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Francesco Fanciulli was born in Porto Santo Stefano

(province of Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy) on May 29, 1853. He had eight siblings, and his father was a tailor who also owned a haberdasher's. Fanciulli started playing the cornet in the local town band when he was nine. A talented musician from the very beginning, he continued his studies at  the Conservatory of Florence, where he took a diploma as a professor of the cornet. At the age of twenty, he was first cornetist at the Pergola Theatre in Florence, then became leader of the Politeama Orchestra, the actual “Teatro Comunale”, in 1875.

In 1876, Fanciulli engaged himself as a private musical tutor to an American family named Brown and moved to the United States. He landed in New York on September 24th, 1876. At the same time, he started working as a church organist at St. Peter’s Church in Brooklyn and was a singing and piano teacher. Some time later, he met Patrick Gilmore, the most famous bandmaster of that time, and started composing several works for Gilmore’s band.  He composed particularly descriptive music, which was not known in the US at that time.  In 1880, he conducted a non-professional orchestra in New York, the Mozart Musical Union, and in the early 1890s, the Lillian Durell Opera Company in Boston.

He met Amanda Schile, an American painter and musician, in New York; they were married in 1882. They had two sons, Romolo and Jerome, and one daughter, Giulietta Priscilla.

Fanciulli became leader of the Marine Band in 1892 after John Philip Sousa’s resignation, and moved to Washington D.C.
His brilliant career there came to an end five years later when he returned to New York and was named leader of the 71^st Regiment of the New York National Guard, with which he took part in the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901.
In January 1904, he left the 71^st Regiment Band and formed a civilian professional band, Fanciulli’s Concert Band, with which he toured through the United States. The band was broken up in 1905 because of the great financial burden of the big tour.
Fanciulli continued to compose and conduct until his death on July 17th, 1915, in the German Hospital in New York, after an illness of several months. He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York. His manuscripts are in the Americana Collection of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.