Mauro Giuseppe Sergio Pantaleo Giuliani (27 July 1781 – 8 May 1829) was an Italian guitarist, cellist, singer, and composer.
Although born in Bisceglie, Giuliani's center of study was in Barletta where he moved with his brother Nicola in the first years of his life.
He achieved significant success and became a musical celebrity, equal to the best of the many instrumentalists and composers who were active in the Austrian capital city at the beginning of the 19th century.
He was acquainted with the highest figures of Austrian society and with notable composers such as Rossini and Beethoven, and cooperated with the best active concert musicians in Vienna.
He developed a teaching career here as well; among his numerous students were Jan Nepomucen Bobrowicz and Felix Horetzky.
During this Neapolitan period, he appeared frequently in duo concert with his daughter Emilia, who had become a skilled performer on the guitar.
Giuliani's expression and tone in guitar playing were astonishing, and a competent critic said of him: "He vocalized his adagios to a degree impossible to be imagined by those who never heard him; his melody in slow movements was no longer like the short, unavoidable staccato of the piano, requiring profusion of harmony to cover the deficient sustension of notes, but it was invested with a character, not only sustained and penetrating, but of so earnest[3] and pathetic[4] a description as to make it appear the natural characteristic of the instrument.
He had a remarkable ability to weave a melody into a passage with musical effect while remaining true to the idiom of the instrument.
He composed extremely challenging pieces for solo guitar as well as works for orchestra and Guitar-Violin and Guitar-Flute duos.
However, he left behind a vast collection of studies and exercises that are still used in a guitarist's early training today: Of the instruments used by Giuliani, there are guitars made by: