(b Venice, 21 April 1920; d Darmstadt, 13 Nov 1973). Italian composer. As a boy he appeared in Italy and abroad as a violinist and conductor; he then studied at the conservatories of Rome and Venice, and with Scherchen, who in 1948 guided him towards 12-note serialism. In 1951 he visited Darmstadt, where he taught and conducted from 1954, and where he settled. He was internationally admired as an orchestral conductor, notably in contemporary music. He played an unequalled part in the early postwar development of Italian music. His earlier works are Schoenbergian, but in the mid-1950s, like Berio with whom he was closely associated, he developed a relaxed Italian accent within the avant-garde language: in 1954 the two founded an electronic music studio in Milan, and there he produced several tape compositions (Continuo, 1958). His other works include the theatrical project Hyperion (1964), the opera Satyricon (1973), solo instrumental pieces and much for orchestra (three oboe concertos, 1962, 1967, 1973; Quadrivium with percussion quartet,1969).
Maderna, Bruno (brū'nō mädĕr'nä), 1920-73, Italian composer and conductor, b. Venice. Maderna studied composing with Gian Francesco Malipiero and conducting with Hermann Scherchen. As a conductor he introduced many avant-garde works to Italy. Maderna's music at times employed serialism and aleatoricism, while always sharing a warmth and expressiveness. He collaborated with Luciano Berio in electronic music at the Milan Radio. Among his works are three instrumental serenades (1946, 1954, 1969), three oboe concertos (1962, 1967, 1973), and the Juilliard Serenade for chamber orchestra and tape (1971).
Italian composer and conductor Bruno Maderna was one of the preeminent figures in contemporary European music in the mid-twentieth century. Born in Venice, Maderna was a child prodigy who played hot violin in a local combo and made his conducting debut at La Scala at age 12. By 1935 the course of Maderna's career was redirected by Italian fascists, who sent the talented child out to tour the capitals of Europe as a symbol of the superiority of the fascist order. Maderna was rescued from this depressing situation by prominent Veronese fashion designer Irma Manfredi, who took the now-adolescent professional musician under her wing and provided for his education.
By the age of 20 Bruno Maderna had already earned his degree in composition from the Conservatory of Rome and returned to Venice to continue under composer Gian Francesco Malipiero. Under Malipiero, Maderna began to master the complexities of serial composition, but this was interrupted by his conscription into the fascist army. By 1943 Maderna had deserted, and in 1945 he turned up fighting on the side of the partisans. At war's end, Malipiero helped get Maderna a teaching job at the Venice Conservatory. He supplemented his income by making transcriptions of Baroque music for the publisher G. Ricordi, composing pop tunes and creating scores for radio drama and some rather undistinguished Italian films.
In 1948 Maderna took a conducting class with legendary maestro Hermann Scherchen and through him probably got to know Wolfgang Steinecke, the founder of the Darmstadt Festival. Maderna had already met composer Luigi Nono at Ricordi, and would meet Luciano Berio in Milan after leaving the Venice Conservatory in 1952. Steinecke engaged Maderna as a conductor at the Darmstadt Festival, a post that made Maderna a celebrity in postwar European avant-garde and one that he would hold until the end of his days. With Berio, Maderna co-founded the Studio Fonologia Musicale of the RAI in 1955, a major electronic music facility that hosted composers such as John Cage, Francesco Donatoni, Henri Pousseur, Niccolò Castiglioni, Luc Ferrari, and others.
As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, Bruno Maderna's work as a composer began to take a backseat to his activity as a conductor. He was named principal guest conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, appeared frequently with the Juilliard Ensemble, and was musical director for two years at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood. He also spent a great deal of time in the recording studio and produced many fine albums of contemporary music, although in concert Maderna was equally well known for conducting the symphonies of Mahler and other well-worn repertoire of the Viennese classics. Perhaps this had some effect on Maderna's personality as a composer, as well, for by the end of his life he'd turned his back on the serial aesthetic espoused by the Darmstadt Festival and his colleague Pierre Boulez. This phase of Maderna's career is experienced in his opera Satyricon (1973), the orchestral piece Quadrivium (1969), and in his never-finished series of pieces blanketed under the title Hyperion (1964-1973), unofficially an opera but officially a "lyric (drama) in the form of a spectacle."
When the end came for Maderna at age 53, it did so swiftly -- he was diagnosed with lung cancer during the rehearsals for Satyricon, which premiered in March 1973, and was dead by that November. His celebrity in America was so short-lived that by 2004 Maderna's name was largely forgotten there, but not so in Europe, where he is yet regarded as one of the giants of postwar modernism. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide
Maderna was born in Venice. At the age of four he was taught violin in Chioggia, and his grandfather recognized the child's brilliance.[2] So began his career as a child prodigy. He was known in Italy and abroad as "Brunetto" (Italian for Little Bruno).[3]
He continued his studies in Milan (1935), Venice (1939) and in Rome (1940), where he finally took his degree in composition and musicology at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. At Rome he was instructed by Alessandro Bustini, but he also took a course of instruction from Antonio Guarnieri in Siena in 1941, and he then studied composition with Gian Francesco Malipiero in Venice in 1942-43.[4]
During World War II he joined the army, the Partisan Resistance.[5] After the War, 1947-1950, he taught composition at the Venice Conservatory at the invitation of Malipiero. In those years he taught a large class which included Luigi Nono, who had previously studied law.[6]
In 1948 (through Malipiero[7]) he met Hermann Scherchen, and Maderna and Luigi Nono both attended a course of instruction with him at Venice.[8] Scherchen set Maderna's direction towards dodecaphonic method.[9] He was invited to conduct at the (1951) Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, where he took a founding initiative in the Internationales Kranichsteiner Kammer-Ensemble, a chamber-group which was newly re-convened every year as an ad-hoc-Ensemble.[10] Here he met (among others) Boulez, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Cage, Pousseur and the most important performers of the neue Musik, who inspired him to compose new pieces.
Maderna was a versatile director, capable of switching between different musical styles. He directed Purcell'sDido and Aeneas, Wagner's Parsifal, many works by Debussy and Ravel, classical and romantic symphonies. Together with Luciano Berio, he founded the Studio di Fonologia Musicale of the RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) in 1955[11]: they also organized the Incontri Musicali ('Musical Encounters') music review and concert series.[12]
In 1957-58 he taught dodecaphonic technique at the Milan Conservatory: in this period he also taught composition seminars at the Dartington's Summer School of Music (UK). From 1967 to 1970 he taught conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum and also at the Rotterdam Conservatory. He become established at Darmstadt in 1963.[13]
Among the early works is the Concerto per due pianoforti e strumenti (1947-1948), influenced by the music of Bartók, which has a special approach towards difficult sonorities. In 1948 he composed his first serial work, the Liriche greche.[14] The Quartetto per archi in due tempi (of 1955) is an even more intensively serial piece.[15]
The flautist Severino Gazzelloni inspired Maderna during the Darmstadt experience. In 1961 he composed Honeyreves for flute and piano: this piece was built on complex flute melodies and on unusual piano sound effects (clusters, playing on the strings, etc.). In the Studio di Fonologia Musicale, with the help of sound technician Marino Zuccheri, he wrote some electroacoustic works: Musica su due dimensioni (Music on two dimensions, 1958) for flute and magnetic tape, Notturno (1956) and Continuo (1958) both for magnetic tape.
In 1962-63 Maderna wrote his First Oboe Concerto (Concerto for Oboe and Chamber Ensemble). In 1967 he wrote his Second Oboe Concerto, and in 1973 his Third.
One of his works is Quadrivium for four percussionists and four orchestral groups (played for the first time at the Royan Festival in 1969). A recording of this work, coupled with the composer's Aura and Biogramma, was made by the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra under Giuseppe Sinopoli in 1979 and issued by Deutsche Grammophon.[16] Among various other compositions are an electro-acoustic divertimento Le Rire (1964), a "work in progress" called Hyperion, and an opera Satyricon.
Maderna was versatile: he also produced scores for five Italian movies released between 1946 and 1968.
^ Ircam Biographie of Luigi Nono (external links).
^Britannica Online Encyclopedia, see [1]: Sitsky 2002, at p. 329: Ircam Biographie of Maderna (external links).
^Hans Zender, in Interview with Roland Diry and Suzanne Laurentius, 'Neue Musik erwartet Selbstandigkeit,' Ensemble Modern Newsletter no. 24 (01/2007), see external link.
^ Ircam Biographie (external link), according to which it was in 1954.
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Luzio, Claudia di (2006). "Traumnahe Welten—weltnahe Träume: Zum Verhältnis von Traum und Wirklichkeit im Musiktheater von Luciano Berio und Bruno Maderna". In Traum und Wirklichkeit in Theater und Musiktheater: Vorträge und Gespräche des Salzburger Symposions 2004, edited by Peter Csobádi, Gernot Gruber, and Jürgen Kühnel, 342-356. Wort und Musik: Salzburger akademische Beiträge 62. Salzburg: Mueller-Speiser. ISBN 3-85145-099-X
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