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News from the darkest corners of the
musical universe:
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Saturday, July 24, 2004 ◦
Italian composer Piero Piccioni, who wrote music for more than 100 movies in Italy and abroad has died in Rome. He was 82.
During his career Piccioni worked with Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Jean-Luc Godard. The Italian news agency ANSA said Piccioni died suddenly in his apartment in the capital on Friday night.
Born in Turin, in north-western Italy, Piccioni debuted as a pianist in the late 1930s and then worked in a jazz orchestra in the early 1940s. A few years later he started composing for the big screen, the first steps in a career that would span four decades.
In 1957 he wrote the soundtrack for Dino Risi's comedy "Poor But Handsome". In the 1960s Piccioni worked with Mauro Bolognini on "Bell' Antonio", starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale, with Rossellini in "Anima Nera" (Black Soul), starring Vittorio Gassman, with Godard in "Contempt" starring Brigitte Bardot and with Visconti in "The Stranger" based on the novel by Albert Camus.
One of his most famous works was the soundtrack for Francesco Rosi's "The Mattei Affair" in 1972. Piccioni also wrote the music for films by Lina Wertmuller, including "All Screwed Up" in 1973 and "Swept Away" a year later.
Throughout his career, Piccioni kept up a prolific collaboration with Alberto Sordi, the Italian actor and director who passed away last year. Piccioni composed the soundtrack for dozens of Sordi's movies, including "Help Me My Love", "Stardust" and "While There's War There's Hope".
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Friday, July 23, 2004 ◦
Award-winning TV and film composer Jerry Goldsmith has died at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 75. Goldsmith created music for many classic shows, ranging from Star Trek and Planet of the Apes to The Man from Uncle and Perry Mason. His personal assistant Lois Carruth said he died on Wednesday night after a long battle with cancer. Over nearly 50 years he was nominated for 17 Academy Awards, winning one, and was also honoured with five Emmys. He won the 1976 Academy Award for his score for horror film The Omen, and Emmys for TV work including Star Trek: Voyager and Babe. He wrote music for a string of classic movies including Escape From The Planet Of Apes, Papillon, Chinatown, Alien and Poltergeist. He also composed pieces for The Mummy, LA Confidential, Basic Instinct, Rambo III and Gremlins. Among several dozen TV compositions were themes for Dr Kildare, The Waltons and Police Woman. Goldsmith was a classically-trained composer and conductor who began musical studies at the age of six. Many of his TV and movie scores have become classics in their own right, and he sometimes seemed virtually synonymous with soundtracks. Goldsmith also wrote composed orchestral pieces and taught occasional music classes at local universities.
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