Tributes pour in for the Modena-born "cantautore" whose songs and writing shaped half a century of Italian culture.Francesco Guccini, one of Italy's most influential singer-songwriters and a towering figure in the tradition of cantautori, has died at the age of 86.  He passed away on Thursday morning at his home in Pavana, with his wife Raffaella and daughter Teresa by his side.   His family said that, in keeping with Guccini's final wishes, his funeral would be held privately in the coming days. A public memorial ceremony is expected to take place in September to allow admirers to pay their respects. Who was Francesco Guccini? Born in Modena on 14 June 1940, Guccini moved to Bologna in 1961, the city that would become the emotional and artistic centre of his life, while maintaining a deep attachment to Pavana, where his family had taken refuge during world war two. He began playing guitar as a teenager, inspired by the arrival of rock and roll in Italy, and started writing songs by the late 1950s.   Over a career spanning more than five decades, Guccini became one of the defining voices of Italian song-writing, blending social commentary, history, poetry and irony.   He first found an audience through collaborations with bands including I Nomadi and Equipe 84, who performed his early compositions, among them Auschwitz and Dio è morto, before he began his own solo career as a performer in 1967.   His breakthrough albums of the 1970s, including Radici (1972), which featured his celebrated eight-minute epic La locomotiva, and Via Paolo Fabbri 43 (1976), cemented his reputation as one of the country's foremost songwriters.   His self-deprecating anthem L'Avvelenata, a sharp response to critics and the music industry, became one of his signature works, even though he later expressed mixed feelings about it. Beyond music Guccini was also a prolific writer, producing autobiographical novels and noir fiction, and he worked occasionally as a screenwriter, comic-book author, film composer and actor.   He taught Italian language at the Bologna campus of Dickinson College, and his contribution to Italian culture was honoured with the naming of an asteroid, a species of cactus and a butterfly subspecies after him.   Guccini released his final solo album, L'ultima Thule, in 2012, having decided in advance that it would mark the end of his recording and touring career, a promise he largely kept, aside from later albums of traditional cover songs.   His last interview, published in the Corriere della Sera on 31 December, was described by commentators as characteristically frank and clear-eyed. Tributes News of his death prompted an outpouring of tributes from across Italian politics and culture.   Former prime minister Romano Prodi said the region of Emilia-Romagna had lost one of its great masters, describing Guccini as a singular voice capable of capturing the land, its people and its everyday joys and nostalgia through his music and writing.   "Guccini told the story of Italy with extraordinary depth and humanity" - Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri wrote on social media - "He gave voice to the dreams, doubts, battles and fragilities of entire generations, transforming words into poetry and songs into collective memory".   Commentators and fellow artists likewise recalled him as one of the last century's most important Italian intellectuals, whose songs wove together music, literature and civic engagement, and who remained fiercely attached, throughout his life, to the unpretentious world of the osterie and dance halls where his career began. Photo credit: Eugenio Marongiu / Shutterstock.com

Photo credit: Eugenio Marongiu / Shutterstock.com