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Giovanni Fusco was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor and is among scholars and experts conisdered to be the father of modern film music.

At only nine years of age, he followed in his brother's footsteps, accompanying the projection of silent films on the piano in several rooms of the capital, earning ten pounds a night. This first activity will be a key factor in his formation as a film-music composer.

He enrolled at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, he studied piano with P. Boccaccini and Alfredo Casella, organ with Fernando Germani, composition with R. Storti and Alfredo Casella, and conducting with Bernardino Molinari, earning a diploma in piano. In 1931 he graduated in composition at the Conservatory in Pesaro in 1942 and again in Rome in conducting.

Maestro Fusco composed numerous film scores since 1936, including those of Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and La guerre est finie (1966) as well as of most of the 1948-1964 films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, from N.U. (Nettezza Urbana) to Il Deserto Rosso, except for La Notte (soundtrack by Giorgio Gaslini) and some of his early short films. Two of his soundtracks, those of Antonioni's Cronaca di un amore and L'avventura, won Silver Ribbon for the best film score from Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists in 1951 and 1961, respectively.

Fusco infused into his music a life of its own and elevated music to a key factor in every film he worked on because of his strict belief that one could not do a film without music. Whether one agrees with this or not it's up to the individual and the film in question, what is for sure is that without his music even the most brilliant film he scored would be a gorgeous score shorter.

He passed away on May 31st 1968 in Rome.