Luigi Nono/Mauizio Pollini - "sofferte onde serene..." Vinyl, LP, Album, Germany, 1979 (Deutsche Grammophon)

My knowledge on the Italian composer Luigi Nono is limited, and I have only this album "sofferte onde serene..." and a compilation with Berio and Maderna.   I have an interest with composers of the 20th-century who used magnetic tape as part of the ensemble, and Nono is no stranger to the tape machine.  Here Nono has the noted pianist Maurizio Pollini play along with magnetic tape that is haunting and very mood sturring.  It's music to wait for an upcoming storm.  And that storm is "a floresta èjovem e cheja de vida."   A composition with magnetic tape as well as clarinet played by William O. Smith, who was an original member of Ennio Morricone's (and others) Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.  

a floresta èjovem e cheja de vida" is very much rooted in the Vietnam War, and Nono was very much against that war.   The texts in this piece are from various sources and mostly from the Left.  A haunting work as well as the first piece on this album. 

Ennio Morricone - "Ecce Homo, I Sopravvissuti" Vinyl, LP, Album, OST, 2002 (Dagored)

Ennio Morricone's "Ecce Homo: I Sopravvissuti" is one of his more obscure works, but of course, it's excellent.  This is more of his small orchestration with strings, some vocals, but basically a chamber work.  There is also a thumb-piano mixed in with the strings, and flute.   The Chimes gives it a slight exotica feel, but it's music that is quietly intense.  

"Ecce Homo" is a film from 1968 and directed by Bruno Gaburro.  If the film is like the music, it has to be an intense viewing experience.  Although Morricone wrote for the screen, I feel his music works just as well as an independent music piece.  I have to imagine that the works here are incidental pieces - there is no major theme music, but just a series of music that's similar or plays with the major theme.  The great Edda Dell'Orso is the vocalist, and again, her operatic touches are magical and profoundly beautiful.  In sections, I think of John Cage's prepared piano music, but I think due that the piano (prepared piano?) and thumb-piano are used in a rhythmic manner.  Also noted is the conductor, the great Bruno Nicolai.  

Egisto Macchi - "ll Deserto" 2 x Vinyl, Album, LP, Limited Edition, Reissue 1974/2016 (Cinedelic Records)

Egisto Macchi's "ll Deserto" is a masterpiece.  The orchestration of all four sides is one of quiet, but mixed in with real instruments such as 'maybe' a french horn, oboe, various orchestrational string instruments as well as percussion over an electronic hum that comes in and out of the mix.  "ll Deserto" is very much a sonic portrait of a North African desert, or at the very least a desert in one's imagination.  One wonders if Brian Eno heard this album before he made his ambient classic "Discreet Music," because in parts the music is very similar, if not in style, in the mood that carries the landscape.  

The white album cover is so minimal that it makes The Beatles White Album a complex design.  Yet the cover conveys the vastness of Macchi's music within its vinyl grooves.  Nine pieces are on this double album, and each one flows into the other as natural as the wind blowing across the white sands of a desert.  The rhythm conveys an African feeling and clearly not a Southwestern Desert in the United States.    The original edition of the album came out in 1974 on a small record label based in Florance Italy called AYNA.   Macchi did a lot of music for Music Libraries, which means it is used by a film producer to pick and choose their music if they need something cheaply or quickly for a scene in their film.   Macchi is very much a soundtrack composer, but in Library Music one can make their own soundtracks to fit their own mood.  In other words, the compositions can be experimental or groovy dance tune - nevertheless, it's an area of great experimentation.   

As mentioned, "ll Deserto" can easily fit into the ambient music world, but again, one marvel at the real instrumentation of actual instruments that is a great deal of the final sound.   The music is relaxing, but it has its quiet sinister qualities as well.  A beautiful album to reflect on one's daydreams.