EA Bucket 36. / Italian Vacation 17: Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Radio Milano

Grant Chu Covell

[December 2025.]

In 1955, Bruno Maderna and Luciano Berio teamed up to establish the Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Radio Milano. The Italians were responding to their French and German colleagues who were outfitting their own electronic music studios (Groupe de Recherches Musicales, in Paris, and Studio für elektronische Musik des Westdeutschen Rundfunks, in Cologne). The initial studio configuration (generators, filters, mixers, recorders, etc.) was designed by physicist Alfredo Lietti. Technicians included Marino Zuccheri and Lucio Cavallarin.

The Studio closed its doors when the indispensable Zuccheri retired in 1983, but the RAI kept the equipment, eventually sending it over to the Civico Museo degli Strumenti Musicali. In 2008, the Museum of Musical Instruments at the Sforza Castle in Milan faithfully reconstructed the physical layout from photos and old films. If the equipment still functions, all that’s missing is power and, presumably, the thick tang of cigarettes.

I love museums, but the day I visited, there were no sounds, despite at least one large (non-functioning) screen. It’s a bit dreary to see a museum of musical instruments (acoustic and electronic) when all the artifacts are sequestered behind glass and voiceless.

A view into the reconstructed Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Radio Milano.

The mixing desk.

A patch bay on the wall.

A rack of oscillators.

A filter.

Tape decks for 1” tape.

The Tempophon, which could change the pitch of a taped sound without changing its tempo.

Behind one of the racks, ancient resistors.

From the Studio’s archives: A technical plan for Cage’s Fontana Mix.

An excerpt from Maderna’s score for Don Perlimplin.

A card catalog, open to the entry for Nono’s La fabbrica illuminata.

In-person and online exhibits detail the composers who passed through: “…in addition to Berio and Maderna, we remember Luigi Nono, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Niccolò Castiglioni, Luciano Chailly, Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Armando Gentilucci, Giacomo Manzoni, Gino Marinuzzi Jr., Angelo Paccagnini, Salvatore Sciarrino, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Camillo Togni, Roman Vlad.”

Berio and Maderna were the Studio’s heavy hitters. Anthologies give them ample credit, and their output is easy to find. “Acousmatrix VII” (BVHaast 9109) offers Berio’s Momenti (1960), Thema – Omaggio a Joyce (1958) and Visage (1961) along with Maderna’s Le Rire (1962) and Dimensioni II – Invenzione su una voce (1960). A solid Maderna dose on Stradivarius (STR 33349) includes the last two along with Notturno (1956), Syntaxis (1957), Musica su due dimensioni (1958) which adds flute, and Serenata III (1961).

On revisiting the RAI Studio for this article, Maderna’s Le Rire and the concentrated Serenata III make more of an impression. Having been a Sinfonia groupie, I had previously homed in on Berio’s work. But then again, who can forget Visage, among the most enduring tape creations ever, showcasing the impossibly gifted vocalist Cathy Berberian (married to Berio at the time). Maderna’s Dimensioni II – Invenzione su una voce also features Berberian.

This time through, I hear a shape in Maderna’s Le Rire, the quickly skittering whistle at 1:26, prefigure a similar contrasting motive within Berio’s 1976 violin Sequena VIII (at around the six-minute mark). Berio seems to have stepped away from electronics after Maderna died in 1973. (A history of the Studio is for another day.) He created the electroacoustic Chants parallèles (1975) in Paris, and later as the technology evolved, incorporated electronics into Ofaním (1988) and Altra voice (1999).

Returning to the above list, of course Nono’s RAI compositions are familiar on these pages. The recent “Les Espaces Électroacoustiques II” (col legno WWE 2SACD 40003) is relevant as it offers not just Omaggio a Emilio Vedova (1960) and La fabbrica illuminata (1964) but also Berio’s Altra voce. The twofer also has A floresta é jovem e cheja de vida (1965-66), G.M. Koenig’s Klangfiguren II (1955-56) and Terminus X (1967), and Stockhausen’s Kontakte (1958-60). Nono probably had strong feelings about the RAI administration which had declined to promote the political Contrappunto dialettico alla mente (1969). Hear it among “Luigi Nono: Complete Works for Solo Tape” on Stradivarius STR 57001.

Pousseur developed Scambi in 1957 (mode 318 or BVHaast CD 9010), perhaps the first tape piece meant to be reconstructed and rearranged as a mobile. Cage realized Fontana Mix in 1959 with Zuccheri. It’s still a wacky collage. During the same Milanese sojourn, he also appeared on an Italian game show, winning a prize which leveraged his encyclopedic knowledge of mushrooms.

Some of the composers listed in the museum exhibit created just one opus at the Studio: Castiglioni’s Divertimento (1961), Togni’s Recitativo (1961), Vlad’s Ricercare elettronico (1961) and Donatoni’s Quartetto III (1962) are such unicorns (clearly there were a lot of residencies in the early 1960s). Sciarrino is not a composer usually associated with electronics, but he has taken the plunge. As far as I can tell, La voce dell’Inferno (1981) came into being at the Milan Studio.

Evidently Die Schachtel is the place to be. I’ve missed out on owning one of just two hundred copies of an elaborate box set containing an LP, CD and book: “Angelo Paccagnini: Musica Elettronica allo Studio di Fonologia della RAI di Milano, 1969/1971” (Die Schachtel DS46/1) with four Paccagnini works,  Flou II (1971), the disturbing Partner (1969), Underground (1971) and Un Uomo da Salvare (1969). A release with just 3 pieces on LP (DS46) might still be attainable. Head over to Die Schachtel’s storefront on bandcamp to stream parts of it.

Seek out the slightly more available six CD collection “Prix Italia: L’Immaginazione in Ascolto – Imagination at Play” with three by Maderna: Don Perlimplin (1961), Ritratto di Erasmo (1969) and Ages (1972), Berio’s Diario immaginario (1975), Rota’s La notte di un Nevrastenico (1959), Castiglioni’s Attraverso lo specchio (1961) and Sciarrino’s La voce dell’Inferno (1981) on Die Schachtel DS22.

Also on the wishlist: “Milan Rai Studio Di Fonologia Musicale 1955-83: Marino Zuccheri & Friends” with a book and Zuccheri’s Parete 67 (1967) and Plastico (1961) (Die Schachtel DS35/2). Parete 67 is separately released on an LP, Die Schachtel DS35/8.

Zuccheri receives a big credit for “Armando Gentilucci: Musica Elettronica” with Gentilucci’s Come qualcosa palpita nel fondo (1973) and Che voi pensiate (1975) alongside a collection of eight instrumental compositions grouped as Selva di Pensieri Sonanti (1986-89) on Die Schachtel DS40. Also probably hard to find, given the included book and reproductions of political posters from the 1970s.

Several of the attractive books bundled by Die Schachtel can be had separately over at NoMus. Alga Marghen is another specialty Italian label offering Clementi’s Collage 2 (1960), Collage 3, “Dies Irae” (1966/67), and Fantasia su roBErto FABbriCiAni (1982) for flute and tape on NMN 167.

I had trouble digging out details about the Studio efforts of Chailly, Manzoni, Marinuzzi and Sinopoli. Chailly (father of conductor Riccardo) worked at RAI for a stretch and wrote a series of Sonata Tritematicas, meaning compositions in a three-part sonata form. A CD with five such sonatas is included with the Die Schachtel / NoMus monograph volume on Chailly. Marinuzzi was key in establishing an electronic music studio in Rome, as well as being a prolific film score composer. Sinopoli’s website gives scant details for two electronic pieces from 1969.