Io, Prometeo: zum Entwurf konkreter Subjektivitat in Luigi Nonos "Tragedia dell' ascolto" Prometeo - Mast, Christine (Frankfurt am Main Stroemfeld, 2008)
With Prometheus, Luigi Nono (1924-90) and his librettist Massimo Cacciari chose a figure from ancient mythology as the protagonist of their tragedy Prometeo, a figure who has come to symbolise belief in progress, unconditional love of mankind and hubris at the same time. At the same time, this work culminated what had determined Luigi Nono's compositional thinking from 1980 onwards: extreme and previously unheard-of sound designs, spatial-sound movements and musical development processes.While his oeuvre up to 1977 had cemented Nono's reputation as a 'committed' composer who reacted directly to political events, the ostensibly timeless theme of Prometeo sparked irritation. However, bearing in mind the fact that the political is first concretised in its smallest unit, the ego, and in how this ego relates to a supposedly overpowering, fateful entity, the score of Prometeo is read here as the story of the emergence of subjectivity, that of the protagonist. He proves to be ambivalent, located in the field of tension between solipsism, redemptive utopia and deconstruction.
Keywords: Nono, Luigi -- 1924-1990; Tragedy; Mythology; Music philosophy and esthetics