... sofferte onde serene ... or ..... sofferte onde serene ... (Italian: "serene waves suffered" or "endured"),  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.

Composition Nono wrote ... sofferte one serene ... for his friend Maurizio Pollini after their 1971–1972 collaboration in Como una ola de fuerza y luz. Nono used the sounds of his native Venice, notably its bell towers, which he heard from across the Venetian Lagoon at home on Giudecca. He finished it there in 1976, dedicating it to Pollini and Pollini's wife Marilisa. Nono's music was affected by the "harsh wind of death", with recent losses including Bruno Maderna, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Nono's parents, and Marilisa's miscarriage.

Nono extended the piano's sonority, emphasizing its pedal resonances via tape. Pollini and sound technician Marino Zuccheri recorded this part at the .

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 leftist . 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."

Casa Ricordi published the score (1977, 1992). Pianist and musicologist Paulo de Assis prepared a prototype critical edition at the (2009, unpublished).

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. He composed the live and taped piano parts to blend in uniform textures, distinct from his previous violent and contrasting style.

Recordings

The following is a list of notable performances of this composition:

PianoSound technicianLabelYear of recordingMaurizio PolliniMarino ZuccheriDeutsche Grammophon1979Aldo OrvietoAlvise VidolinARTIS Records1993Markus HinterhäuserAndré RichardCol Legno1994Iris Gerber—Edition Bianchi-neri1997Sven Thomas KieblerAndré Richard2e21997Kenneth Karlsson—Albedo Music2000—Telos Music2001Pascale Berthelot—CNSMD2003Paulo de Assis—Orpheus Institute CD Series2018—Kairos2018

Notes

References

Further reading 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. . 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.

External links Manuscript of title page in Casa Ricordi Digital Collection Program notes from the performance of UW Modern Music Ensemble, Inverted Space, André Richard (live electronics), and Brooks Tran (piano) at Meany Hall for the Performing Arts, University of Washington (2014) , Hideki Nagano (piano), Ensemble InterContemporain , Alfonso_Gómez, (piano), Roland Breitenfeld, electronics