Luigi Nono's creative itinerary cannot be separated from his marked political commitment. And it does not mean that the musical work of this essential composer has been simply a function of a speech, music as mere propaganda.

The dialogue was rooted, dialectical, coherent. And it started from a deep investigative calling.

Nono was elbow to elbow with the most important and iconoclastic musicians of the 20 century, and not from the position of one who listens and agrees. He made contributions to the musical avant-garde, convinced of the need for permanent renewal, from the shape and concept, but without this reinvention meant sterile fractures. Breaks when the revolutionary spirit needed them. He shied away from conventional formats, which he associated with bourgeois tyrannies.

And over time he became convinced that schools and trends could not be assumed as immovable cathedrals. "There are no roads, you have to walk," Nono took as his guide this phrase, which he read on a wall in the city of Toledo.

His interest in electronic music made him one of the champions of a movement, often understood from the logic of confrontation, but which he understood as a space for lucid experimentation.

Luigi Nono's ties with Cuba were always very close. They were based on identification with a social project, a deed, a revolutionary calling. And in this country he found a welcoming creative space, which took shape in collaborations with Casa de las Américas and the Cuban National Ballet.

Luigi Nono was one of the titans in teh music of the 20 century. Music and Revolution, integrating areas of a work that, a hundred years after the composer's birth, poses many challenges.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff