The quadrivium (rarely: quadrivia^[1]) comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in the Renaissance Period, after teaching the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" (or a "place where four roads meet"),^[2] and its use for the 4 subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century.^[3][4] Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts (based on thinking skills),^[5] as opposed to the practical arts (such as medicine and architecture).

The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy (sometimes called the "liberal art par excellence") and theology. The word "trivia" has been rarely used to refer to the trivium.^[1]

Origins[link]

These four studies compose the secondary part of the curriculum outlined by Plato in The Republic, and are described in the seventh book of that work.^[5] The quadrivium is implicit in early Pythagorean writings and in the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella, although the term "quadrivium" was not used until Boethius early in the sixth century.^[6] As Proclus wrote:

The Pythagoreans considered all mathematical science to be divided into four parts: one half they marked off as concerned with quantity, the other half with magnitude; and each of these they posited as twofold. A quantity can be considered in regard to its character by itself or in its relation to another quantity, magnitudes as either stationary or in motion. Arithmetic, then, studies quantities as such, music the relations between quantities, geometry magnitude at rest, spherics [astronomy] magnitude inherently moving.^[7]

Medieval usage[link]

At many medieval universities, this would have been the course leading to the degree of Master of Arts (after the BA). After the MA, the student could enter for Bachelor's degrees of the higher faculties (Theology, Medicine or Law). To this day, some of the postgraduate degree courses lead to the degree of Bachelor (the B.Phil and B.Litt. degrees are examples in the field of philosophy, and the B.Mus. remains a postgraduate qualification at Oxford and Cambridge universities).

The study was eidetic, approaching the philosophical objectives sought by considering it from each aspect of the quadrivium within the general structure demonstrated by Proclus, namely arithmetic and music on the one hand,^[8] and geometry and cosmology on the other.^[9]

The subject of music within the quadrivium was originally the classical subject of harmonics, in particular the study of the proportions between the music intervals created by the division of a monochord. A relationship to music as actually practised was not part of this study, but the framework of classical harmonics would substantially influence the content and structure of music theory as practised both in European and Islamic cultures.

Modern usage[link]

In modern applications of the liberal arts as curriculum in colleges or universities, the quadrivium may be considered as the study of number and its relationship to physical space or time: arithmetic was pure number, geometry was number in space, music number in time, and astronomy number in space and time. Morris Kline classifies the four elements of the quadrivium as pure (arithmetic), stationary (geometry), moving (astronomy) and applied (music) number.^[10]

This schema is sometimes referred to as "classical education" but it is more accurately a development of the 12th and 13th centuries with recovered classical elements, rather than an organic growth from the educational systems of antiquity. The term continues to be used by the classical education movement.

See also[link]

Look up quadrivium in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Andreas Capellanus
• Classical education movement
• Degrees of the University of Oxford
• Trivium
• Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)

Bruno Maderna (21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian conductor and composer. For the last ten years of his life he lived in Germany and eventually became a citizen of that country.

Biography[link]

Maderna was born in Venice. At the age of four he was taught violin in Chioggia, and his grandfather recognized the child's brilliance. So began his career as a child prodigy. He was known in Italy and abroad as "Brunetto" (Italian for Little Bruno).^[1]

He continued his studies in Milan (1935), Venice (1939) and in Rome (1940), where he finally took his degree in composition and musicology at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. At Rome he was instructed by Alessandro Bustini, but he also took a course of instruction from Antonio Guarnieri in Siena in 1941, and he then studied composition with Gian Francesco Malipiero in Venice in 1942-43.^[2]

During World War II he was drafted into the army, but soon after he voluntarily joined the antifascist Partisan Resistance. ^[3] After the War, 1947-1950, he taught composition at the Venice Conservatory at the invitation of Malipiero. In those years he taught a large class which included Luigi Nono, who had previously studied law.^[4]

In 1948 (through Malipiero^[5]) he met Hermann Scherchen, and Maderna and Luigi Nono both attended a course of instruction with him at Venice.^[6] Scherchen set Maderna's direction towards dodecaphonic method.^[7] He was invited to conduct at the (1951) Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, where he took a founding initiative in the Internationales Kranichsteiner Kammer-Ensemble, a chamber-group which was newly re-convened every year as an ad-hoc-Ensemble.^[8] Here he met (among others) Boulez, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Cage, Pousseur and the most important performers of the neue Musik, who inspired him to compose new pieces.

Maderna was a versatile conductor, capable of switching between different musical styles. He directed Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Wagner's Parsifal, many works by Debussy and Ravel, classical and romantic symphonies. Together with Luciano Berio, he founded the Studio di Fonologia Musicale of the RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) in 1954^[9]: they also organized the Incontri Musicali ('Musical Encounters') music review^[10] and concert series.^{[citation needed]}

In 1957-58 he taught dodecaphonic technique at the Milan Conservatory: in this period he also taught composition seminars at the Dartington International Summer School. From 1967 to 1970 he taught conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum and also at the Rotterdam Conservatory. In 1963 he relocated to Darmstadt in the then West Germany and afterward became a German citizen.^[11][12]

He died in 1973 at Darmstadt, when he was about to rehearse Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.^{[citation needed]}, and during rehearsals for his own opera, Satyricon.^[13] Pierre Boulez wrote his Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna the following year and Luciano Berio wrote "Calmo" for voice and orchestra in homage to his friend. His notable students include Norma Beecroft and Rocco Di Pietro.

Works[link]

Among the early works is the Concerto per due pianoforti e strumenti (1947–48), influenced by the music of Bartók, which has a special approach towards difficult sonorities. In 1948 he composed his first serial work, the Liriche greche.^[14] The Quartetto per archi in due tempi (of 1955) is an even more intensively serial piece.^[15]

The flautist Severino Gazzelloni inspired Maderna during the Darmstadt experience. In 1961 he composed Honeyreves for flute and piano: this piece was built on complex flute melodies and on unusual piano sound effects (clusters, playing on the strings, etc.). In the Studio di Fonologia Musicale, with the help of sound technician Marino Zuccheri, he wrote some electroacoustic works: Musica su due dimensioni (Music in two dimensions, 1952, rev. 1957 and 1963) for flute and magnetic tape, Notturno (1956) and Continuo (1958) both for magnetic tape.

In 1962-63 Maderna wrote his First Oboe Concerto (Concerto for Oboe and Chamber Ensemble). In 1967 he wrote his Second Oboe Concerto, and in 1973 his Third.

One of his works is Quadrivium for four percussionists and four orchestral groups (played for the first time at the Royan Festival in 1969). A recording of this work, coupled with the composer's Aura and Biogramma, was made by the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra under Giuseppe Sinopoli in 1979 and issued by Deutsche Grammophon.^[16] Among various other compositions are an electro-acoustic divertimento Le Rire (1964), a "work in progress" called Hyperion, and an opera Satyricon.

Maderna was versatile: he also produced scores for five Italian movies released between 1946 and 1968.

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Anon. 2011. "Bruno Maderna." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online (Accessed 22 November 2011).
• Baroni, Mario (2003). "The Macroform in Post-tonal Music: Listening and Analysis". Musicæ Scientiæ: The Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music 7, no. 2 (Fall): 219–40.
• Clark, Philip (2011). "Thoroughly Modern Maderna". Gramophone (January): 44–45.
• Dalmonte, Rossana (2001). "Maderna [Grossato], Bruno [Brunetto]". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Dalmonte, Rossana, and Mario Baroni (1985). "Bruno Maderna, Documenti". Milan: Edizioni Suvini Zerboni.
• Dalmonte, Rossana, and Mario Baroni (1989). Studi su Bruno Maderna. Milan: Edizioni Suvini Zerboni.
• Dalmonte, Rossana, and Marco Russo (2004). Bruno Maderna Studi e Testimonianze. Lucca: LIM.
• Drees, Stefan (2003). "Renaissance-Musik als Inspirationsquelle für das Komponieren Bruno Madernas und Luigi Nonos". In The Past in the Present: Papers Read at the IMS Intercongressional Symposium and the 10th Meeting of the Cantus Planus, Budapest & Visegrád, 2000, 2 vols., edited by László Dobszay, 1: 545-558. Budapest: Liszt Ferenc Zeneművészeti Egyetem. ISBN 963-7181-34-2
• Fabbi, Roberto (2002). "Cena sociale. Satyricon e il 'politico'". Musica/Realtà, no. 67.
• Fearn, Raymond (1990). "Bruno Maderna". [Chur]: Harwood Academic Publishers.
• Fearn, Raymond (2003). "'Luft von anderem Planeten...': The presence of the Epitaph of Seikilos in Bruno Maderna's Composizione no. 2 (1950)". In The Past in the Present: Papers Read at the IMS Intercongressional Symposium and the 10th Meeting of the Cantus Planus, Budapest & Visegrád, 2000, 2 vols., edited by László Dobszay, 1:559–68. Budapest: Liszt Ferenc Zeneművészeti Egyetem. ISBN 963-7181-34-2
• Gagné, Nicole V. (2012). Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music. Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6765-9 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-8108-7962-1 (ebook).
• Ircam-Centre Pompidou (2011). "Bruno Maderna". Ressources.ircam (Accessed 22 November 2011).
• Luzio, Claudia di (2006). "Traumnahe Welten—weltnahe Träume: Zum Verhältnis von Traum und Wirklichkeit im Musiktheater von Luciano Berio und Bruno Maderna". In Traum und Wirklichkeit in Theater und Musiktheater: Vorträge und Gespräche des Salzburger Symposions 2004, edited by Peter Csobádi, Gernot Gruber, and Jürgen Kühnel, 342-356. Wort und Musik: Salzburger akademische Beiträge 62. Salzburg: Mueller-Speiser. ISBN 3-85145-099-X
• Mathon, Geneviève (2003). "À propos du Satyricon de Bruno Moderna". In Musique et dramaturgie: Esthétique de la représentation au XXème siècle, edited by Laurent Feneyrou, 571–93. Esthétique 7. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. ISBN 2-85944-472-6
• Mila, Massimo (1999). Maderna musicista europeo, nuova edizione. Piccola biblioteca Einaudi, nuova serie 17. Turin: Einaudi Editore. ISBN 88-06-15059-6
• Neidhofer, Christoph (2005a). "'Blues' through the Serial Lens: Transformational Process in a Fragment by Bruno Maderna". Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, no. 18 (March): 14–20.
• Neidhofer, Christoph (2005b). "Bruno Madernas flexibler Materialbegriff: Eine Analyse des Divertimento in due tempi (1953)". Musik & Ästhetik 9, no. 33 (January): 30-47.
• Neidhofer, Christoph (2007). "Bruno Maderna's Serial Arrays". Music Theory Online 13, no. 1 (March).
• Poel, Piet Hein van de (2003). "Bruno Maderna sur le Satyricon: Pop art en musique". In Musique et dramaturgie: Esthétique de la représentation au XXème siècle, edited by Laurent Feneyrou, 599–601. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne.
• Sitsky, Larry (Ed.) (2002). Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biographical Sourcebook. Westport Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press.
• Suvini-Hand, Vivienne (2006). "Bruno Maderna's Ausstrahlung". In Sweet Thunder: Music and Libretti in 1960s Italy. Legenda Italian Perspectives 16, 151–78. London: Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing. ISBN 1-904350-60-7, ISBN 978-1-904350-60-6 (See extracts at [1])
• Verzina, Nicola (2003). Bruno Maderna: Etude historique et critique. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 2-7475-4409-5
• Zender, Hans, with Roland Diry and Suzanne Laurentius (2007). "Neue Musik erwartet Selbstandigkeit". Ensemble Modern Newsletter no. 24 (January):^{[page needed]}.

External links[link]

• Madeleine Shapiro's Modernworks website, short biography
• Biography from the Bach-cantatas website
• Ircam Biography of Luigi Nono
• Notes on Bruno Maderna from the Avant Garde Project webpage, derived from various record sleevenotes
• Naxos biography of Maderna
• Liking Bruno Madera

Eric Lau is a British music producer and DJ from London, England. His production style is characterized by heavy drums, often unrecognisable samples and a mixture of live and sequenced instrumentation.

He first gained exposure with the song "Im Fine" featuring Rahel on Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Bubblers (Part 4),^[1] this release marked the resurgence of the stripped back soul style and was followed swiftly by his debut EP for Fat City Records.

He released his debut album "New Territories" in 2008 on Ubiquity Records to critical acclaim. Straight No Chaser wrote "New Territories represents the arrival of a talented artist and perceptive one-man production house."^[2]

After a two year absence Lau returned in 2010 with a new EP titled "Kilawatt: V2", as the second instalment of the producer series released by Kilawatt. The release was received positively by both critics and fans.

On 27 September 2010, Lau released a 20-track instrumental LP entitled "Makin' Sound".

In February 2011 Lau followed up "Makin' Sound" with "Quadrivium", another 20-track instrumental project, featuring music inspired by the John Martineau book of the same name.

In November 2011 Lau released "The Mission - Single" with Detroit rapper Guilty Simpson and Georgia Anne Muldrow contributing a remix.

On February 3, 2012 Lau released the much anticipated "The Mission - EP", featuring vocals from rapper Guilty Simpson, Fatima and Olivier Daysoul. The vinyl edition of the release also featured contributions from drummer Chris "Daddy" Dave, and producer Damu The Fudgemunk.

Discography[link]

• Brownswood Bubblers (Part 4) (2006)
• Presents Dudley And Friends (2006)
• Producer No. 1 (2007)
• New Territories (2008)
• Kilawatt V2 (2010)
• Eric Lau & Friends - See & Under Standing (Reprise) (2010)
• Makin' Sound (2010)
• Quadrivium (2011)
• The Mission - Single (2011)
• The Mission - EP (2012)
• What I'd Rather - Single (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Kilawatt Music's Web Site
• Ubiquity Records Web Site

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