Guido Guerrini (composer)

Guido Guerrini (September 12, 1890 – June 14, 1965) was an Italian composer, violinist, violist, conductor, music educator, academic administrator, and music critic. He began his career as a violinist, violist, and conductor in Bologona in the 1910s. After serving in the Italian Army during World War I, he taught on the faculties of several music conservatories in Italy and was the longtime director of the Florence Conservatory from 1928 to 1947. His work in Florence was interrupted during World War II when he was imprisoned in an Italian fascist concentration camp in 1944–1945. While there he composed his opera Enea which was later staged at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in 1953. He also served as director of the Bologna Conservatory (1947–1949) and the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia (1950–1960). At the time of his death in 1965 he was president of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. As a composer, Guerrini’s early music was inspired heavily was by Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss, but he later mitigated his penchant for romantic music with a more architectural and intellectual approach to composing. His most successful pieces were his requiem Missa pro defunctis and his mass