Renato de Grandis

Renato de Grandis (24 October 1927 – 2 December 2008) was an Italian composer, musicologist, writer and Theosophist. Biography Renato de Grandis was born in 1927 in Venice. He studied piano, conducting, composition, and musicology in Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia. Among his teachers were famous musicians Gian Francesco Malipiero and Bruno Maderna. Music In 1945, Renato, being an eighteen-year-old student, won the first prize in a composition competition organized by the Italian radio, and in 1953, he had the first national award of Italy for composition. In 1959, he settled in Darmstadt, where he lived for about twenty years, then lived in Brussels. He wrote 2 operas, 4 symphonies, 12 sonatas for piano, and other works. De Grandis was an outstanding but atypical figure in the context of avant-garde music of the late 20th century. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called him an “avant-garde outsider,” while the music encyclopedia MGG (1st edition) wrote that “he pointed the way in European musical theatre for decades.” He was considered one of the most significant European avant-garde composers. His music was being performed in Darmstadt, Dortmund, Cologne, Kiel