Bruno Maderna (1920-1973)
Italian composer and conductor, one of the greatest interpreters of contemporary music, Maderna was born in Venice. He made his conducting debut at the age of twelve, gaining fame as a child prodigy. He studied composition under the patronage of Countess E. de Polignac at the Conservatory in Rome (with A. Bustini) and in Venice (with Gian-Francesco Malipiero). He studied conducting under A. de Guranieri in Siena. Drafted into the army during the war, he fought in the Russian campaign; subsequently he joined the anti-Nazi resistance movement.
In 1948, in the wake of contact with Hermann Scherchen, he became interested in the dodecaphonic technique. From then onwards he divided his time between composition, conducting and teaching (Darmstadt, Milan, Salzburg, Tanglewood, New York).
Maderna played a crucial role in shaping the Italian avantgarde after 1945. In 1954, together with Berio, he founded the Studio de la Fonologia at rai in Milan. In 1957-58 he conducted a course in dodecaphonic technique in Milan. He developed close links with Darmstadt, attending the courses, conducting seminars and eventually settling there for good (1963). In 1970 the town granted him its honorary citizenship.
Maderna was awarded the prestigious Prix Italia three times: for music to radio plays Il mio cuore è nel Sud by G. Patroni Griffi (1950) and Ritratto di Erasmo to his own text (1970), and in 1972 for the 'radiophonic invention' Ages (text in collaboration with G. Pressburger). He died in Darmstadt.

Selected works: Studi per 'Il Processo' di Franz Kafka, stage music (1950), Improvvisazione I and II for orchestra (1951, 1953), Sequenze e strutture for tape (1954), Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (1954), Notturno for tape (1955), String Quartet (1955), Syntaxis for tape (1957), Serenata II for 11 instruments (1957), Continuo for tape (1958), Piano Concerto (1959), Dimensioni II for voice and electronic sounds; phonemes by H. G. Helms (1960), Don Perlimplin, radio opera after F. Garcia Lorca (1961), Serenata III for tape (1962), Le rire for tape (1964), Hyperion, 'poetry in the form of spectacle', text by F. Hšlderlin, phonems by H. G. Helms (1964), Stelle per Diotima for orchestra (1965), Aulodia per Lothar for oboe d'amore and guitar ad lib. (1965), Widmung for solo violin (1967), Violin Concerto (1969), Serenata per un satellite for eight performers (1969), Pièce pour Ivry for solo violin (1971), Viola for viola (1971), Tempo libero I for tape (1971), Solo for musette, oboe, oboe d'amore and English horn, for one performer (1971), Ausstrahlung for female voice, flute and solo oboe, orchestra and tape (1971), Venetian Journal after J. Boswell for tenor, 22 instruments and tape (1972), Aura for orchestra (1972), Dialodia for two flutes or two oboes (1972), Biogramma for orchestra (1972), three concertos for oboe and orchestra (1962, 1967, 1973), Grande aulodia for flute, oboe and orchestra (1970), Satyricon, opera, libretto after Petronius (1973).

Widmung. Widmung means 'dedication' in German. The composer, however, never revealed to whom the piece was dedicated. Two years after completion, Widmung was incorporated into the Violin Concerto as its second violin cadenza. Incidentally, the Concerto has no dedication either.
Widmung is a game of allusions and cryptograms. The game consists in hiding the tone row by interpolating at the very beginning of the piece two obviously tonal melodic fragments. The music is full of ambiguity and the meaning of every gesture lies only in what it alludes to.
Maderna strives to recover the real sense contained in these useless gestures and to reawaken it from the structure which expresses it. In this way, he constructed the musical discourse based on quotations and allusions, trying to say something, which is never really disclosed any more than he ever disclosed the subject of the 'dedication'.
The music itself becomes the cryptogram of its own history in the same way as each building stone of Venice is pregnant with the memories is bears. Drop by drop, the gesture distils the memory of what can no longer be evoked. It recalls just exactly what it has declared itself no longer capable of recalling. It is interesting to note that Widmung is the title of the first lied in Schumann's song cycle Myrten.
(based on notes by Dino Villatico)