Luigi Nono, sound supervisor Maurizio Pollini, live and taped piano Marino Zuccheri, sound technician
... sofferte onde serene ... or ..... sofferte onde serene ...[a] (Italian: "serene waves suffered"[1] or "endured"),[2] ALN 42, is a composition for piano and tape by Italian composer Luigi Nono. Borne of Nono's friendship and artistic collaboration with Maurizio Pollini, it was the first of Nono's works in what became his late style.
Pollini (live and taped piano), Zuccheri (sound technician), and Nono (sound supervisor) gave the premiere at the Milan Conservatory's Sala Verdi on 17 April 1977.
After Al gran sole carico d'amore (1972 and 1975), which was inspired by women's revolutionary struggle, ... sofferte onde serene ... marked a final introspective shift within Nono's overtly leftistœuvre. In the premiere's program note, Nono quoted Kafka on the "equilibrium of the profound interior". Nono's music became slower and quieter, with pitches often occupying a high register or tessitura. He became more concerned with spatiality, especially "floating sounds", and moved toward the use of fragments and silences in subsequent works. Heinz-Klaus Metzger observed these changes as an "intensification of [Nono's] identity."[3]
Casa Ricordi published the score (1977, 1992). Pianist and musicologist Paulo de Assis prepared a prototype critical edition at the Orpheus Institute [nl] (2009, unpublished).[6]
Structure
... sofferte onde serene ... is a fourteen-minute movement in 155 bars. Tempo markings are very strict and tempo variations based on performance are rare. The original tape recorded by Nono, still used in concert performances, has a thirteen-minute-and-thirty-nine-second duration. Nono used as many as eight reference numbers in the score to keep the piano and the tape synchronized:
00:54 – Begin after three seconds
01:56 – Begin after three seconds
02:57 – Begin immediately
05:11 – Begin immediately
06:49 – Begin immediately
09:16 – Begin immediately
11:49 – Begin immediately
13:14 – Begin after two seconds
... sofferte onde serene ... calls for on-stage piano, a mixer and a sound engineer meant to be placed off-stage, and four loudspeakers: two on the piano and two on the bottom-left and bottom-right corner of the stage. The piece starts with the piano at a tempo of = ca. 60. Nono marks further tempo changes in almost every bar.[7] He composed the live and taped piano parts to blend in uniform textures, distinct from his previous violent and contrasting style.[1]
Recordings
The following is a list of notable performances of this composition:
Carvalho, Mário Vieira de. 1999. "Towards Dialectic Listening: Quotation and Montage in the Work of Luigi Nono". Contemporary Music Review 18, no. 2:37–85.
Caselli, Massimo. 1992. "... sofferte onde serene ... de Luigi Nono". Revista Música 3, no. 1:17.
Harris, John Mark. 2003. "Performing Luigi Nono's ... sofferte onde serene ...". DMA diss. La Jolla: University of California, San Diego.
Linden, Werner. 1989. Luigi Nonos Weg zum Streichquartett: Vergleichende Analysen zu Seinen Kompositionen Liebeslied, ... sofferte onde serene ..., Fragmente, Stille, An Diotima. Kassel: Bärenreiter. ISBN3-7618-0940-9.
Miller, Darren. 2014. "The Collaborative Role of the Technician in ... onde sofferte serene ...". Revista Vortex 2, no. 1:37–47.
Riede, Berndt. 1986. Luigi Nonos Kompositionen mit Tonband: Ästhetik des musikalischen Materials, Werkanalysen, Werkverzeichnis. Berliner Musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten 28. Munich: E. Katzbichler.
Rizzardi, Veniero. 1999. "Notation, Oral Practice and Performance Practice in the Works with Tape and Live Electronics by Luigi Nono". Contemporary Music Review 18, no. 1:47–56.
Spangemacher, Friedrich. 1983. Luigi Nono, die elektronische Musik: historischer Kontext, Entwicklung, Kompositionstechnik. Forschungsbeiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 29. Regensburg: G. Bosse.