Sylvano Bussotti (born 1931), an Italian avant-garde composer, was one of the most audacious of the experimental composers of his generation. His ability to discover new sounds in conventional instruments was unsurpassed.

Sylvano Bussotti was born in Florence and received his early education there. Between 1941 and 1948 he studied at the Florence Conservatory, and in 1957 he became a student of Max Deutsch, a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg, in Paris. At the same time Bussotti studied painting and became acquainted with the principles of abstract expressionism and the concepts of aleatory (or "chance") music championed by John Cage and others.

In abstract expressionist painting a great deal was left to chance. The painter worked without a preconceived plan or drawing and sometimes dripped or slashed paint on his canvas. In the corresponding movement in music, composers believed that the traditional composer-performer relationship, in which the composer "controls" performance through the exactitude...