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Ennio Morricone

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Ennio Morricone.
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Ennio Morricone.

Ennio Morricone (born November 10, 1928, Rome) is an Italian composer especially noted for his film scores. He has composed the scores of more than 500 films and TV series. Although only 30 of these are for Western films, it is for this work which he is best known. Morricone's sparse style of composition for the genre is particularly exemplified by the soundtracks of the classic spaghetti westerns, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968). In more recent years, his haunting scores for The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986), The Untouchables (Brian DePalma, 1987), Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988), and Lolita (Adrian Lyne, 1997) have demonstrated his giftedness and the power of his work. He is also credited as Dan Savio.

Contents

Biography

Morricone was born in Rome and was educated at the Conservatory of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in the trumpet and composition under Goffredo Petrassi, and choral music and choral direction. In the beginning, he regarded himself to be destined to compose modern classical music, but this changed when he was invited to write arrangements for popular Italian songs, something that was completely unfamiliar to him at that time. A particular success was the song Se telefonando sung by Mina.

In 1956 he married Maria Travia. He began writing music for films in 1962 but continued to work in classical composition and arrangement. In 1964 he began his famous collaboration with Sergio Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci. For Leone he wrote the score for A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964) and continued with a number of other Spaghetti Western films. By 1968 he was reducing his work outside of film and in the same year wrote twenty scores for films. His collaboration with Leone is considered one of the finest collaborations between a director and a composer. He scored all of Leone's films from A Fistful of Dollars to Once Upon a Time in America. His score of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in particular is his most famous and along with the William Tell Overture is one of the most recognized sounds ever affiliated with the Western genre. Although he is most famous for writing the scores of Leone's films, he was more at ease with directors such as Giuliano Montaldo and Gillo Pontecorvo. Morricone frequently collaborated with childhood friend Alessandro Alessandroni, who performed as the whistler on many of the Sergio Leone soundtracks.

He received his first Nastro d'Argento in 1970 for the music in Metti, una Sera a Cena (Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, 1969) and his second only a year later for Sacco and Vanzetti (Guiliano Montaldo, 1971). He received his first nomination for an Academy Award in 1979 for the score to Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978) and another in 1986 for The Mission, 1987 for The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987), 1991 for Bugsy (Barry Levinson, 1991) and 2001 for Malèna (Giuseppe Tornatore, 2000).

He composed over two dozen scores for the Italian Mafia TV series La Piovra. See La Piovra 2 (soundtrack), La Piovra 3 (soundtrack), La Piovra 4 (soundtrack), La Piovra 5 (soundtrack).

Morricone's film music has been recorded by other artists on a number of occasions: Hugo Montenegro had a hit with a version of the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in both the UK and the US and followed it up with an album of Morricone's music in 1968, and John Zorn recorded an album of Morricone's music, The Big Gundown, in the mid-1980s. More recently Morricone collaborated with world music artists, like Portuguese fado singer Dulce Pontes (in 2003) and virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma (in 2004), who both recorded albums of Morricone classics with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra and Morricone himself conducting. Metallica uses Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold as an intro at their concerts. The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra also played it on Metallica's Symphonic Rock album S&M. Ramones used the theme from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as a concert intro. The theme from A Fistful Of Dollars is also used as a concert intro by The Mars Volta.

In 2003 he scored the Japanese Taiga drama about Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's legendary warrior.

In 2005 he was on a world tour with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra, touring from cities like New York, Bilbao, Bratislava and Tokyo.

In 2006 the soundtrack maestro is set to make a guest appearance on the Morrissey album Ringleader of the Tormentors, scoring the string part for Dear God, Please Help Me, recorded in Rome's Forum Music Village Studios.

Prizes and Awards

Soundtrack filmography

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994–1998 2000–2004

TV films & series

Films with songs by Morricone

?(Al)La scoperta dell'America (Sergio Giordani, 1977)?

See also: List of classical compositions

References

External links

 

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