Best Western music genius
Movie composer legend Ennio Morricone dies at 91
THE musical genius behind the whistling, whip-cracking, bellringing theme tune to A Fistful of Dollars has died, aged 91.
Italian composer Ennio Morricone wrote more than 400 film scores and won an Oscar for his music for Quentin Tarantino movie The Hateful Eight in 2016.
But it is his work on 1960s Spaghetti Westerns with his schoolmate Sergio Leone that is most instantly recognisable.
He wrote the music for the Leone trilogy which made Clint Eastwood a star – A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly .
Morricone used unconventional instruments, such as amplified harmonicas, mariachi trumpets, and the ocarina – an ancient Chinese instrument shaped like an egg.
The music was accompanied by the sounds of whistling, the cracking of whips, gunshots and noises inspired by wild animals, including coyotes.
But he never liked the association with the Spaghetti Westerns. He said: “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.”
The composer, known as the Maestro, passed away in a Rome hospital yesterday of complications after he broke his leg in a fall. Born in Rome in 1928 in the time of Mussolini, he learned music from his dad, a trumpeter in small orchestras. Morricone first wrote music for theatre and radio and later was a studio arranger for record labels, working with some of Italy’s biggest pop stars in the 1950s and 1960s.
His first feature film credit was for Luciano Salce’s Il Federale in 1961, and in 2007 he won a lifetime achievement Oscar for decades of work that included scores for the 1987 mobster movie The Untouchables and 1991 crime drama Bugsy.
One of the few Italians to become a Hollywood legend without living there, Morricone
The Hateful Eight
1. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
2. For a Few Dollars More
3. A Fistful of Dollars
4. Once Upon a Time in America
5. The Untouchables
6. Bugsy
7. The Hateful Eight
8. The Mission
9. Cinema Paradiso
10. Days of Heaven said a studio once offered him a luxurious villa in California, but he turned it down. He said: “Rome is my home. All my friends are here, as well as plenty of directors who love me and appreciate my work.
Morricone married Maria Travia in 1956. They had four children.
Film composer Hans Zimmer, who won an Oscar for The Lion King score in 1995, paid tribute. He said: “Ennio was an icon and icons just don’t go away.” Dance music duo Orbital said Morricone was a “great influence” and “one of the best film composers of all time”.
New Order frontman Bernard Sumner said: “He made beautiful emotional music and was the master of melody.”