For many music lovers there was life before Prometeo and there is life after Prometeo. It's difficult to overestimate the impact of Luigi Nono's masterpiece. The composer himself called this work which he based on the myth of Prometheus a ‘tragedia dell'ascolto’: a tragedy for listening. The whole piece is focused on the auditive experience. The soloists, choirs and orchestral groups perform on a specially built framework, positioned in different places and heights around the auditorium; their projected sounds are electronically manipulated live. The audience is enveloped in music which moves from bottomless depths to delicate heights, from soft, hesitant strings to deeply sonorous voices and overpowering harmonies, a unique world of sound in which an extraordinary, fascinating drama unfolds.
dates
Thu June 19 2014 10:30 PM
information
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Duration of performance unknown (zonder pauze)
related
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Lunchconcerts Nono Interventions
Studenten Koninklijk Conservatorium, Sonology Electroacoustic Ensemble & Clarini baroque trumpet consort
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Conference “… Hay que caminar …” Luigi Nono’s musical paths between politics and art (1)
Luigi Nono, Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Luigi Nono: Il Canto Sospeso e.a.
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, Ingo Metzmacher, Experimentalstudio des SWR, Cappella Amsterdam
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Conference “… Hay que caminar …” Luigi Nono’s musical paths between politics and art (2)
Luigi Nono, Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Luigi Nono: Caminantes … Ayacucho
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, Ingo Metzmacher, Experimentalstudio des SWR, Schola Heidelberg, Cappella Amsterdam
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Luigi Nono: La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura
Irvine Arditti, André Richard
In 2014 it will have been 90 years since the Italian Luigi Nono (1924-1990) was born. He was one of the greatest European composers of his time. Almost a quarter of a century after his death, his music is seldom performed. Having organised similar projects dedicated to the music of Varèse (2009), Xenakis (2011) and Cage (2012), this year the Holland Festival honours Luigi Nono with a mini festival featuring, over the course of a long weekend, highlights from his extensive and varied body of work. As well as three full-scale concerts, there will also be an intimate late-night performance of La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, a two-day conference entitled “… Hay que caminar …” - Luigi Nono’s musical paths between politics and art, and the exhibition Luigi Nono 1924–1990 - Maestro di suoni e silenzi, which will be accompanying the concerts held at the Gashouder. This year's annual free concerts in the underpass of the Rijksmuseum by conservatory students will be fully dedicated to Nono's music. Musical direction for the three central concerts at the Gashouder will be in the hands of the conductor and Nono expert Ingo Metzmacher. A very special highlight will be the contribution made by the Swiss composer, conductor and sound engineer André Richard, who worked in close collaboration with Nono for years and who gave his name to one of Nono's compositions, entitled André Richard.
One of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde, Nono, together with contemporaries such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, for years spearheaded the New Music movement. He also married Nuria Schönberg, daughter of Arnold Schönberg, the founder of twelve tone music. Still, the historical inevitability of serialism as advocated by the avant-garde, was never sufficient for Nono. Viewing music as a system which was not self-contained, Nono wanted his music to be open to the world from the start, looking for ways to change political consciousness through sound. To Nono, radical music could never stand on its own, but is always the inevitable outcome of radical, political ideas.
The weekend will open with Nono's masterpiece Prometeo (1981-1985), which he himself called a 'tragedia dell'ascolto' – a tragedy for listening. According to musicologist Paul Griffiths, in his later years 'listening attentively' became more and more of a political act to Nono: listening attentively implies having a regard for the other, not only for the echoes of yourself. Prometeo is based on the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods to give it to humanity and was sentenced to eternal torment for his deed. Using texts by Aeschylus, Walter Benjamin, Rilke and others, Nono combined various versions of the myth. The plot of the story is all but left out; all drama is contained in the interaction between sound and ear. For the original production, the Italian architect Renzo Piano designed a large space built of wood, reminiscent of an ark. For the Amsterdam event, the huge, round space of the Gashouder will be transformed into an auditorium where all the musicians and sound sources surrounding the audience can be placed exactly as the composer intended.
