Luigi Nono - any fans here?
 

I'm currently listening to Luigi Nono for the very first time, and am digging it rather a lot (from a comp album with "Polifionica - Monodia - Ritmica" on it). I'm up for listening to more of signor Nono's stuff - can anyone recommend me any more of his stuff? Cheers.

He knobbed Schoenberg's daughter. Fair play to him. I mean, she might have been a munt, but can you imagine knobbing Schoenberg's daughter? Amazing.

"Many people died to bring Glice this information".

Lovely stuff, I'm happy to be elucidated on Nono's romantic trysts.

As regards Nono himself - everything I've heard of his is kind of interesting in a scratchy, discontinuous fashion, but I get the impression that he's more of a gestural composer than he is a musical one; that's not to say the music's awful (certainly, Kremer doesn't commision just anyone) but that it's not as meticulously amazing as a Grisey or a Xenakis.

By "gestural", do you mean he's more into pursuing a thematic/stylistic path out of a theoretical imperative rather than an emotional/visceral one?

I've never heard of Grisey before, but am certainly curious now, so thanks for that :)

I don't think theoretical imperatives are what he's after... I always think of him as one of those fantastically exuberent sorts who's well into doing stuff and doesn't worry too much about whether the result is that good - by which I mean his is a music of gestures. The one piece I know quite well La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura has loads of tracks of music that may or may not be heard, and the violinist is to move between music stands, scraping chairs and all that. It's all well and good in the concert hall, but on record those gestures are lost. His music seems to come from that world of the 50s where theatre and sound and dance and painting (etc) all occured simultaneously rather than in their own rarified spaces.

Like some of his works, don't know much about himself, no a big fan.