Piccioni, Piero

(1921-2004)

   Jazz musician, orchestra director, film composer. Piccioni was launched on a musical career in his teens when he was hired as a solo pianist to play live on a weekly program on national Italian radio. Profoundly influenced by the music of Duke Ellington, he soon formed his own jazz orchestra which, as the "013" Big Band, was the first orchestra to play live on Italian radio after the announcement of the fall of Fascism. At the end of the 1940s he lived for a period in the United States, where he met and played with jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker and Max Roach. Back in Italy he worked briefly as a lawyer before beginning to compose music for films in the early 1950s, originally under the stage name of Piero Morgan. His first feature film score was for Gianni Franciolini's Il mondo le condanna (The World Condemns Them, 1952), which was soon followed by music for Alberto Lattuada's La spiaggia (The Beach, 1953). After scoring, among others, Dino Risi's two popular teen comedies, Poveri ma belli (Poor, but Handsome, 1956) and Belle ma povere (Pretty but Poor, 1957), he began to use his own name while working on Francesco Rosi's Imagliari (The Magliari, 1959). He subsequently scored all of Rosi's films, winning the Nastro d'argento for the stark and unnerving sound design of Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962).

   For the next 25 years, Piccioni worked extensively in both commercial and auteur cinema, moving easily between sword-and-sandal epics such as Il figlio di Spartaco (The Son of Spartacus, 1963) and auteur films such as Luchino Visconti's Lo straniero (The Stranger, 1967). He formed an especially close professional relationship with Alberto Sordi and scored practically all the films that Sordi appeared in or directed, from the early Fumo di Londra (Smoke Over London, 1966) to Sordi's final film, Incontri proibiti (Forbidden Encounters, 1998). In the 1970s, beginning with Mimi metallurgico ferito nell'onore (The Seduction of Mimi, 1972), he also frequently worked with Lina Wertmuller and received the David di Donatello for his score of Wertmiiller's Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto (SweptAway, 1975). Having composed music for over 150 films, in 1996 he was awarded the Flaiano International Prize for his career.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira