Monday, July 6, 2020

Legendary music composer Ennio Morricone passes away

Ennio Morricone wrote for hundreds of films, television programmes, popular songs and orchestras, but it was his friendship with Italian director Sergio Leone that brought him fame, with scores for Spaghetti Westerns starring Clint Eastwood in the 1960s.

Ennio Morricone, whose scores for movies such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Mission and Cinema Paradiso made him one of the world’s most famous and prolific screen composers, has died, ANSA news agency said on Monday. He was 91.

ANSA said Morricone, who won two Oscars and dozens of others awards including Golden Globes, Grammys and BAFTAs, broke his femur some days ago and died during the night in a clinic in Rome.

His last Oscar was in 2016 for best original score for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.

He first declined the job, but then relented, demanding that Tarantino allow him a “total break with the style of Western films I wrote 50 years ago.”

Ennio Morricone wrote for hundreds of films, television programmes, popular songs and orchestras, but it was his friendship with Italian director Sergio Leone that brought him fame, with scores for Spaghetti Westerns starring Clint Eastwood in the 1960s.

They include the so-called Dollars Trilogy – A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Ennio Morricone used unconventional instruments such as the Jew’s harp, amplified harmonica, mariachi trumpets, cor anglais and the ocarina – an ancient Chinese instrument shaped like an egg.

The music was accompanied by real sounds such as whistling, cracking of whips, gunshots and sounds inspired by wild animals including coyotes.

He always tried to shake off the association with the Spaghetti Westerns, reminding people, particularly outside Italy, that he had a very creative and productive life before and after the films he made with Leone.

“It’s a strait-jacket. I just don’t understand how, after all the films I have done, people keep thinking about A Fistful of Dollars. People are stuck back in time, 30 years ago,” the Maestro, as he was known in Italy, told Reuters in 2007.

“My production for Westerns is maybe 7-1/2 or 8 percent of what I have done overall.”

One of Ennio Morricone’s most evocative soundtracks was for the 1986 film The Mission, by Roland Joffe, for which he was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe.

To accompany the story of the Jesuit missions in 18th century South America, Morricone used European style liturgical chorales and native drums to convey the mix of the old and new worlds.

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