Il Canto Sospeso (1955/56)
(The links to the nine movements of the work are given below)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_canto_sospeso)
Il canto sospeso (The Suspended Song) is a cantata for vocal soloists, choir, and orchestra by the Italian composer Luigi Nono,
written in 1955–56. It is one of the most admired examples of serial
composition from the 1950s, but has also excited controversy over the
relationship between its political content and its compositional means.
History
The title Il canto sospeso may be literally translated as "The Suspended Song", though the word sospeso
may also be rendered as "floating" or "interrupted". The title is
actually taken from the Italian edition of a poem, "If We Die", by Ethel Rosenberg
who, together with her husband Julius, was tried and convicted in
America of espionage and of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.
Their execution on 19 June 1953 caused outrage in Europe. The phrase in
the English original is "the song unsung" (Nielinger 2006, 87).
Nono chose his texts from an anthology published in 1954 by Giulio Einaudi as Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza europea,
a collection of farewell letters written to loved ones by captured
European resistance fighters shortly before their executions by the
Nazis. The score is dedicated "a tutti loro" (to all of them) (Nielinger
2006, 85). The premiere was given under the direction of Hermann Scherchen
in Cologne on 24 October 1956. Four years later it was performed at the
twenty-third Festival of Contemporary Music of the Venice Biennale
under the direction of Bruno Maderna
(Mila 1975, 382; Nielinger 2006, 83). This Venice performance was
recorded for the radio on 17 September 1960 and in 1988, nearly three
decades later, became the first commercially released recording of Il canto sospeso.
Four years after completing the work, Nono incorporated its entire fourth movement into his opera Intolleranza 1960 (Nielinger 2006, 83).
