The Italian composer Luigi Nono (1924-1990) was one of the most socially engaged of 20th-century composers. His Marxist political views influenced most of his avant-garde compositions.

Luigi Nono was born on January 29, 1924, in Venice, Italy, where his father was a prosperous engineer. He started studying music in 1941 at the Venice Conservatory. He received his doctorate in law in at the University of Padua while studying music with composer Gian Francesco Malipiero. In 1946 he began studies with composer-conductor Bruno Maderna and with German conductor Hermann Scherchen, who both became early proponents of his work. Nono also attended the important Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany, where his first compositions, which were strongly influenced by composer Anton Webern, were performed.

Nono was an active member of the Italian Communist Party, and he often used Marxist texts and revolutionary writings as a basis for his compositions. In the mid-...