Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini ( ; born Enrico Nicola Mancini, ; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

His works include the theme and soundtrack for the ''Peter Gunn'' television series as well as the music for '' The Pink Panther'' film series (" The Pink Panther Theme") and "Moon River" from '' Breakfast at Tiffany's''. '' The Music from Peter Gunn'' won the inaugural Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Mancini enjoyed a long collaboration in composing film scores for the film director Blake Edwards. Mancini also scored a No. 1 hit single during the rock era on the Hot 100: his arrangement and recording of the " Love Theme from ''Romeo and Juliet''" spent two weeks at the top, starting with the week ending June 28, 1969.

Early life

Henry Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland and raised in West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Both his parents were Italian immigrants. Originally from Scanno, Abruzzo, his father Quintiliano "Quinto" Mancini was a laborer at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company and amateur musician who first came to the U.S. as a teenager around 1910. His mother Anna () came to the U.S. from Forlì del Sannio as an infant.

At age eight, Mancini began learning the piccolo. Mancini said that hearing Rudolph G. Kopp's score in the 1935 Cecil B. DeMille film ''The Crusades'' inspired him to pursue film music composition despite his father's wishes for him to become a teacher.

He later studied piano and orchestral arrangement under Pittsburgh concert pianist and Stanley Theatre (now Benedum Center) conductor Max Adkins. Not only did Mancini produce arrangements for the Stanley Theatre bands, but he also wrote one for Benny Goodman, an up-and-coming bandleader introduced to him by Adkins. According to Mancini biographer John Caps, the young Mancini "preferred music arranging to any kind of musical performance, but taking apart a Chopin mazurka or Schumann sonata in order to play it helped him see...how the puzzle of form, meter, melody, harmony, and counterpoint had been solved by previous composers."

After graduating from Aliquippa High School in 1942, Mancini first attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. Later that year, Mancini transferred to the Juilliard School of Music in New York City following a successful audition in which he performed a Beethoven sonata and improvisation on " Night and Day" by Cole Porter. Because he could only take orchestration and composition courses in his second year, Mancini studied only piano in his first year at Juilliard, in a condition Caps called "aimless and oppressed—a far cry from Adkins's enabling protective environment."

After turning 18, Mancini enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in 1943. While in basic training in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he met musicians being recruited by Glenn Miller. Owing to a recommendation by Miller, Mancini was first assigned to the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France. In 1945, he helped liberate the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria.

Career

Newly discharged, Mancini entered the music industry. In 1946, he became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra, led by 'Everyman' Tex Beneke. After World War II, Mancini broadened his skills in composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration during studies opening with the composers Ernst Krenek and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

In 1952, Mancini joined the Universal-International's music department. During the next six years, he contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably ''Creature from the Black Lagoon'', '' The Creature Walks Among Us'', '' It Came from Outer Space'', '' Tarantula'', '' This Island Earth'', '' The Glenn Miller Story'' (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination), ''The Benny Goodman Story'' and Orson Welles' '' Touch of Evil''. During this time, he also wrote some popular songs. His first hit was a single by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians titled ''I Won't Let You Out of My Heart''.

Mancini left Universal-International to work as an independent composer/arranger in 1958. Soon afterward, he scored the television series ''Peter Gunn'' for writer/producer Blake Edwards. This was the genesis of a relationship in which Edwards and Mancini collaborated on 30 films over 35 years. Along with Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Leith Stevens and