Search - L. Nono :: Prometeo

Fragments,silences,committment to the human spirit

03/29/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Nono's Prometeo is simple the summation of his life's work. He emerged from the post-war generation of composers devoted to the new musical vocabulary of Anton Webern and serial thinking. However Nono always thoughtomething more was needed coming from the ravages of Europe after the Second World War, the ends of culture it look liked. Nono was a committed Marxist in fact the only one who wrote music and searched incessantly to find a conceptual bridge between art music and politics. His important body of work reflects this, and can be roughly divided into three creative periods. The first dominated by serial thinking, yet Nono developed a "sonoricism" an appreciation of the pure quality, the pure power of sound. He liked cluster chords, and deposited the wealth of the 12 tones into massive block chords. His first opera "Intolleranza" is and end point. The second period was intensely more politically committed, with another giant mural-like opera "Like a Great Burgeoning Light of Love", an opera where three female heroines visit the ravages of the 20th Century, Chile, Vietnam. From this point many scholars claim Nono had retreated into a musical language intrspective, hypnotic, floating static sounds going nowhere, and an obvious style in vogue. But Nono never bowed to market anything. "Prometeo" is a sum total of the advances of the 20th Centruy. He had the collaborative aid of many to create this work. Architect Renzo Piano designed a boatlike platform, where "Prometeo" is performed. Conductor Claudio Abbado, long a Nono devotee, was used, Hans Haller for computer aid and the spatialization of the sound where the sounds of the vocalists travel in diagonakls and cross over the heads of the audiences, Massimo Cacciari did fragmented text and ancient Greek German and Italian is utilize. The message here is the transgressive elements that has become part of the market driven age postmodernity, Prometeo subtitled in "the tragedy of listening" meaning we don't hear anymore, we have lost our ability to hear, and will continue to loose it with the lack of serious music finding a place within culture. To experience Prometeo must be live, but here Matzmacher and the forces brings a committed vocal purity to this work. You will not another work more focused on the problems of humaity and modernity than Nono."

Prometeo-Tragedia dell? ascolto: The Tragedy of listening.

Daniel Cadorin | Caracas, Venezuela | 12/17/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Perhaps, it is some how difficult to listen, in its whole extent, the beauty and breadth of this masterpiece of Luigi Nono composed approaching the end of his life. As a composer concerned of the social liberation of the human being, all Nono's composing life was dedicated to express in music language the controversial situation of the human being in his existence and indigence before all the social (and nature) forces that try to destroy or limit his freedom. Nono's leitmotiv in his compositions, since his first works, was always to identify each note, time metering, dynamics, pitch, and free use of dissonant intervals (and even the most uncomfortable ones) with a specific social intention or human meaning representing the stridence of the injustice in the world. Indeed the use of orchestral clusters helps to enhance the tension or rebellion of the mankind or its unconformism. The use of live electronic gives special polyphonic textures to the whole, mystery, spatiality, spirituality, tension toward the eternity (and I say this in spite of his Marxist confession). I was starting saying that it is difficult to appreciate the breadth of this work since, as performed live, all the orchestra and voices are spread around the whole 3rd-dimension space of the theatre hall. A friend of mine (Antonio Pileggi), Italian contemporary composer, who attended Claudio Abbado's premiere of Prometeo, at San Lorenzo Church in Venice, told me that it was overwhelming (unfortunately I never had, at this time, the opportunity of attending a live presentation of this work). In some way, one can reproduce this spatiality by listening the Prometeo at night, in a very silent room with good surround sound equipment: reverberation of the room helps to get more realism. I recommend as a supreme pleasure listening it at the same time one contemplates a modern canvas or browses a book of modern art, making a pause in the canvas that call more the attention of the listener: you'll never get disappointed. In fact, Luigi Nono composed "Guai ai gelidi mostri" after several canvas of the painter Emilio Vedova and texts assembled by Massimo Cacciari (the same poet Prometeo's). In regard of the work itself, Prometeo suggests the limited possibility of the human being of participating in completeness of the sonorous substance. This reminds the sense of the Prometeo myth of stealing the fire, that was reserved only for Zeus, for the mankind. In this case, Nono attempts to resemble the myth by extending a universe of sounds in the space, in order that each listener might be able to get different perceptions according to her (or his) location in the space: in conclusion, Nono, tries to reach the music to the mortals as a sense of redemption of the listener, which is a human being. However, getting the complete sonorous substance is impossible unless the human being were able to stay in all and each part of the space where the sounds occur at the same time. That is why still is a tragedy of listening."

One of the Greatest Works of the 20th Century.

Stephen Beville | UK | 05/08/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Luigi Nono's Prometeo is perhaps his ultimate work of resistance to an ever-increasing capitalist/commercial world. What could be so revolutionary as an opera or 'dramma per musica' without any visual dimension; a protest against the barrage of visual and aural junk on television and in magazines that we have to confront everyday. And this absence of the visual is no doubt to enhance our listening capabilities and focus - Prometeo is subtitled 'a tragedy of listening'. In addition, throughout its two hour span, the tempo is mainly slow, the dynamics are predominantly quiet, which gives added resonance to the indignant outbursts that punctuate the work. It is a radical statement, demanding of both performers and listeners (especially the second half that becomes increasingly dissolute and fragmentary) and may require a number of listens before you begin to realise its sublime secrets.



The human voice was, above all, central to Nono's music, and emblematic of its humanity. Nono's new sound-worlds, his visions of humanity are of universal relevance. Indeed, there are few works that quite give the sense of 'cosmic perspective' as Prometeo. This is reinforced intellectually by Nono's philosophical stance towards history, as influenced by Walter Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History' - which here is given a central role in the libretto. It is within this context that we perceive the Prometheus myth, and crucially, the lines from Hoelderlin which are given striking realisation in the spiralling chorus, amplified and spacialised with the use of live electronics. Massimo Cacciari's compiled text, consisting of disparate fragments from Hesiod, Benjamin, and Hoelderlin provides ample material for philosophical meditation, and gives the impression of an interpretation of the music rather than vice-versa. This no doubt is due to Nono's musical 'setting', sometimes omitting words, or combining them, or refracting them into purely sonic material. The act of listening, which here becomes a philosophical act, takes precedence; the texts serving as pointers to the new dimensions of meaning realised sonically.



In our world drowned by a multitude of aural phenomina, the composer seeks a music of pure intervallic relations to build upon. When Nono recalls the basic intervals of the perfect fourth and fifth in the choral parts, he is signalling the recovery of something fundamental to humanity, something that no doubt relates to the Prometheus myth at the dawn of our time. Prometeo may be likened to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, in that it is a meditation on the human history and destiny - only it is a Ninth Symphony for our own age, where former certainties about man's place in the universe have collapsed and pluralities of thought co-exist, here presented in a new and open synthesis.



The orchestral writing, sometimes strident and anguished, is predominantly reflective, melting into the most delicate microtonal nuances and timbres. Like the chorus and soloists, the instrumental writing is spatialised and divided into antiphonal groups - a deliberate allusion to the practises of Renaissance composers, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli and the multi-lateral acoustic properties from Nono's home town, Venice. Both voices and instruments are supported by electronic transformations of the utmost subtlety, which together with the new playing techniques (particularly noticeable in the wind writing with its 'feathery' evocations of 'wings of the angel' in Io-Prometeo and Tre Voici) create the new possibilities of listening that was Nono's objective.



This live performance from the Salzburg festival 1993 (it demands to be re-released!) is a triumph for everyone involved under the marvellous direction of Ingo Metzmacher, who has become something of a champion of Nono's music. We really need someone of his ability in the UK where Prometeo still awaits its premiere, now over twenty years after its first performance!"