Roman Vlad

Roman Vlad ( born December 29, 1919 in Czernowitz, Bukovina, Romania, † September 21, 2013 in Rome, Italy ) was a Romanian-born Italian composer, pianist and musicologist. He created numerous musical works for the Italian cinema of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Among these compositions for films such as The Walls of Malapaga, The pact with the devil, A Sunday in August, mistress of the world or girl in the window.

  • 4.1 Symphonic Music
  • 4.2 Chamber Music
  • 4.3 Music for Ballet
  • 4.4 Music for theater

Life and work

Roman Vlad studied first in his native Romania at Titus Tarnawski and Liviu Russu and earned a diploma as a pianist. Before the arrival of the Red Army in 1938, he fled to Italy, where he studied at the University of Rome and later at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. 1951 Vlad was officially an Italian citizen.

Vlad began his career as a performer and composer, he won the Enescu Prize in 1942 for his Sinfonietta and the Silver Ribbon for his film music. He was artistic director of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana from 1955 to 1958 and again from 1966 until 1969. He was 1960 President of the Italian Society for New Music and musical consultant for the third Italian RAI program.

Vlad was a versatile composer, he wrote symphonic works for the concert hall as well as ballet music and music for the theater. Vlad published as a musicologist several books on music, including the history of the twelve-tone music (1958 ) and biographies of Stravinsky and Dallapiccola.

Mainly known, however, was Roman Vlad for his numerous film compositions. During the 1940s he wrote the music for numerous short films and documentaries such as Racconto un affresco, Romantici a Venezia or Bianchi pascoli before settling in 1946 also devoted to the composition of feature films. His first big success was in 1949 the music for the drama by director René Clément The walls of Malapaga with Jean Gabin and Isa Miranda in the lead roles. In the early 1950s, the scores for René Clair's created The pact with the devil with Michel Simon and Gérard Philipe and for the comedy A Sunday in August by director Luciano Emmer.

In the 1950s he composed the music for many well-known directors such as Marcello Pagliero, Mario Zampi, Giuliano Biagetti, Romolo Marcellini, Ladislao Vajda, Vittorio Gassman, Riccardo Freda, Jules Dassin, Alexandre Astruc, Francesco Rosi and Ralph Habib. At the beginning of the 1960s, yet arisen various other film compositions for film makers such as William Dieterle, Marino Girolami, Carlo Campogalliani, Vincenzo Lucci Chiarissi or Renato Castellani.

In 1988 he wrote one of his last film music for the film Il giovane Toscanini directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Roman Vlad died on September 21, 2013 at the age of 93 years in Rome.

Vlad was a member of the Executive Council of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and artistic advisor for the Ravenna Festival and the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto.

Awards

Filmography (selection)

Movies

TV series

Short films and documentaries

Concert works

Symphonic Music

  • Suite of Christmas Transylvania
  • Meditations on an old Russian song
  • Music for violins ( Meloritmi )
  • Concerto for Piano and Orchestra Concertante Variations on a twelve-tone row of Mozart's Don Giovanni
  • Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra
  • Concerto for Harp and Orchestra ( Sonnets to Orpheus )

Chamber Music

  • Serenade for twelve instruments
  • Divertimento for eleven instruments
  • Studi dodecafonici for Piano
  • Three Poems by Montale for baritone and piano, 1976

Music for ballet

  • La strada del caffè
  • La dama delle camelie
  • Il gabbiano
  • The Return

Music for theater

Publications

  • Modernità e nella musica contemporanea tradizione, Turin, Giulio Einaudi, 1955
  • Luigi Dallapiccola, Milan, Suvini Zerboni, 1957
  • Stravinsky, Turin, Giulio Einaudi, 1958
  • Storia della dodecafonia, Milan, Suvini Zerboni, 1958
  • Introduzione alla civiltà musicale, Bologna, Nicola Zanichelli, 1988
  • Capire la musica, Florence, Giunti, 1989, ISBN 880920154X
  • Architettura di un capolavoro. Analisi della Sagra della primaveradi Igor Stravinsky, Turin, BMG Publications, 2005 - ISBN 88-7592-802-9
Beauty and the Devil Young Toscanini I Vampiri Integrated Authority File
691665
de