The whole life of the Venetian composer Luigi Nono was spent under the sign of encounter. A fundamental one was the meeting with Bruno Maderna when he was twenty-something, just after the first world war. In the school of Francesco Malipiero he is initiated into not only Monteverdi, but also the theorists of the 1500-1600. After that will come the encounter with Hermann Scherchen, an enlightened German conductor who introduced him into the experimental laboratory of Darmstad. Nono’s passions did not orbit only in the strictly musical circle, but they were extended to other contaminating grounds: poetry ( the “caminantes” by Machado will mark a turning point in his composing style), painting (the fellowship with Emilio Vedova), architecture (the staging for the Prometheus by Renzo Piano), philosophy (brotherly friendship with Massimo Cacciari), social commitment, the passion for liberation movements from all the world, the subscription to the Communist Party.

The publishing house Colophon of Belluno has dedicated to Nono this huge book as a homage, under the sign of encounter and long-lasting friendship. The book has been published in 150 copies in the quarto edition, with two original engravings by Emilio Vedova and a study for the Prometheus by Renzo Piano made with an etching, resulting in 72 pages which are a collective token of friendship: from Luigi Berlinguer to Pietro Ingrao, Duilio Courir, Inge Feltrinelli, Roberto Fabbriciani, Salvatore Sciarrino amongst the others. “Al gran sole carico di amore” entitled at one of his compositions, has recently been presented in the Apollo Halls of the Fenice theatre. The composer Aldo Clementi was very surprised when he met him:” I was in one of the halls, the one dedicated to Klee (Biennale ’54) when he suddenly, shy visitor, but with a determined and heated look” and he describes him as “explorer, discoverer of new worlds and eternal boy, transfigured by his very timeless utopias”. Cacciari proposes an hermetic Mid-European parable set at the beginning of 1900 between Venice and Wien “I wrote it many years ago, as the final chapter of a ‘serious essay’ about the image of the spiritual relationship between Wien and Venice, I had made up the story of two artists, a painter and a musician, so to represent what I most loved in Emilio Vedova and Luigi Nono. The divertissement was really enjoyed by some erudite historian of the artistic avant-gardes, but was also liked by my two big friends. I am now republishing it with some changes, with the hope that it will still make Gigi laugh as it did then”. The musician Roberto Fabbriciani met him in Milan in 1978 and he was fascinated by his longing for research and novelty: “I often went to visit him in Venice, at the Giudecca. His house opened on a garden ending in the lagoon. (…) We spent those days in Venice talking about many things, strolling along the calli, the canals, sometimes going with the boat to bathe in the sea and ending in some ‘trattoria’. Later, when we went back home, Carlotta welcomed us barking and wagging its tail, the tawny dog that one day had followed Gigi home, claiming to stay there. I left the Giudecca with the feeling of a bigger professional enrichment, open to new horizons. Inge Feltrinelli remembers him as beautiful (with an exclamation point) “always ready to help everyone. Always full of new ideas”.

The memory ofIngraois very passionate: “I was a close friend of Luigi Nono. I cannot tell when exactly our friendship started, but I remember very well that it soon became intense and passionate. Gigi was quite younger than me, but he had started soon to travel around and he experienced his discovery of the century in an intense, restless way”. As many others, Yury Liubimov, founder of the theatre Taganka in Moskow, was invited to visit him in his house at the Giudecca: “I remember our walks in Venice, his stories about the gorgeous canvas of Tintoretto. Gigi stroke me with his extraordinary knowledge of painting, of the history of music – with his talent, discretion and the attention to the neighbourhood’s inhabitants, who spoke with him about nothing in particular and went fishing with him. I was stricken by the love that everybody felt for him and his desire to get into the life of everyone”.