Italo Lippolis was born in Bari on January 25, 1910 and began his composition studies with Davide Delle Cese (1856-1938) at the "Niccolò Piccinni" Music Institute of his hometown, now the Homonymous Conservatory of Music... The Sonata for Viola and Piano composed by Italo Lippolis in 1956 is not a "unicum" of its kind, but a further precious acquisition to the wide and little known 19th-century Italian repertoire dedicated to viola.