Stelvio Cipriani (Rome, 20 August 1937 – Rome, 1 October 2018) was an Italian musician and composer.
Author of film soundtracks, from an early age he was initiated into the study of music. He has composed the music for over 300 films including “Anonimo veneziano” who gave him world fame by selling 14 million records he has worked, among others, with James Cameron, Steno, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Dino Risi and even Quentin Tarantino has chosen Cipriani’s music as a soundtrack for his movie “Grindhouse: death proof”.
After graduating in piano and composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, he earned a living playing on cruise ships and as an accompanist for pop music singers such as Rita Pavone, Tony Renis and Peppino Di Capri. For a short time in the United States he too found the opportunity to study with Dave Brubeck.
Returning to Italy, he began composing soundtracks with The Bounty Killer and other minor production films, including the western A man, a horse, a gun whose theme Henry Mancini made an arrangement in 1968 (A Man, a Horse and a Gun) which achieved good record success. In 1970 the music for Anonimo Veneziano gave him considerable popularity, making him also win the Silver Ribbon. He then devoted himself to the most diverse film genres, especially drama, thriller and horror. From 1972, with The police thanks, he became one of the main authors of soundtracks of the detective vein, with well-known actors such as Tomas Milian, Franco Gasparri and Maurizio Merli. He also composed music for some television dramas, such as Where’s Anna? which was an incredible success with the public, and for films of American production such as Tentacles and Piraña fear, the first film by James Cameron. In the eighties he obtained other good acclaim with the soundtracks for A poor rich, Electric Blue and Don Bosco. At the beginning of the nineties, with the arrival of the Venezuelan telenovelas broadcast by Rete 4 which had a very high number of plays, he edited the music of the Italian edition of 13 works, including Topazio, Manuela and Milagros.
It was Maestro Stelvio Cipriani, with Federico Fellini, who created the word “filmic” applied to music, understood as OST Film Scores, referring to how some soundtracks immediately inspire clear cinematic images in the editing and editing phase.
In 2007 he was among the guests of the Night of the Angels, dedicated to the mystic Natuzza Evolo, broadcast by Rai International on April 9th.
In 2016 he took part in the filming of the episodic docufilm Diario Di Bordo, Inside The Outsider by the international artist Veronica Vitale. Furthermore, Stelvio Cipriani is among the main production counselors of the independent recording project “Inside The Outsider” produced by Veronica Vitale in Cincinnati together with Joe Jackson and Bootsy Collins.
Struck by ischemia on 23 December 2017, he died in a nursing home in Rome on 1 October 2018 at the age of 81 [4]. He is buried in the Verano Cemetery in Rome.
