The brilliance of Piero Piccioni’s seductive jazz scores
A great score can transport you to another realm, carrying you away with lush strings and beautiful brass sections into a cinematic world where everything is hopelessly romantic, dramatic, or tragic. There have been many great composers in the history of cinema whose work has elevated movies into even greater pieces of art, and Piero Piccioni remains one of the most impressive names to have emerged from Italy.
Born in 1921, the composer had been attracted to music from an early age, with his father regularly taking him to live performances. Like many musicians who develop a keen interest in the art form when they’re young, Piccioni couldn’t cast aside his desire, finding himself on the radio for the first time before he’d even reached adulthood.
The 17-year-old Piccioni could be heard playing piano on the airwaves as far back as 1938, but it would be another six years before he would return. With a backdrop of Italian fascism and the imminent dawn of World War II looming, American-inspired jazz wasn’t the most widely accepted genre at the time. Jazz players often had to work clandestinely, but by 1944, Piccioni’s 013 Big Band made musical history by becoming the first jazz band to play on Italian radio following the demise of fascism within the country. He subsequently began working as a composer in the 1950s, with his first score being Il Mondo le Condanna. From there, Piccioni’s scores could be heard in many Italian films, making him one of the country’s most prolific and interesting composers. Inspired by American jazz, bossa nova, and classic Hollywood film scores, Piccioni made an array of soundtracks for westerns, erotica, comedies, and dramas, some featuring vocalists like Julie Rogers and Catherine Howe and others purely instrumental.
In an interview with Movie Music International, Piccioni revealed some of his biggest influences, highlighting a love for Dimitri Toimkin before adding, “I have drawn much from the works of Debussy and Honegger, plus there is the jazz side of things where Duke Ellington and Bill Holman figured quite largely.”
One of Piccioni’s greatest scores is easily Camille 2000, a film directed by Radley Metzger. While the film wasn’t acclaimed—in fact, it was rather negatively reviewed—the score stands out as one of the most sensual, dreamy, and playful collections of film music from the ‘60s, with tracks like ‘Easy Lovers’ and ‘Pearls’ acting as clear highlights. It was a case of a score being a little too good for the film it was made for, something that often happened when Piccioni was in charge of soundtracking a movie. The composer frequently worked on Italian films that would soon fade into cinematic obscurity, with his music becoming the main reason many are still discussed.
In that same interview, Piccioni revealed his love for working on movies “that have a modern setting,” explaining that “the romantic and mysterious variety are particularly appealing to my appetite, then I can write either a jazz or contemporary classical score, and maybe in certain circumstances I have been able to combine the two styles, which is quite interesting.” Much of his work has a sensual quality, with Piccioni harnessing the expert ability to combine melodic pianos with romantic string sections that perfectly encapsulate an essence of seduction and an innate sophistication.
His Anna Karenina score, made for the 1974 miniseries, is a gorgeous album. The piano notes that open ‘Illusione perfetta’—before being accompanied by strings and then flute—send a shiver down your spine. It’s dreamy and romantic, with a slight hint of melancholy underneath, and one of Picionni’s most accomplished singular pieces.
Other terrific scores from Piccioni include Amore mio aiutami, arguably one of his most well-known works; Anastasia mio fratello, Colpo Rovente, and C’era una volta, with the composer naming the latter as a particular favourite. Piccioni also made some amazing songs featuring vocals, like ‘It’s Possible’ from 1974’s Il Dio sotto la pelle, which has a distinctive R&B feel to it, subsequently leading it to be sampled by many modern artists, from DJ Khaled to Soulja Boy.
Piccioni knew many other popular Italian composers of the time, and it was a certain legendary figure whom he once used as an assistant: “One of my very first arrangers and orchestrators was Ennio Morricone; he was also incidentally the best I ever used,” he revealed. While Morricone rose to become one of the most well-known composers of all time, Piccioni doesn’t get nearly as much credit. Yet, his versatile ability to create scores that took from bossa nova to psychedelic European guitar music to classical composers allowed his work to feel truly ahead of its time.
