Teo Usuelli(1920-2009)

He completed his studies in Milan. After having received his diploma in Humanities, he attended the Faculty of Pure Mathematics at the State University for four years with good results. He specialized in music and choir song in 1944, and graduated in Composition from the Conservatory "G. Verdi" of Milan in 1945. After having fought as a partisan from 1941 to 1945, he studied in depth vocal polyphony in 1947. In the immediate postwar period, he started his musical career as a director of vocal polyphonic groups for various concerts and radio programs of polyphonic music, paying particular attention to the Italians of the XVI and XVII centuries. He moved to Rome in the late forties, and has been extremely busy writing music for cinema and for television. In the field of folk music he studied Italian regional groups, and his transcriptions, from the laudi of the 1200s to the songs of the mountain, belong to the repertory of numerous choirs. Among the most famous are Montagnes Valdotaines and Belle rose du printemps. He has also composed various songs, such as Meravigliose labbra and La canzone del faro, which were quite successful. He taught "Harmony and Counterpoint" in the conservatories of Piacenza, Bologna and L'Aquila; he retired from teaching in 1986. He created for RAI 3 TV a series of 6 episodes, each dedicated to a major contemporary Italian composer, called "Che musica è". He participated in it as Conductor, taking part in debates with the public and presenting various music performed by "Spettro sonoro". At present, he is working on music with computers, programming computers and composing "digital music". He collaborates with the C.R.M. (Center for Music Research) of Rome, creating software for the projects "FLY10" and "FLY30". Among his compositions in this genre we mention Mooning for soprano and c64, Sinite for Fly10 and soprano, and Nomina for Fly30 and soprano. Furthermore, his main compositions include music for theater, for orchestra, chamber music, film music (for films directed by Marco Ferreri and other renowned directors) and music for TV.