on the 100th anniversary of Luigi Nono’s birth (1924-1990)
Il Nuovo e l’Antico

La Stagione Armonica
conductor Sergio Balestracci
Roberto Fabbriciani bass flute
Alvise Vidolin live electronics and magnetic tape

Tomás Luis de Victoria
pieces from Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae in Passione Domini

Luigi Nono
Das atmende Klarsein for small choir, bass flute, live electronics and magnetic tape


An extraordinarily fecund relationship links the Italian ‘new music’ of the post-war period with history. Luigi Nono, in particular, used technology to rethink sound emission techniques, reverberation, and the relationship with space. He traced this approach back to the ancient Venetian tradition, which he explored in Das atmende Klarsein, now entrusted to two of his faithful collaborators, Roberto Fabbriciani and Alvise Vidolin. This meditation on death, edited by Massimo Cacciari, draws on Rilke’s Duino Elegies and on texts inscribed on Orphic tablets found in the tombs of deceased mystery-cult initiates. Death and the relationship between the human and the divine are also explored in the vocal counterpoint inspired by the Holy Week Office of Tomás Luis de Victoria, a great Spanish composer who worked in Rome during Palestrina’s time.