This Week in Classical Music: February 10, 2025. Still Catching Up. We’ve missed several important anniversaries during the last month and would like to acknowledge some of them now. But first, today is the birthday of Leontyne Price, one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century.She’s with us and turned 98 today!
But back to the missed anniversaries.The Italians constitute the largest group. First, two important 20th-century composers: Luigi Dallapiccola, born on February 3rd of 1904, and Luigi Nono, born January 29th of 1924. We posted two entries on Dallapiccola last year (here and here). Last year was Nono’s 100th anniversary but we failed to commemorate the event appropriately. So, here's a short outline of Nono’s life and work.
Luigi Nono was born on January 29th of 1924 in Venice. He studied at the Liceo Musicale with the noted composer Gian Francesco Malipiero. In 1946 he met Bruno Maderna, one of the first avant-garde Italian composers. Maderna was only four years older but more established; as he and Nono were working in Venice, and a small community of musicians organized themselves around them. Dallapiccola, of an older generation but a friend of both, had a significant influence on their development.
Several early works by Nono were presented at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, the most important gathering of new composers. Soon after he became an active participant and, together with Boulez and Stockhausen, one of the leaders of the new music movement. In 1955 he married Nuria Schoenberg, daughter of Arnold Schoenberg. Nono was a leftist, as were many of his fellow composers. A principled anti-fascist, he went much further to the left than many. For example, his opera Al gran sole carico d'amore, (the libretto for which he co-wrote with Yuri Lyubimov, the director of the original production and also the director of the famous Moscow Taganka theater), was loosely based on plays by Bertolt Brecht and contained excerpts of speeches by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx and Lenin. Some of his music composed during the 60s was extremely political and dogmatic. For example, his Non Consumiamo Marx consists of sounds recorded during the 1968 student uprising in Paris and a voice reading the messages left on the walls during that period. A much more interesting piece was his Prometeo, tragedia dell’ascolto composed over several years in the early 1980s, the period when his work became less political. Prometeo is called “opera,” although the word should be taken in its original Italian sense, “work” – it is a composition for five singers, two speakers, a chorus, and a small orchestra, with sounds being electronically manipulated. To celebrate both Nono and Dallapiccola, here is Luigi Nono’s piece from 1979, Con Luigi Dallapiccola, performed by the ensemble Percussions de Strasbourg. It’s about 12 minutes of different sound effects created by the different percussion instruments; we think there’s more music here, however unusual it is, than in many established compositions.
And then there is another Italian, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance. He was born between February 3rd of 1525 and February 2nd of 1526. We don’t play him often enough, so no matter when his actual birthday was, here is Palestrina’s late motet, Peccantem me quotidie (I sin every day). Ensemble The Sixteen is led by their founder, Harry Christophers.
Still Catching Up plus Price. 2025
This Week in Classical Music: February 10, 2025. Still Catching Up. We’ve missed several important anniversaries during the last month and would like to acknowledge some of them now.
But first, today is the birthday of Leontyne Price, one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century. She’s with us and turned 98 today!
But back to the missed anniversaries. The Italians constitute the largest group. First, two important 20th-century composers: Luigi Dallapiccola, born on February 3rd of 1904, and Luigi Nono, born January 29th of 1924. We posted two entries on Dallapiccola last year (here and here). Last year was Nono’s 100th anniversary but we failed to commemorate the event appropriately. So, here's a short outline of Nono’s life and work.
Luigi Nono was born on January 29th of 1924 in Venice..jpg "Luigi Nono")
He studied at the Liceo Musicale with the noted composer Gian Francesco Malipiero. In 1946 he met Bruno Maderna, one of the first avant-garde Italian composers. Maderna was only four years older but more established; as he and Nono were working in Venice, and a small community of musicians organized themselves around them. Dallapiccola, of an older generation but a friend of both, had a significant influence on their development.
Several early works by Nono were presented at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, the most important gathering of new composers. Soon after he became an active participant and, together with Boulez and Stockhausen, one of the leaders of the new music movement. In 1955 he married Nuria Schoenberg, daughter of Arnold Schoenberg. Nono was a leftist, as were many of his fellow composers. A principled anti-fascist, he went much further to the left than many. For example, his opera Al gran sole carico d'amore, (the libretto for which he co-wrote with Yuri Lyubimov, the director of the original production and also the director of the famous Moscow Taganka theater), was loosely based on plays by Bertolt Brecht and contained excerpts of speeches by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx and Lenin. Some of his music composed during the 60s was extremely political and dogmatic. For example, his Non Consumiamo Marx consists of sounds recorded during the 1968 student uprising in Paris and a voice reading the messages left on the walls during that period. A much more interesting piece was his Prometeo, tragedia dell’ascolto composed over several years in the early 1980s, the period when his work became less political. Prometeo is called “opera,” although the word should be taken in its original Italian sense, “work” – it is a composition for five singers, two speakers, a chorus, and a small orchestra, with sounds being electronically manipulated. To celebrate both Nono and Dallapiccola, here is Luigi Nono’s piece from 1979, Con Luigi Dallapiccola, performed by the ensemble Percussions de Strasbourg. It’s about 12 minutes of different sound effects created by the different percussion instruments; we think there’s more music here, however unusual it is, than in many established compositions.
And then there is another Italian, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance. He was born between February 3rd of 1525 and February 2nd of 1526. We don’t play him often enough, so no matter when his actual birthday was, here is Palestrina’s late motet, Peccantem me quotidie (I sin every day). Ensemble The Sixteen is led by their founder, Harry Christophers.