Born on 21 April 1920 in Venice, Bruno Grossato (he later adopted the surname of his mother, Caterina Maderna) took up the violin at the age of four, studying the instrument with his grandfather. While still a child, he played several instruments (violin, drums, accordion) in a variety band founded by his father, Umberto Grossato, with which he toured northern Italy, notably performing in the most well-known cafés in Venice. A child prodigy, from 1932 to 1935, under the fascist regime, he conducted several orchestral concerts in Milan, Trieste, Venice, Padua and Verona.

At age four he also became an orphan, and was adopted by Irma Manfredi, a wealthy woman from Verona who ensured that he received a rigorous and comprehensive music education. From 1935 to 1937, the young Maderna took private music theory and composition lessons with Arrigo Pedrollo. He went on to study with Alessandro Bustini at the Rome Conservatory from 1937 to 1940, obtaining a diploma in composition. He subsequently returned to Venice where he undertook an advanced degree in composition at the Benedetto-Marcello Conservatory (1940-42) under the tutelage of Gianfrancesco Malipiero, during which he composed his Piano Concerto (1941). He also studied conducting with Antonio Guarnieri at the Accademia Chigiana in Sienna (in 1941) and with Hermann Scherchen in Venice (in 1948). His contact with Scherchen proved to be decisive, for it was through him that Maderna was introduced to twelve-tone music and the repertoire of the Second Viennese School.

During the Second World War, he participated in the partisan resistance, an experience that would have a lasting effect on him. In 1946, he met Luigi Nono, with whom he founded a research and study group dedicated to both early repertoire (drawing upon the collection housed at the Marciana Library) and contemporary works. From 1948 to 1952, he taught music theory at the Venice Conservatory. During this time, he collaborated with Malipiero on the creation of a critical edition of early Italian music. A meeting with Luigi Dallapiccola had a significant influence on Maderna’s works of the late-1940s (e.g., Tre liriche greche, 1948). Starting in 1949, he began to regularly attend the Darmstadt Summer Courses (his Fantasia e Fuga (B.A.C.H. Variationen) was premiered there that year); he went on to become, along with Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen, one of the festival’s most prominent figures in the 1950s and 60s.

In 1950, Maderna also embarked upon an international career as a conductor, initially appearing in Paris and Munich, and later throughout Europe. In 1955, along with Luciano Berio, he co-founded the Milan Radio Studio di Fonologia and Incontri musicali, a series of concerts which did much to promote contemporary music in Italy. In 1957-58, following an invitation from Giorgio Federico Ghedini, he taught twelve-tone technique at the Milan Conservatory. From 1960 to 1962, he served as conductor and professor at the Darlington College Summer School of Music in Devon, Great Britain.

Despite his numerous engagements as a conductor (his programmes were notable for their syncretism, i.e., presenting early music alongside classical, romantic, modern or contemporary repertoire), Maderna remained active as a composer. Additionally, from 1961 to 1966, he and Pierre Boulez led the Darmstadt Internationales Kranichsteiner Kammerensemble. Throughout the 1960s, Maderna appeared frequently as a conductor in the Netherlands, and in 1967, became a professor at the Rotterdam Conservatory. He also taught conducting and composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg from 1967 to 1970, and in Darmstadt in 1969; notable among his students were Lucas Vis, Yves Prin and Gustav Kuhn.

Also in the 1960s, he frequently travelled to the United States, where he taught composition and conducted the Juilliard Ensemble, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1971-72, he served as director of the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, and in 1972-73, was head conductor of the RAI Milan Symphony Orchestra. In 1972, his work Ages, composed for the radio in collaboration with novelist Giorgio Pressburger, was awarded the Italia Prize. On 13 November 1973, in Darmstadt, Maderna died of cancer, just a few months after having been diagnosed, and while rehearsals for his opera, Satyricon, were still ongoing.