Famous Composers from Italy

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Updated October 14, 2018388 items

List of notable or famous composers from Italy, with bios and photos, including the top composers born in Italy and even some popular composers who immigrated to Italy. If you're trying to find out the names of famous Italian composers then this list is the perfect resource for you. These composers are among the most prominent in their field, and information about each well-known composer from Italy is included when available.

List is made up of a variety of people, including Joe Satriani and Jean-Baptiste Lully.

This historic composers from Italy list can help answer the questions "Who are some Italian composers of note?" and "Who are the most famous composers from Italy?" These prominent composers of Italy may or may not be currently alive, but what they all have in common is that they're all respected Italian composers.

Use this list of renowned Italian composers to discover some new composers that you aren't familiar with. Don't forget to share this list by clicking one of the social media icons at the top or bottom of the page. {#nodes}
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  • Gioacchino Rossini

    Gioacchino Rossini

    Dec. at 76 (1792-1868)
    • Birthplace: Pesaro, Italy
    Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 โ€“ 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of 12 and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810โ€“1823 he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of self-borrowing. During this period he produced his most popular works including the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia (known in English as The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola, which brought to a peak the opera buffa tradition he inherited from masters such as Domenico Cimarosa. He also composed opera seria works such as Otello, Tancredi and Semiramide. All of these attracted admiration for their innovation in melody, harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. In 1824 he was contracted by the Opรฉra in Paris, for which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X, Il viaggio a Reims (later cannibalised for his first opera in French, Le comte Ory), revisions of two of his Italian operas, Le siรจge de Corinthe and Moรฏse, and in 1829 his last opera, Guillaume Tell. Rossini's withdrawal from opera for the last 40 years of his life has never been fully explained; contributary factors may have been ill-health, the wealth his success had brought him, and the rise of spectacular Grand Opera under composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer. From the early 1830s to 1855, when he left Paris and was based in Bologna, Rossini wrote relatively little. On his return to Paris in 1855 he became renowned for his musical salons on Saturdays, regularly attended by musicians and the artistic and fashionable circles of Paris, for which he wrote the entertaining pieces Pรฉchรฉs de vieillesse. Guests included Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Giuseppe Verdi, Meyerbeer and Joseph Joachim. Rossini's last major composition was his Petite messe solennelle (1863). He died in Paris in 1868.
  • Ennio Morricone
    • Birthplace: Rome, Italy
    Ennio Morricone (November 10, 1928 โ€“ July 6, 2020) was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and trumpet player who wrote music in a wide range of styles. Morricone composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. His score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) is considered one of the most influential soundtracks in history. In 2016, Morricone received his first competitive Academy Award for his score to Quentin Tarantino's film The Hateful Eight, at the time becoming the oldest person ever to win a competitive Oscar. His other achievements included three Grammy Awards, three Golden Globes, six BAFTAs, ten David di Donatello, eleven Nastro d'Argento, two European Film Awards, the Golden Lion Honorary Award and the Polar Music Prize in 2010.
  • Jean-Baptiste Lully

    Jean-Baptiste Lully

    Dec. at 54 (1632-1687)
    • Birthplace: Florence, Italy
    Jean-Baptiste Lully (UK: , US: ; French: [ส’ษ‘ฬƒ baหˆtist lyหˆli]; born Giovanni Battista Lulli, Italian: [หˆlulli]; 28 November [O.S. 18 November] 1632โ€“ 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer, instrumentalist, and dancer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered a master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in 1661.
  • Luciano Berio

    Luciano Berio

    Dec. at 77 (1925-2003)
    • Birthplace: Oneglia
    Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 โ€“ May 27, 2003) was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled Sequenza) and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.
  • Ferruccio Busoni

    Ferruccio Busoni

    Dec. at 58 (1866-1924)
    • Birthplace: Empoli, Italy
    Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 โ€“ 27 July 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and teacher. His international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary figures of his time, and he was a sought-after keyboard instructor and a teacher of composition. From an early age, Busoni was an outstanding if sometimes controversial pianist. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory and then with Wilhelm Mayer and Carl Reinecke. After brief periods teaching in Helsinki, Boston, and Moscow, he devoted himself to composing, teaching, and touring as a virtuoso pianist in Europe and the United States. His writings on music were influential, and covered not only aesthetics but considerations of microtones and other innovative topics. He was based in Berlin from 1894 but spent much of World War I in Switzerland. He began composing in his early years in a late romantic style, but after 1907, when he published his Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, he developed a more individual style, often with elements of atonality. His visits to America led to interest in North American indigenous tribal melodies which were reflected in some of his works. His compositions include works for piano, among them a monumental Piano Concerto, and transcriptions of the works of others, notably Johann Sebastian Bach (published as the Bach-Busoni Editions). He also wrote chamber music, vocal and orchestral works, and operasโ€”one of which, Doktor Faust, he left unfinished when he died, in Berlin, at the age of 58.
  • Muzio Clementi

    Muzio Clementi

    Dec. at 80 (1752-1832)
    • Birthplace: Rome, Italy
    Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi (23 January 1752 โ€“ 10 March 1832) was an Italian-born English composer, pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer. Encouraged to study music by his father, he was sponsored as a young composer by Sir Peter Beckford who took him to England to advance his studies. Later, he toured Europe numerous times from his long-standing base in London. It was on one of these occasions, in 1781, that he engaged in a piano competition with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Influenced by Domenico Scarlatti's harpsichord school and Haydn's classical school and by the stile galante of Johann Christian Bach and Ignazio Cirri, Clementi developed a fluent and technical legato style, which he passed on to a generation of pianists, including John Field, Johann Baptist Cramer, Ignaz Moscheles, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Carl Czerny. He was a notable influence on Ludwig van Beethoven and Frederic Chopin. Clementi also produced and promoted his own brand of pianos and was a notable music publisher. Because of this activity, many compositions by Clementi's contemporaries and earlier artists have stayed in the repertoire. Though the reputation of Clementi was exceeded only by Haydn and Beethoven in his day, his popularity languished for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.