Piero Buscaroli (21 August 1930 – 15 February 2016) was an Italian

musicologist Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...

, journalist and essayist.

Life

Born in

Imola Imola (; or ) is a city and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Bologna, located on the river Santerno, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. The city is traditionally considered the western entrance to the historical region Romagna ...

, the son of a

Latinist Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of ...

, Buscaroli studied organ, harmony and counterpoint at the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, and later he graduated in law with a thesis about the Italian legal history. From 1955 to 1977, Buscaroli collaborated with the magazine ''

Il Borghese ''Il Borghese'' is a monthly cultural and political magazine with a right-wing stance published in Rome, Italy. The magazine has been in circulation since 1950 and is named after the conservative Borghese family. and published until 1993. The n ...

'', writing articles of music criticism, international politics and modern history and often using the pseudonym "

Hans Sachs Hans Sachs (5 November 1494 – 19 January 1576) was a German ''Meistersinger'' ("mastersinger"), poetry, poet, playwright, and shoemaking, shoemaker. Biography Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg (). As a child he attended a singing school that w ...

". From 1972 to 1975 he was director of the newspaper ''Roma'', and in 1979 he began a long collaboration with the newspaper ''

Il Giornale (), known from its founding in 1974 until 1983 as (), is an Italian-language daily newspaper published in Milan with an average circulation of 28,933 in May 2023. In 2006, it was considered one of Italy's main national newspapers. History an ...

'' directed by

Indro Montanelli Indro Alessandro Raffaello Schizogene Montanelli (; 22 April 1909 – 22 July 2001) was an Italian journalist, historian, and writer. He was one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes according to the International Press Institute. A volunteer ...

, where he used the pseudonym Piero Santerno for his not-music-related articles. Buscaroli wrote several books on the history of music, notably ''Bach'' (1985), which got over twenty editions, ''Beethoven'' (2004), a 1350 pages book which was the result of five years of continuous study, and ''La morte di Mozart'' ("The death of Mozart", 1996), in which he suggested that

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

Requiem A Requiem (Latin: ''rest'') or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead () or Mass of the dead (), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the souls of the deceased, using a particular form of the Roman Missal. It is ...

was not left unfinished because of the death of its author, but because of a deliberate choice of Mozart himself, due to reluctance on his part to fulfill the contractual clause, imposed on him by the client, which prevented him to claim authorship of his work.

References

Sources

* 1930 births 2016 deaths Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini alumni People from Imola University of Bologna alumni Italian musicologists 20th-century Italian non-fiction writers 20th-century Italian male writers Italian non-fiction writers Italian male non-fiction writers {{Italy-writer-stub