Luigi Nono

Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music. Biography Early years Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono began music lessons with Gian Francesco Malipiero at the Venice Conservatory in 1941, where he acquired knowledge of the Renaissance madrigal tradition, amongst other styles. After graduating with a degree in law from the University of Padua, he was given encouragement in composition by Bruno Maderna. Through Maderna, he became acquainted with Hermann Scherchen—then Maderna’s conducting teacher—who gave Nono further tutelage and was an early mentor and advocate of his music. Scherchen presented Nono’s first acknowledged work, the Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell’op. 41 di A. Schönberg in 1950, at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. The Variazioni canoniche, based on the twelve-tone series of Arnold Schoenberg’s Op. 41, including the “Ode-to-Napoleon” hexachord, marked Nono as a committed composer of anti-fascist political orientation. (Variazioni canoniche also used a six-element row of rhythmic values.) Nono had been a member of the Italian Resistance duri