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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