The title is actually taken from the Italian edition of a poem, "If We Die", by Ethel Rosenberg who, together with her husband Julius, was tried and convicted in the United States of espionage and of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.

[4] Il canto sospeso is set for solo soprano, alto, and tenor voices, mixed choir, and an orchestra consisting of: Woodwinds: Brass: Percussion: 3 timpani 2 harps celesta Strings:

[7] For its pitch material, Il canto sospeso employs an all-interval twelve-tone row sometimes called the "wedge" series because of its presentation of all the intervals within the octave in expanding order.

[12] Although the premiere under Hermann Scherchen's baton in Cologne on 24 October 1956 was a success, the direct reference to Nazi crimes was bound to be controversial at a time when such things were not generally spoken of in Germany.

6 and 10 orchestral pieces and Arnold Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden), declared that Il canto sospeso "probably left the most significant impression to date of any concert work of the young generation of composers today.

[13] The choice of texts, however, provoked protracted dissension over the appropriateness of Nono's compositional means to its political content, particularly in the context of Theodor Adorno's recently published "Das Altern der neuen Musik", which associated integral serialism with totalitarian regimes, and his famous phrase, "to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric".