Stelvio Cipriani

Stelvio Cipriani was a prolific Italian composer who wrote scores for around 240 feature films, documentaries, television shows and shorts over a career that lasted from the 1960s to his death, aged 81, on 1st October 2018. His most famous music was the romantic score for Enrico Maria Salerno's 1970 drama 'The Anonymous Venetian' starring Tony Musante as a dying Venetian oboe player.

Born in Rome in 1937, he played the organ as a young man and studied at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory. He worked on cruise ships and spent some time learning from jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. His first film credit was a spaghetti western titled 'The Ugly Ones' in 1966 and he went on to write the music for dozens of dramas, war films, romances, adventures and many more spaghetti westerns. He used his theme for the 1973 crime drama 'The Great Kidnapping' again in a bizarre 1977 film titled 'Tentacles' about a mutated giant octopus starring John Huston and Shelley Winters, and Quentin Tarentino used it on the soundtrack of his 2007 thriller 'Death Proof'. His last movie score was for Salvatore Arimatea's 'Ballando il Silenzio' in 2015.