Stanislao Gastaldon

Martino Stanislao Luigi Gastaldon (April 8, 1861 – March 6, 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.

Gastaldon was born in Turin on April 8, 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 land owner, 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. The family moved from one Italian city to another during Gastaldon's childhood and early youth while his father worked on a series of engineering projects. Part of his childhood was spent in San Vito Chietino in the Abruzzo region, where a street is now named for him and where his younger brother Guglielmo was born in 1864.

Gastaldon studied music with the Turinese composer Antonio Creonti and with Torquato Meliani, an organist at the Florence Cathedral, as well as studying literature at the University of Florence. He began composing songs at the age of 17, sometimes writing the lyrics himself under the pseudonym of "Flick-Flock". Although it is not known for sure why Gastaldon chose "Flick-Flock", Italian musicologist Maria Scaccetti suggests that it probably derived from the popular ballet, Flick und Flock by Peter Ludwig Hertel, which had been performed at La Scala in 1861. Music from the ballet arranged as a military march became the official fanfare of the 12th Regiment of the Bersaglieri corps, which had been based in Turin. Gastaldon was only 20 when the Florentine firm Venturini published his song "Musica proibita", which made his name as a composer and achieved an enduring popularity. Its success would also provide an entry to the most important salons in Italy, where many of his early songs were first performed. His musical fame preceded him when Gastaldon did his obligatory year of military service in 1883. He was assigned to be one of the "professors" of the 24th Infantry Regiment band.

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