Ennio Morricone: 1928 - 2020

Oscar-winning film composer Ennio Morricone has passed away at 91.

A composer, orchestrator, and conductor who composed over 400 scores for film and television in a career that spanned over 70 years…Ennio Morricone was born in Rome in 1928. His first music teacher was his father Mario, who taught him how to read music and play several different instruments. He entered the National Academy of St. Cecilia to take trumpet lessons before the age of 12. He studied the trumpet, composition, and choral music and completed a four-year program in just six months. 

After graduating in 1954, he started to write and arrange music for films as a ghost writer for well-known composers. His earliest scores credited to him were Italian comedy and costume films.  In 1964, his career took off when he was hired by former classmate Sergio Leone, and together they created a unique score for Leone’s “Spaghetti Western”,  A FISTFULL OF DOLLARS…starring Clint Eastwood. Because of budget restraints, Morricone used gunshots, cracking whips, whistles, and electric guitars to create a signature sound that he would be known for. He would compose for Leone’s two follow-ups in his Dollars Trilogy; FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966). He would go on to compose for Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), and Leone’s last Western, A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE (1971). 

Morricone would compose for many films, with notables such as EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977), DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978), THE THING (1982), ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984), THE MISSION (1986), THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987), CINEMA PARADISO (1988), CASUALTIES OF WAR (1989), BUGSY (1991), WOLF (1994), BULWORTH (1998), MALENA (2000), and MISSION TO MARS (2000). 

In 2015 he would win an Oscar for Quentin Tarantino’s Western THE HATEFUL EIGHT. This was after five previous nominations and an Honorary Award in 2007 that recognized his lifetime achievement. In 2005 four of his film scores were nominated by the American Film Institute for an honored place in the AFI’s Top 25 Best American Film Scores of All Time. In 2009 the Recording Academy inducted his score for THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Over his career he would win four Grammy’s, four ASCAP Awards, and six BAFTA Awards. 

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In 1983, the heavy metal group Metallica started running Morricone’s famous track, The Ecstasy of Gold as a prelude to their shows; a tradition that continues to this day. The track’s wonderful build-up sets the mood for their shows perfectly, and anyone who has been to their shows or viewed the live recordings would have to be soul-less to not get the chills. Morricone’s music was non-traditional at first, but its uniqueness became tradition and influenced not only future film composers but other musical acts as well (the Metallica track The Unforgiven was a direct homage). Over the years, his compositions for Sergio Leone’s trilogy of Westerns have earned even more respect, and at this point…his scores for those films have become synomonous with the cowboy and the Old West. Today he rides into the sunset, and we can’t help but to hear the crack of the whip as he does.