Abstract
This paper considers the serial method of composition implemented by Luigi Nono, one of the postwar music leaders, who was a representative of the Darmstadt School together with K. Stockhausen and P. Boulez. The typical features of the method that was used in a number of Nono’s musical pieces in the 1950s are exemplified through the analysis of the first two parts of his cantata Il Canto Sospeso. One of the most fundamental characteristics is organization of rhythm, which plays the crucial role in the formation of musical syntactic structures.