Nostalgia for the Future: Luigi Nono's Selected Writings and Interviews

✍ Scribed by Luigi Nono (editor); Angela Ida De Benedictis (editor); Veniero Rizzardi (editor)

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 504
• Series: California Studies in 20th-Century Music; 21
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Nostalgia for the Future is the first collection in English of the writings and interviews of Luigi Nono (1924–1990). One of the most prominent figures in the development of new music after World War II, he is renowned for both his compositions and his utopian views. His many essays and lectures reveal an artist at the center of the analytical, theoretical, critical, and political debates of the time.

This selection of Nono’s most significant essays, articles, and interviews covers his entire career (1948–1989), faithfully mirroring the interests, orientations, continuities, and fractures of a complex and unique personality. His writings illuminate his intensive involvements with theatre, painting, literature, politics, science, and even mysticism. Nono’s words make vividly evident his restless quest for the transformative possibilities of a radical musical experience, one that is at the same time profoundly engaged with its performers and spaces, its audiences, and its human and social motivations and ramifications.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Contents
Introduction
Overture. Clarifications (1956)
Excursus I. An Autobiography of the Author Recounted by Enzo Restagno (1987)
Part one. Musical Analysis and Composition
Excursus II. A Letter from Los Angeles (1965)
Part two. Music Onstage
Excursus III. Interview with Renato Garavaglia (ca. 1979–80)
Part three. “Conscience, Feelings, Collective Reality”
Excursus IV. Technology to Discover a Universe of Sounds: Interview with Walter Prati and Roberto Masotti (1983)
Part four. Portraits and Dedications
Excursus V. Interview with Michelangelo Zurletti (1987)
Part five. The “Possible Infi nities”
Excursus VI. “Proust” Questionnaire (1986)
Notes
Bibliographic Notes and Comments to the Texts
Chronology of Nono’s Works
General Index
Index of Luigi Nono’s Works