[1] He was born on 12 December 1935 in London, UK to an Italian father and an English mother, and brought up in Richmond, Surrey.
From 1949, aged 13, he attended the Royal College of Music as a Junior Exhibitioner, studying with William Lloyd Webber.
Policy changes at the BBC's 'Third Programme' resulted in his music being sidelined in favour of serial and avant-garde experimentation, and Martelli rapidly vanished from the schedules.
In the early 1970s council workers unexpectedly emptied his storage space and mistakenly burnt all of his manuscripts, resulting in the only extant scores being those that were already in print by the late 1950s.
[7] This, and other original pieces such as Aubade (1984) and Promenade (1985), shifted the focus of his composition towards light music and received broadcasts and performances by the BBC Concert Orchestra.