Carlo Prosperi

Carlo Prosperi (1921–1990) was an Italian composer and music educator. He studied at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence with Luigi Dallapiccola and Vito Frazzi, graduating in French horn (1940) and composition (1949). Prosperi took an academic leave to serve in the army during the World War II.

In the fifties, Prosperi worked as an assistant music editor at RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana S.p.A.) in Turin and Rome. He started teaching at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in 1958 and remained on the faculty until 1989.

As a composer, Carlo Prosperi was known as one of the pioneers in the Italian avant-garde movement in the fifties. He developed unique free atonality system, distinguished both from the orthodox dodecaphony and serialist music. At the same time, Prosperi despised radical European experiments of the time, such as aleatoric compositions or structuralism.