Coming from a family of independent means, he was able to pursue his art as he saw fit, regardless of changing fashions or economic pressure.
He began studying piano at the age of 7, with Franco Margola in Brescia, then from 1939 to 1943 with Alfredo Casella in Rome and Siena, and Giovanni Anfossi in Milan.
Michelangeli introduced him in 1938 to the music of Arnold Schoenberg, which affected him profoundly and caused him to develop a tremendous interest in the Second Viennese School.
From 1951 to 1957 he attended the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt, but he found the turn toward aleatoricism there, beginning in 1957, alien to his nature, and did not return until he was invited back in 1990.
Amongst the most widely admired works from his post-Darmstadt period are the Charles d'Orléans settings, Rondeaux per dieci (1963–64), which acquires a "torpid expressivity" through the juxtaposition of the coolness of an extremely high lyrical soprano voice and the resonance of the instrumental bass register[3][page needed].