Monday, August 20, 2012

Happy 75th Birthday Stelvio Cipriani


Stelvio Cipriani was born on August 20 1937 in Rome, Italy. Though not coming from a musical background, as a child Cipriani was fascinated by his church's organ. His priest gave him his first music lessons and encouraged Cipriani and his family. Cipriani passed his examinations and studied at Santa Cecilia Conservatory from the age of 14, then played on cruise ship bands, that enabled him to meet composer, musician Dave Brubeck. Upon returning to Italy he became Rita Pavone’s piano accompanist.

His first soundtrack was for the spaghetti western “El Precio de un Hombre” (“The Bounty Killer”) (1966) followed by the well-known score for “Un Uomo, uno caballo, una pistol” (The Stranger Returns) (1967) starring Tony Anthony, and later composed other spaghetti western scores for Anthony. In all Stelvio has composed the scores for 14 Euro-westerns.

Cipriani became prolific in the Italian film world and was awarded a Nastro d'Argento Best Score for  the film “The Anonymous Venetian” (1970). One of Cipriani's most famous scores is from "La Polizia Sta a Guardare" (1973). The main theme was recycled by Cipriani for the score for “Tentacoli” (1977) and was brought to the public's attention again in 2007 when it was featured in Quentin Tarantino's “Death Proof” (2007). Cipriani's scores for the films of the "La Polizia..." series were different arrangements over the same theme. Some of those themes were used in the soundtrack of the couple Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani's first feature Amer.

Today we celebrate Stelvio Cipriani’s 75th birthday.

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