"[3] As a child he played several instruments (violin, drums and accordion) in his father's small variety band.

A child prodigy, in the early thirties he was not only performing violin concertos, he was already conducting orchestral concerts: first with the orchestra of La Scala in Milan, then in Trieste, Venice, Padua and Verona.

[4] Orphaned at the age of four,[5] Maderna was adopted by a wealthy woman from Verona, Irma Manfredi, who saw to that he received a solid musical education.

[5] After Rome he returned to Venice, where he attended the advanced course for composers (1940–42) organised by Gian Francesco Malipiero at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory (his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra dates from this time).

He also studied conducting with Antonio Guarnieri at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena (1941) and Hermann Scherchen in Venice (1948).

Fellow composers he met at this time included Luigi Dallapiccola and, at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Boulez, Messiaen, Cage, Pousseur, Nono and Stockhausen.

[1] In 1957–58, at the invitation of Giorgio Federico Ghedini, he taught at the Milan Conservatory, and between 1960 and 1962 he lectured at Dartington International Summer School in England.

His work Musica su due dimensioni for flute, cymbals, and tape, which premiered at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in 1952, is one of the earliest examples of a composer combining acoustic and electronic sounds.