Bruno Maderna

Bruno Maderna (born Bruno Grossato, 21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian composer, conductor and academic teacher.

Maderna was born Bruno Grossato in Venice but later decided to take the name of his mother, Caterina Carolina Maderna.^{[failed verification]} At the age of four, he began studying the violin with his grandfather. "My grandfather thought that if you could play the violin you could then do anything, even become the biggest gangster. If you play the violin you are always sure of a place in heaven." As a child, he played several instruments (violin, drums and accordion) in his father's small variety band. A child prodigy, in the early thirties, he was not only performing violin concertos, he was already conducting orchestral concerts: first with the orchestra of La Scala in Milan, then in Trieste, Venice, Padua and Verona. He was originally Jewish.

Orphaned at the age of four, Maderna was adopted by a wealthy woman from Verona, Irma Manfredi, who saw to it that he received a solid musical education. He took private lessons in harmony and musical composition from Arrigo Pedrollo from 1935 until 1937 and studied composition with Alessandro Bustini at the Rome Conservatory from 1937 until 1940.

After Rome, he returned to Venice, where he attended the advanced course for composers (1940–42) organised by Gian Francesco Malipiero at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory (his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra dates from this time). He also studied conducting with Antonio Guarnieri at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena (1941) and Hermann Scherchen in Venice (1948). Through Scherchen Maderna discovered twelve-tone technique and the music of the Second Viennese School.

During the Second World War, he took part in the partisan resistance. From 1948 to 1952, he taught music theory at the Venice Conservatory. During this period, he collaborated with Malipiero on critical editions of Italian early music. Fellow composers he met at this time included Luigi Dallapiccola and, at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Boulez, Messiaen, Cage, Pousseur, Nono and Stockhausen.

In 1950, Maderna started an international career as a conductor, first in Paris and Munich, then across Europe. In 1955, he founded the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano with Luciano Berio and Incontri musicali, a series of concerts disseminating contemporary music in Italy.

With his later wife Beate Christina Koepnick, a young actress from Darmstadt, Maderna had three children.

In 1957–58, at the invitation of Giorgio Federico Ghedini, he taught at the Milan Conservatory, and between 1960 and 1962 he lectured at Dartington International Summer School in England. From 1961 to 1966, Maderna and Pierre Boulez were the main directors of the International Kranichsteiner Kammerensemble in Darmstadt. Despite this heavy workload throughout these years Maderna found time to compose.