Luigi Nono

[petrarch]

https://www.youtube.com/v/swOJjf1HfjE

[Mandryka]

Could someone please tell me what La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura means?

[petrarch]

Could someone please tell me what La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura means?

"The nostalgic utopian future distance"

https://www.lafolia.com/nonos-shrug-at-immortality-la-lontananza-nostalgica-utopica-futura/

The work is dedicated to fellow composer Salvatore Sciarrino: "a Salvatore Sciarrino 'caminante' esemplare."

Sciarrino, in explaining the title, describes it as "a complimentary reference to one of my old works from 1977, All'aure in una lontananza. Until then the term lontananza (distance) had only existed as a concept in Baroque poetry.… For its part La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura is an original title, a unique aesthetic metaphor even, despite the fact that it actually refers to a close circle of authors who were dear to Nono. In terms of conceptual translation: the past reflected in the present (nostalgica) brings about a creative utopia (utopica), the desire for what is known becomes a vehicle for what will be possible (futura) through the medium of distance."

Also:

https://italianacademy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/devel-generate/phi/Griffiths%20essay.pdf

[T. D.]

Could someone please tell me what La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura means?

Surely it's a poetic conceit that doesn't admit of a precise definition?
According to a Guardian article (https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/apr/23/luigi-nono-future-creative-utopia),

The full title translates awkwardly, and the composer Salvatore Sciarrino, to whom La lontananza is dedicated, suggests the following convoluted interpretation: "the past reflected in the present (nostalgica) brings about a creative utopia (utopica), the desire for what is known becomes a vehicle for what will be possible (futura) through the medium of distance (lontananza)".

My eyes just glazed over...

[Mandryka]

Yes I got as far as "The nostalgic utopian future distance", thought about it for a few seconds, and decided to defer to you!

[Mandryka]

"The nostalgic utopian future distance"

https://www.lafolia.com/nonos-shrug-at-immortality-la-lontananza-nostalgica-utopica-futura/

Also:

https://italianacademy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/devel-generate/phi/Griffiths%20essay.pdf

Both of these look interesting, thanks.

[vers la flamme]

I have been listening a bit to La Lontananza lately. I have the recording with Melise Mellinger and Salvatore Sciarrino. I find it an extremely opaque, arcane work, and yet also hypnotizing. Nono seems to have done the impossible with this work. I'm impressed, even if I don't fully understand what I'm hearing (and perhaps never will).

I'm tempted to purchase the Kremer/DG recording, which is a good 20 minutes shorter. Any opinions on one vs the other?

Is this quite representative of his music? I can't recall hearing another note of his music outside of this work. Where to next, from here?

[T. D.]

I have been listening a bit to La Lontananza lately. I have the recording with Melise Mellinger and Salvatore Sciarrino. I find it an extremely opaque, arcane work, and yet also hypnotizing. Nono seems to have done the impossible with this work. I'm impressed, even if I don't fully understand what I'm hearing (and perhaps never will).

I'm tempted to purchase the Kremer/DG recording, which is a good 20 minutes shorter. Any opinions on one vs the other?

Is this quite representative of his music? I can't recall hearing another note of his music outside of this work. Where to next, from here?

Can't say on La lontananza; I've seen one live performance (which adds something; the piece has some theatrical aspects as the violinist perambulates the stage) but only have the Kremer. Disclosure: I've always found Kremer's tone a bit wiry for my taste, but it seems to work well here. If you like La lontananza, ...sofferte onde serene for piano + tape suggests itself. I didn't love the latter, but tastes vary.

No expert, but Nono's "late" work, say post-1980, incorporating electronics is somewhat quieter, different from his earlier music. I enjoy the late stuff but kept few recordings - had several good ones on Dischi Ricordi but sold them when I was thinning the collection of postwar music and turning back more to "standard repertory". I would recommend the quiet/delicate Fragmente - Stille, an Diotima (1980, string quartet, somewhat of a watershed piece) and as a contrast, (especially) the earlier como una ola de fuerza y luz (1971/2), which is incredibly fiery and intense. Only recording I have of the latter (plus Epitaffio #1 and #3) is pretty good IMO:


I suspect physical recordings may be thin on the ground, downloads perhaps the way to go.

[Mandryka]

I have been listening a bit to La Lontananza lately. I have the recording with Melise Mellinger and Salvatore Sciarrino. I find it an extremely opaque, arcane work, and yet also hypnotizing. Nono seems to have done the impossible with this work. I'm impressed, even if I don't fully understand what I'm hearing (and perhaps never will).

I'm tempted to purchase the Kremer/DG recording, which is a good 20 minutes shorter. Any opinions on one vs the other?

Is this quite representative of his music? I can't recall hearing another note of his music outside of this work. Where to next, from here?

The Kremer is quite extrovert. Miranda Cuckson is one I like very much because it is very colourful. I've also enjoyed Arditti because he's spiritual. At some level, I think this music is an exploration of colour.



The utopia is, for Nono, the left, socialism. It's not part of the present, socialism has come to nothing, hence lontananza nostalgica. And the format has the violinist moving round the stage from score to score - like a search, a quest, a pilgrimage. That sense of searching, a ricercar, should come out in the music alone, on a CD.

As far as where to go next with Nono, I'm absolutely clear about that. Prometeo.

[Mandryka]

From Miranda Cuckson's website  - my bold

"La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura" distills Nono's manifold lifelong preoccupations – philosophy, politics, history, theater, text, spatialization, improvisation, real-world sounds, electronics and amplification – into the relatively simple medium of solo violin and 8-track tape. The work requires a highly spatialized eight-channel speaker configuration for the electronics, and the violin soloist also wanders among the audience during the performance. Previous stereo recordings did not capture this crucial aspect of the work. The DTS-CD version of this new recording endeavors to present the work as the composer intended: a "surround-sound" experience. In addition, this recording also includes an element overlooked by previous recordings: vocalizations from the violin soloist that are pivotal to Nono's intentions.  In the words of Miranda Cuckson, "Nono's indications for the violinist to sing illuminate the fundamentally lyrical, almost operatic quality at the heart of the work: the piece is truly a 'madrigal' as Nono described it."

[petrarch]

My least favorite is Mellinger/Sciarrino, actually. Arditti/Richard is my favorite, with Kremer/Gubaidulina a close second. Colombo/di Scipio available on YT has a generous amount of reverb and it is an engrossing performance.

I have attended a couple of performances of the work with Miranda Cuckson performing (I don't have the release mentioned, so can't really compare) and it was the first time I have witnessed the "singing along" take on the work. It was probably the shortest 45-50 mins in concert of my life.

[T. D.]

The live performance I saw (Mark Menzies, NYC, 2001) did not include the vocalizations. Excellent program, though (Lachenmann/Nono).
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/09/arts/music-review-carefully-scraping-along-with-the-senses-atingle.html

[some guy]

Here's the situation. You have distance (or remoteness), you have the future, you have a utopia, and you have nostalgia. Well, a utopia in the future is not so difficult an idea nor that the future is distant. Nostalgia is a usually seen as a desire for the past, the good old days, but remoteness is just as important for nostalgia as "pastness" is, and the future is just as remote as the past. Being nostalgic about the future gives a nice little kick to things, the same kind of kick as "Back to the Future" gives. "I remember (and yearn for) a utopia in the distant future" kind of thing. Nostalgia points backwards so turning it around to make it point forwards lets you (encourages you) to think about both the future and the past differently than you did before.

Besides all that, both "utopia" and "nostalgia" are ferociously ironic terms. Ostensibly good, but whatever goodness there is is often understood as masking something that's essentially bad.

Nostalgia for a remote future utopia.

[Mandryka]

In 2014 The Minguet Quartet gave a concert to celebrate Nono's 90th birthday. The final piece was Fragmente Stille, but before it they played a transcription of an Ockeghem song, and a movement from op 132 (LvB) and a movement from the Verdi quartet - these other pieces were supposed to have influenced Nono in his quartet.

Does anyone know anything about these influences of Ockeghem, Beethoven and Verdi? 

If anyone wants the concert recording I can let them have it. It's a radio broadcast with comments from a presenter in German, which may or may not answer my question above - I can't understand German.

[petrarch]

In 2014 The Minguet Quartet gave a concert to celebrate Nono's 90th birthday. The final piece was Fragmente Stille, but before it they played a transcription of an Ockeghem song, and a movement from op 132 (LvB) and a movement from the Verdi quartet - these other pieces were supposed to have influenced Nono in his quartet.

Does anyone know anything about these influences of Ockeghem, Beethoven and Verdi? 

The work was commissioned by the city of Bonn for the 30th Beethovenfest and includes the performance instructions mit innigster Empfindung and sotto voce borrowed from the slow movement of B's op. 132.

much more important to me was Beethoven's idea of using a special kind of material, the Lydian mode, for this thanksgiving. And I, too, have used a special material, the scala enigmatica by Verdi [from his Ave Maria], in order to thank various people in various ways.

Sketches refer to Scherchen, who discussed Verdi's Ave Maria in his conducting course in Venice in 1948.

The same sketch mentions Maderna and Malor me bat, ascribed to Ockeghem, including the notated opening of the work under headings "Ockeghem (Odhecaton A 1504)" and "Bruno 1948" (referring to the classes Maderna taught at the time during which Malor me bat was arranged for performance). There is also a scribbled "Verdi-Scherchen-Ave Maria" tied to "Ockeghem-Bruno-Ave Maria".

If anyone wants the concert recording I can let them have it. It's a radio broadcast with comments from a presenter in German, which may or may not answer my question above - I can't understand German.

That would be great, thanks.

[GioCar]

If you can read French, here's an article on Nono's string quartet where you can find all answers to your question.
https://books.openedition.org/contrechamps/1615
The original is in German. There is an Italian translation in the book "Nono" (Aa.Vv., EDT 1986) which I own.
I don't know if it has ever been translated in English.

[Mandryka]

If you can read French, here's an article on Nono's string quartet where you can find all answers to your question.
https://books.openedition.org/contrechamps/1615
The original is in German. There is an Italian translation in the book "Nono" (Aa.Vv., EDT 1986) which I own.
I don't know if it has ever been translated in English.

Excellent, thanks. It looks as though it's available in French as an e-book

https://www.7switch.com/fr/ebook/9782940599103/luigi-nono

(And I noticed that Nono's writings in French is also available

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecrits-1CD-audio-Luigi-Nono/dp/2940068291/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=contrechamps+nono&qid=1598623895&sr=8-2)

[petrarch]

(And I noticed that Nono's writings in French is also available

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecrits-1CD-audio-Luigi-Nono/dp/2940068291/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=contrechamps+nono&qid=1598623895&sr=8-2)

The Contrechamps book is an enlarged and updated collection of writings initially gathered in the 1993 Christian Bourgois edition:

https://www.amazon.com/Ecrits-Luigi-Nono/dp/2267011522

The latter is more or less what is available in English in Nostalgia for the Future:

https://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-Future-Interviews-California-20th-Century/dp/0520291204

(I have all 3 but only read the Bourgois edition)

[Mandryka]

Very much enjoying the piece for tuba and all sorts of electronic hocus pocus on this CD, called Post Prae Ludium 3 Babaar. I think it sounds like Sciarrino - the same plaintive vocal sounds from the instrument.

[CRCulver]

Very much enjoying the piece for tuba and all sorts of electronic hocus pocus on this CD, called Post Prae Ludium 3 Babaar. I think it sounds like Sciarrino - the same plaintive vocal sounds from the instrument.

When I saw the title "Post Prae Ludium 3 Babaar" I initially thought it was a typo for the well-known piece Post-Prae Ludium per Donau, like something had gone wrong with your phone keyboard. But now I see from Nono's list of works that Post-prae-ludium No. 3, "BAAB-ARR", for piccolo and live electronics (1988), actually existed. However, it was never recorded by the Experimentalstudio team on that NEOS three-volume set, on the grounds that "Una nuova esecuzione di Baab-arr non è possibile: non abbiamo a disposizione né un abbozzo, né schizzi (se non per live electronics) di Luigi Nono." Thanks for drawing my attention to that old recording of it.