Maestro of film, Italy’s Morricone, dead at 91
ENNIO Morricone, one of the world’s best-known and most prolific film composers, died in Rome yesterday at the age of 91.
Tributes poured in for the man who composed the music for about 500 films, including his childhood friend Sergio Leone’s 1966 spaghetti western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” for which he finally won an Oscar in 2016.
Morricone died in hospital where he was being treated for a fractured femur following a fall, according to a statement from lawyer and family friend Giorgio Assuma.
Morricone “passed away in the early hours of July 6 with the comfort of his faith,” the statement said. “He remained “fully lucid and with great dignity right until the end.”
Tributes began pouring in for the maestro soon after his death was announced.
“We will remember forever and with infinite gratitude the artistic genius of maestro Ennio Morricone,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said.
“He made us dream, he moved us and made us think, writing unforgettable notes that will remain forever in the history of music and cinema,” he said.
Italian film actress Monica Bellucci said of Morricone that “there are people who have the ability to make the world better because they know how to create beauty,” while Gilles Jacob, the former head of the Cannes film festival, described him as the “emperor” of film music.
Famed Italian conductor Riccardo Muti called Morricone “a master for whom I nurtured friendship and admiration,” describing him as an “extraordinary musician.”
Born on November 10, 1928, Morricone began composing at the age of six, and at just 10 he enrolled in trumpet school at the prestigious Saint-Cecilia conservatory in Rome.
He played in jazz bands throughout the 1940s before beginning to ghost write for film and theater.
(AFP)