Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) was an Italian composer and conductor: he played an unequalled part in the early postwar development of Italian music, presiding, as teacher and conductor, over the early careers of Nono, Berio, Donatoni, Aldo Clementi and others. In his conducting career he specializad in the performance of new music, and it eventually led him to regard West Germany as his second country and to settle in Darmstadt, which he first visited in 1951.
He taught conducting, composition and analysis at the Darmstadt summer courses, at the Milan Conservatory and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 1972 he won an Italian Prize and in 1974 he was posthumously awarded the Beethoven Prize of the city of Bonn.