employed in order to guarantee equal distribution of dynamics for each pitch. Some repetition is inevitable, however, as each pitch occurs not 12 but 15 times in this part. The dynamic organization does not apply to Part II of this movement.Google Scholar

95 One reason, perhaps, why Nono eventually decided not to change the dynamics in this movement. That a revision was intended has been remarked by Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 47, note 61.Google Scholar

96 Stockhausen, ‘Music and Speech’, 57.Google Scholar

97 Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 132.Google Scholar

98 The sketch is published ibid., 212.Google Scholar

99 The original texts, notated on this sketch, are: ‘fra poche ore non sarò più’ ('in a few hours I will no longer be'; sopr.), ‘sperando nella vita mi avvio alla morte’ ('I will go to death with hope for life'; alto), and ‘vado con la fede in una vita migliore per voi’ ('I go in the belief of a better life for you'; ten.).Google Scholar

100 Density and text distribution in this movement are represented in schematic form in De Benedictis, ‘Gruppo, linea e proiezioni armoniche’, 205. The exact distribution of duration factors can also be seen in this diagram.Google Scholar

101 Sketches show that the idea of reading the pitch and duration factor series backwards was a later one. A first draft (ALN 14.11/01) combines runs of the original series with the duration factor series as written, beginning at the top of the square (line 1). Nono here makes use of the fact that the last number of each duration factor series is the same as the first of the next: the final E♭ and initial A are merged and consistently given the same duration. The draft breaks off with the comment ‘proiezioni armoniche come?’ ('harmonic projection how?'), but was later used, virtually unchanged, in reverse, for the end of Part I.Google Scholar

102 This is the retrograde of the first run of the series in the first draft, ALN 14.11/01.Google Scholar

103 Nono, ‘Un'autobiografia’, 512.Google Scholar

104 Ibid., 495.Google Scholar

105 Ibid., 496.Google Scholar

106 Nono marks in red: ‘nelle parti spostamenti di pause 1–2–3 / e 3 2 1 | sempre 1–2–3 e 3 2 1’ ('in the parts displacements of rests 1–2–3 / and 3 2 1 | always 1–2–3 and 3 2 1'). ALN 14.02.08/03, published in Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 210.Google Scholar

107 The symbolism was first pointed out by Huber, ‘Luigi Nono: Il canto sospeso VIa, b’, 66.Google Scholar

108 The sketch is published in Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 203.Google Scholar

109 The permutation was first employed in this form in the Polifonica of Nono's Polifonica–Monodia–Ritmica (1951). See Rizzardi, ‘La “Nuova Scuola Veneziana”’, 25.Google Scholar

110 For a fuller analysis of durations in no. 6a see Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 172–4.Google Scholar

111 The distribution of dynamics is detailed ibid., 177.Google Scholar

112 Also first discussed by Huber is the structural use of the vowels U I E O A from ‘dUro dIrE addiO vitA'. Huber, ‘Luigi Nono: Il canto sospeso VIa, b’, 72–9. If Stockhausen was trying to seek out a serialization of vowel sounds he should have looked for it here.Google Scholar

113 The sketch is printed in Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 205.Google Scholar

114 The letters match Motz's analysis, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 106–22.Google Scholar

115 ALN 14.02.07/08 R sup/inf. Intervals are notated as in Nono's sketches (2– through to 4+).Google Scholar

116 See sketch ALN 14.09/01 R sx. Numeric representations of this material and possible clues for its derivation are found on sketch ALN 14.02.07/06.Google Scholar

117 The dynamic sometimes changes when the pitch is repeated.Google Scholar

118 Sketches ALN 14.09/01-03. The initial draft is in ten sections: two sections a1 (rows 1/2), two sections a2 (rows 3/10 and 4/9), two sections a3 (rows 5/8 and 6/7), two sections a2 (rows 7/6 and 8/5) and two sections ai (rows 9/10). The sections combine original and retrograde forms, and duration factors follow the repetition patterns of the respective pitch series. The structural idea of combining solo soprano with soprano and alto voices is already present, but contrary motion is not yet a defining principle.Google Scholar

119 Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 112–15.Google Scholar

120 See ibid., 179–80, 207. For reasons of clarity I have separated the two squares.Google Scholar

121 On the derivation of series A–D from the all-interval series see Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 80–1.Google Scholar

122 As Rizzardi has shown, Nono had used such a constant once before. The Monodia of Polifonica–Monodia–Ritmica (1951) uses 21 series. Of these, nos. 1–3, 5, 17–18 and 20–1 are similarly marked by a mirror-symmetric position of the tritones. See Rizzardi, ‘La “Nuova Scuola Veneziana”’, 29–30.Google Scholar

123 Bailey, ‘Work in Progress’, 302.Google Scholar

124 The structural use of rests to separate individual word cells was pointed out to me by Angela Ida De Benedictis, who compares them to a ‘rhyme scheme’, emphasizing the end of each unit of text. A large part of Motz's analysis of this movement also deals with the formation and expressive qualities of the solo vocal line (Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 87–92).Google Scholar

125 Mila, ‘La linea Nono’, 308.Google Scholar

126 First drafts of the overall form of the work are found in the sketches ALN 14.02.01/01–04. Two of these are published in Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 187–8. An initial selection of texts indicates up to 15 movements (ALN 14.01.01/06–07).Google Scholar

127 Mila, ‘La linea Nono’, 302.Google Scholar

128 See Motz, Konstruktion und Ausdruck, 188.Google Scholar

129 The fastest speed is found in no. 6a ; among the fastest values are the note repetitions in no. 8, where the slowest speed indication is also found ; and the slowest movement overall is no. 7 .Google Scholar

130 Italo Calvino, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (Turin, 1964), ALN.Google Scholar

131 Calvino, The Path to the Nest of Spiders, trans. William Weaver (Hopewell, 1976), Preface, vi–vii.Google Scholar

132 Maderna, ‘Espressione’, Nicola Verzina, Bruno Maderna: Étude historique et critique (Paris, 2003), 63. Verzina dates the short text to 1952–3 because it was found among notes for the ballet Das eiserne Zeitalter, on which Maderna was working at the time.Google Scholar

133 Calvino's preface describes the author's struggle to free himself from such experience: ‘I tried to narrate the partisan experience in the first person, or with a protagonist who resembled me … I moved awkwardly. I could never completely stifle the sentimental and moralistic vibrations. There was always a false note somewhere … As soon as I started to write stories in which I did not appear, all went smoothly: the language, rhythm, shape were precise, functional … I began to realize that the more anonymous and objective the story was, the more it was mine.’ Calvino, The Path, Preface, xix–xx.Google Scholar