Bruno Maderna

An amazing CD that compiles most of the Maderna electronic music production on magnetic tape from 1956 to 1962, all tapes created at the Studio di Fonologia Musicale della RAI Radio televisione Italiana in Milan. Bruno Maderna is yet regarded as one of the giants of post-war modernism, becoming one of the first Italians to produce electronic works. But it was not in technical progress that he saw music's future. Like his contemporaries, he also adopted 12-tone writing in the 1950s, yet Maderna remained an undogmatic and independent composer to the end of his life - and these are some of the best electronic music pieces ever produced. One of the CD's highlight is Musica su due dimensioni (Music in Two Dimensions) for flute, cymbals, and electronic sounds on tape, the first piece to use flute as an acoustic instrument along with electronics. The electronic part was recorded in a single day in Bonn, Germany, with the collaboration of Werner Meyer-Eppler. Maderna was not satisfied with the tape part, which had been produced by superimposing several lines played on a Melochord (a monophonic electronic keyboard instrument, invented in 1947 by Harald Bode), and he revised this part in 1958.