LUIGI MOZZANI
LUTHIER IN CENTO
1890 . 1967

At the age of nine, apprenticed to an amateur clarinet barber, he approached that instrument and the trumpet, being admitted as a clarinet pupil to the Municipal School of Music of Faenza in 1883, with remarkable results. Around the 1890 was admitted to the Music high school of Bologna as a student of oboe under the guidance of Gustavo Gastelli, but he also undertook the study of the guitar, which he quickly mastered. In April of 1891 toured in Germany, France, Spain and Algeria as soloist of guitar and oboe.

On June 7 1892 he obtained a diploma in oboe at the Liceo Musicale of Bologna and in 1893, presented by Gastelli, the role of first oboe in San Carlo Theater in Naples.

His tours soon took him to America where he lived for two years (1894-1896) and where he published a New York the three volumes of Studies for guitar. 

He then settled in Paris where he came into contact with the greatest guitarists active at that time: Alfredo Cottin, Gelas and Miguel Llobet. In France he wrote 8 Pieces for solo guitar and began to take an interest in lutherie and precisely in the construction of the guitar. In 1899 he published several pieces for guitar, including the famous Prayer. He toured England, where he lived for about six months, France, Germany and Austria. In 1906 he presented an anonymous Serenata in the Italian musical competition of the Il Plettro magazine, which won first prize; this work is then published with the title Larian festivals, air with variations.

Between 1905 and 1908 Mozzani was on tour in Germany and Austria where he published, in Berlin, the pieces Gust of wind (Wind Gust), Mazurka and Slow waltz. 

During the first decade of the 1900s, Mozzani returned to Italy and moved permanently to Hundred, in the province of Ferrara, and opens his first lutherie where he builds various guitar models.

Together with the activity of luthier he continues that of concert performer, teacher and composer. In his lutherie he creates a model of guitar-lyra and patented in 1912 a device capable of adjusting the angle of the handle through a system of screws.

Between 1910 and 1924 he built in his lutherie not only the various models of guitars but also stringed and plectrum instruments. In 1914 he resumed his concert activity which took him to many Italian cities.

In 1916 the death of his daughter Giulietta affected him deeply and he decided to abandon the concert activity which actually resumed only after 1930.

He moved his violin making to Bologna and then, in 1942, to Rovereto where he died in 1943.

At the Music Museum of Pieve di Cento there is a large collection of instruments made by Mozzani between 1920 and 1930.