Composer · 1859–1918
Luigi Gaetano Gullì
Biography
Luigi Gaetano Gullì (1859-1918) was an Italian pianist and composer born in Scilla, Calabria. With support for his studies from the provincial authorities, he trained at the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella in Naples, studying piano with Beniamino Cesi and composition with Lauro Rossi. After periods in Paris and Rome and concert tours in northern Europe, he founded the Quintetto Gullì.
He developed a friendship with Edvard Grieg, with whom he performed at Santa Cecilia in 1899, and appeared in Giuseppe Martucci’s Piano Concerto in B-flat minor in 1912. That year he moved to the United States to direct the Kidd-Key Conservatory in Sherman, Texas, later teaching in Chicago. He died in 1918 during his return voyage to Italy and was buried at sea. His surviving piano music brings together Italian lyricism and the formal refinement of the wider European tradition.