LUCIANO FANCELLI

​

Luciano Fancelli was born in Foligno on 10th April  1928, into a family of musicians, his father was a violinist and his mother a pianist. He spent his childhood in Terni and at the age of eight, his mother started him at the piano, but the study bored him. As a boy, he immediately demonstrated his interest for design and geometry, therefore, after the primary school, his parents enrolled him at the Istituto Tecnico. 

It was at the beginning of the Second World War that his love for music blossomed. In this period, in fact, the Fancelli family moved to the Foligno countryside, fleeing the horrors caused by the conflict. It’s there where a doctor lent Luciano a 120 bass accordion; his parents had previously given him a 32 bass accordion with which they had been giving him some music lessons.

The learning of the young Luciano was so quick that his parents made him play in the small military musical group where his father was a violinist and his mother a pianist, Luciano was then aged 15.

At 17 years old, he wrote his first composition “Non così” , which was very successful; at 19, he won the Concorso Internazionale di Stradella and performed throughout Italy: Parma, Naples, Livorno, Reggio Emilia and Viareggio.

In 1947, RAI entrusted him a TV programme “Voci e Strumenti in libertà” and “Luciano Fancelli e la sua fisarmonica”.

In 1950, after a memorable performance of the Beethoven’s V Symphony, he won the music prize of the 4th Concorso Nazionale di Ancona. In those years, he played with a symphony orchestra in Terni and wrote his most important works: Acquarelli cubani, Stranezze, Echi della Versilia, 10 chilometri al finestrino,  Cartoni animati, Pupazzetti, Da quando te ne andasti, Helzapopping, all tracks edited by Cambi, Ricordi and Farfisa.

In 1951, he moved to Milan where he performed at La Scala Theatre with the Fisorchestra Frontalini and started recording some discs. His repertoire included classical and symphonic music, jazz and light music. 

In December 1952, Luciano was invited by RAI at the TV programme “Rosso e Nero”, which had a high index of listeners in those days.

A month later, on 24th January 1953, at the peak of success, he died in Terni of septicaemia, after an untreated sore throat: he would get married shortly thereafter with his girlfriend Elda.

He left us a diary full of notes, drawings of anatomy, poems, a lot of naturalist paintings and, above all, his compositions which are the proof of his inner richness that left us too early.