RADIO LIVE (30’)
Bruno Maderna
Hyperion, 1964
The particular nature of Hyperion can be detected from the printed score: it is a composition by Bruno Maderna, but in the “version by Péter Eötvös”. To use a term common today, Hyperion is a work in progress, an “open work”. Hyperion was first staged at the Teatro La Fenice in 1964, but Maderna continued to revise it, adding new sections and rearranging the order of its constituent parts. The lecture considers the “open” and aleatory conception of the work and examines in detail certain specific aspects of Maderna’s musical language, with a particular focus on the composer’s use of the orchestra, melodic flavour, and vocal writing.