Liking Bruno Maderna

Cdmc, de 10h à 16h

Day study session, coordination Laurent Feneyrou
Photo credits Michel Lavoix

The creator of an abundant, eclectic output that was ever open to new languages and new forms of expression, Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) tackled all genres, oscillating between very great energy and infinite tenderness. His works combine the poetry, gaiety, humour, tenderness and nostalgia of an absolute lyricism that has resonated down from the days of Ancient Greece.
Maderna was also at one with all the trends of the second half of the twentieth century. From the early 1950s he took part in the summer courses at Darmstadt, before becoming a renowned teacher in Europe and the USA. In 1955 he founded, with Luciano Berio, the Studio de Phonologia of the RAI in Milan.
He then went on to direct the Incontri Musicali, at which major works of the post-war period were premiered. Throughout the world Maderna programmed, with rare intelligence, transcriptions and early music, classical and romantic, modern and contemporary works, preferably featuring them in the same concerts. All those who knew him recall an exceptional, attractive personality, an attentive, warm friend, one who was, in Luigi Nono’s words, “the embodiment of the most noble human generosity”.
On the occasion of the publication of two volumes entitled À Bruno Maderna, this study session, in the form of a series of dialogues, will try to draw a portrait of the artiste and his work. We shall measure its full scope, in this early part of the twenty-first century, by the yardstick of one of his maxims: “I have thought, when composing, that music already exists, that it has always existed. So too the music I write. All that is needed is an act of faith in order to feel it about oneself, within oneself”.
Laurent Feneyrou

. 10h Writings, or ‘I am against the forms that are against form’
Laurent Feneyrou and Alain Poirier

. 10h45 Creation, or about ‘a communion of humanity and logic’
Geneviève Mathon, Ivanka Stoianova and Luca Cossettini

. 11h45 Staging, or ‘putting poetry into play’
Giordano Ferrari and Jean-François Trubert

. 14h30 Phonology, or the ‘emergence of new temporal projections’
Nathalie Ruget and Vincent Tiffon

. 15h15 Conducting, or ‘50% before Mahler, 30% between Mahler and Webern, 20% thereafter’
Pierre Albert Castanet, Paul Méfano and Gianfranco Vinay

. 16h Heritage, or ‘Revolution in continuity’
Frédéric Durieux and Stefano Gervasoni

. 17h Hommage à Edgar Varèse (1965), film by Luc Ferrari, collection Les Grandes répétitions

Musical interlude
Bruno Maderna Widmung for solo violin
Nicolas Miribel, violin
String Quartet (1946)
Soloists of L'Itinéraire
Admission free, reservation 01 47 15 49 86
Co-production Cdmc - Éditions Basalte - L'Itinéraire