Stanislao Gastaldon

Martino Stanislao Luigi Gastaldon (8 April 18616 March 1939) was an Italian composer, primarily of salon songs for solo voice and piano. However, he also composed instrumental music, two choral works, and four operas. Today, he is remembered almost exclusively for his 1881 song “Musica proibita” (“Forbidden Music”), still one of the most popular pieces of music in Italy. Gastaldon also wrote the lyrics for some of his songs, including “Musica proibita”, under the pseudonym Flick-Flock. He was born in Turin and after a peripatetic childhood studied music there and in Florence. By 1900, he had settled permanently in Florence, where he died at the age of 77. In his later years, he also worked as a voice teacher, music critic, and art dealer. Life and career Gastaldon was born in Turin on 8 April 1861 to Luigi Gastaldon and Luigia Grazioli. His father was an engineer from Lerino, a village near Torri di Quartesolo in the Veneto region of Italy. His mother was a Roman noblewoman who had married a wealthy landowner, Count Bernardo Genardini, at the age of 16. She met Luigi Gastaldon in 1854 when she was 23 and shortly thereafter abandoned her husband and four children to live with him. T