Luigi Nono (1929-1990)

Introduction
Luigi Nono was an Italian composer who mainly focused on music that had elements of serialism and aleatory music and incorporating electronic music into that formula. As you might suspect from the description of his musical style, his music is very much looking at music from a post-tonal lens.

Work Analysis
Promoteo is a serialist-style opera. There seems to be no real form to what is going on vocally and in the background. The background parts are played on instruments but it is hard to tell if the instruments sounds is pure or being altered in some way because they mostly are used to fill the dissonant chords created by the voices. The piece as a whole is extremely unnerving. Nono self labeled the piece as a "tragedia dell'ascolto" or a "tragedy of listening". The piece itself is divided into 9 different sections or cantatas, but those sections are very hard to separate from one another, with the only defining borders between the sections being brief silences. The overall feeling of the piece is very minimal, with subtle instrumentation under the vocalists to allow the anguish in the voice to shine. The overall complexity of the piece seems as if it would be a nightmare to try to sing due to the little instrumentation to assist in referencing notes, and the overall range the song spans is mind-bogglingly large.

Comparisons
I would compare this specific piece to Schoenberg's Ewartung and to Stravinsky's L'Histoire Du Soldat. Both of these pieces used the same emphasis on the vocal aspect of the piece, with the instrumentation being more of a supporting role in expressing the feeling of the piece. Nono is taking what others expect from a musical composition and flipping that on it's head. Nono wanted others to think about their definition of music and expand it by forcing those who listen to process that the nature of this music might not be what society deems "music" but that it is still music, nonetheless.

Observations
I still am not sure how I feel abut this piece. There are parts that are very interesting to me in terms of the vocal dissonances. The only think that is not allowing me to absolutely love this piece is how it doesn't really change dynamically as a whole, the vocals have major dynamic changes and I wish the supporting instruments under that could have had a more dynamic change to further expand that vocal dynamic, rather than leaving it just to seem like the vocalist are being louder just for fun.