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Musicians and Sound engineers
Archival and Bibliographic Collections – Luigi Chiarini Library
The collection consists of 240 monographs about various subjects. They are mainly manuals and encyclopaedias about sound techniques, photography, applied science and mathematics, plus one video-recording and one audio-recording of reverberation and reflection tests carried out at the Cinecittà Studios.
Antonio Appierto (1925-2003) – Electronic engineer. He studied Audio Engineering at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Film Centre), graduating in 1951. He had a long and prestigious career at CSC: from 1954 onward, he taught Sound Techniques and Sensitometry, holding the Chair until his death. Up until 1995 he taught Film Technology at the “Roberto Rossellini” State Institute for Film and Television in Rome. In 1949 he was one of the founders of ATIC (the Italian Technical Association for Cinematography), and was elected its President many times in succession. In 1995, he was one of the 100 artists and technicians from the Italian cinema industry who were honoured with the title of “Commendatore della Repubblica” (Commander of the Republic) for contributing to the success and development of Italian cinema throughout the world.
The collection consists of monographs, folders of magazines and audiovisual material from Vittorio Gelmetti’s private collection.
Vittorio Gelmetti (1926-1992), musician and teacher at the CSC between 1985 and 1990. He collaborated with Antonioni and the Taviani brothers, among others.
The collection was created in May 2009, at the express wish of the Lavagnino’s daughters, who loaned for free the archive of original documents related to the creative musical activity of Maestro. All the material has been inventoried, catalogued, and cross-referenced in 2010. This resulted in the creation of 339 folders, which kept the arrangement that was originally devised by the Maestro. The archive has been placed in a specially designated space, following proper conservation criteria. The original document-holders have been kept, as a philological regard to the original material. The archive is includes original autograph scores, rough books, SIAE programmes; memo pads with notes, notebooks and signed letters. All musical compositions include a reference to the film they were devised for.
Angelo Francesco Lavagnino (1909-1987) – Composer of classical music and music for motion pictures. He composed film music for many directors, including De Sica, Soldati, Comencini, Monicelli, Leone and Welles.
The fund was established at the end of 2018, thanks to the generous donation of his son Paolo, that he’s also a composer. It consists of over two hundred scores of music for films by different directors with whom Rustichelli has collaborated, in a non-episodic way, from the late 1940s to the 1980s, such as: Germi, Bolognini, Loy, Monicelli, Corbucci, Lizzani, Pasolini, Risi, Steno, Vancini. The twelve boxes from Carpi’s home have been put into folders, keeping the ordering and numbering of the various units, when present. The original title, the director and the year of distribution of the film or show were traced of each individual archival unit, through databases and repertoires. The music studio involved the recognition of the musical documents and their ordering, where they had arrived disorderly, and has enriched the searchable information on the online catalog, signaling the presence of the score, parts, notepad and other annotations, to which is added a list more synthetic to facilitate the users.
Carlo Rustichelli (1916 – 2014) – Composer and musician. He raised in a family of opera enthusiasts, he studied harmony in Modena, then graduated from the Bologna Philharmonic Academy. At the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome he graduated in composition. His film debut came with music composed for Giulio Bonnard’s “Papà per una notte” (1939). From 1947 with the film “Gioventù perduta” (1948), Rustichelli began an artistic partnership with Pietro Germi that continued until the death of the director during the design of “Amici miei” (1975), then shot by Mario Monicelli. Beginning in the 1950s, Rustichelli maintained a production rate of eight to nine films a year. Among the hundreds of scores preserved in the archive, we remember among the films of Germi “L’uomo di paglia” (1958) that gave to Rustichelli his first “Nastro d’argento”. The composer also collaborated with many other directors, such as, Nanni Loy (with whom he worked for “Un giorno da leoni”, 1961; “Le quattro giornate di Napoli,” 1962; “Made in Italy”,1965), Mario Monicelli (“I compagni”, 1963; ” L’armata Brancaleone, 1966, which in 1967 gave to him the second “Nastro d’argento”; “Amici miei,” 1975) and Florestano Vancini (“La lunga notte del ’43,” 1960; “La calda vita,” 1964; “Le stagioni del nostro amore,” 1965), to which must be added unique collaborations such as the one with Gillo Pontecorvo in “Kapò” (1960) and with Billy Wilder in “Avanti!” (“Cosa è successo tra mio padre e tua madre?”, title of the Italian distribution, 1972). Among the collaborations in cinema, it deserves a mention the music that he made for numerous films with Totò. For television, Rustichelli composed the music for the famous adaptation of Franco Rossi’s “Odissea” (1968). In the late 1970s, the number of film collaborations gradually dwindled, often sharing the work with his son Paolo (“Testa o croce” by Loy, 1982, was the first film in which he took part). He briefly returned to the ancient passion of melodrama with Savonarola and Borgia, text by Elio Pecora, never staged.
The collection, a donation by his son, is made up of 432 folders and was fully catalogued after a thorough and complex operation of reorganization, taking advantage of the support of experts, who helped recognizing the parts and musical scores in order to file them according to their composer and the film they were created for. The most substantial part of the collection comprises orchestra scores and parts, rough books and arrangements. Other folders hold his mail, documents from his job and the Diafonia society, SIAE forms and registration notes.
Donato Salone (1914-2008) – Musician, world famous music copyist, assistant and coordinator of recordings on behalf of producers and editors. He worked with Luis Enríquez Bacalov, Manuel De Sica, Ennio Morricone, Riz Ortolani, Piero Piccioni, Franco Piersanti, Nicola Piovani, Carlo Rustichelli, Carlo Savina and Armando Trovajoli.
It is a large multi-media collection which includes rough books, notes, musical scores and concert programmes as well as musical recordings (in various formats) of soundtracks and performances of the Maestro. Researchers can listen to CD recordings of the scores available for consultation and therefore evaluate the relationship between the written music and its performance. They can also study the rough books and notes which show the creative process and discussion with the director, which contributed to the production of the final version of the score. Moreover, the Film Library has copies of the actual films available for consultation. In this way, scholars and film critics can have a complete overview of the artist’s work.
Savina Carlo (1919-2002) – Composer and orchestra conductor. He graduated as a composer, conductor, as well as pianist, organist and violinist, and worked for 14 years as the conductor of the RAI orchestra. From 1945 onwards he specialized in light music, and gained popularity in this genre, first as an arranger and later, after founding his own ensemble, as a conductor and composer of popular songs. He was also extremely active in the film industry, writing more than 200 soundtracks, including those for “Simon Bolivar”, “Liolà”, “Europa di notte” by director Alessandro Blasetti, “Una vita difficile” by Dino Risi, “Eva” di Joseph Losey, “Il futuro è donna” by Marco Ferreri and “Pizza Connection” by Damiano Damiani. Moreover, he conducted soundtracks composed by others, such as the recorded version of the soundtrack of “Ben Hur”, “Sodoma e Gomorra”, “El Cid”, “The Godfather”, “Romeo e Giulietta” and “Tess”. He was the conductor of the Nino Rota orchestra, and collaborated with him on many of Fellini’s films. He conducted music for Miklós Rózsa, Stephen Sondheim, Bill Conti, Philippe Sarde, Dimitri Tiomkin and Stanley Myers. He also worked with some of the top orchestras, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, the orchestras of Athens, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Los Angeles and many others. For many years he was involved in the administration of SIAE, the “Società Italiana Autori ed Editori” (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers), and acted as a member of its governing board until 1993.
The collection was donated by the director himself in 2014-2015 and is made up of over 300 items: more than 100 books about film and photography, 28 photography magazines, 13 folders of documents related to his works, projects, their respective press reviews and letters.
Giorgio Turi (1925-2015) – Director of documentaries and experimental films, cinematographer. He graduated in chemistry and took up photography quite early on during his career. He came in contact with the New American Cinema Group and worked as cinematographer for the movie “Goodbye in the mirror” directed by Storm De Hirsch (1964). He was a researcher at the Pedagogical Institute of the Teacher Training College of the University of Rome, carried out film-related research for the CNR (National Research Council), taught photography at the State Art Institute of Rome and contributed to Rai’s experimental programmes. A creator of experimental movies (some of which were filmed in collaboration with Roberto Capanna), he was a member of the Indipendent Cinema Cooperative. He filmed many documentaries on science, anthropology and pedagogy.
