Oscar-winning composer dies

Ennio Morricone, pictured, one of the world’s bestknown and most prolific film composers, died in Rome yesterday.

Morricone, 91, died in hospital where he was being treated for a fractured femur following a fall, media reports said, quoting a statement from a lawyer.

He composed the music for about 500 films, including his old school friend Sergio Leone’s 1966 spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Quentin Tarantino’s The

Hateful Eight, for which he won an Oscar in 2016.

A statement issued by his lawyer and family friend Giorgio Assumma said Morricone “passed away in the early hours of 6 July with the comfort of his faith”.

He remained “fully lucid and with great dignity right until the end”, the statement said.

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza wrote in a tweet: “Adieu maestro, and thank you for the emotions you gave us.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, embarrassed that such a talent had not been recognised sooner, presented him with a lifetime achievement award in 2007.

Morricone’s previous nominations were for Days

of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991) and Malena (2000).

Although he is most closely associated in the public mind with Leone’s westerns starring Clint Eastwood, Morricone’s composition for Roland Joffe’s Jesuit drama The Mission is considered by many critics to be his cinematic masterpiece, an epic and eclectic reflection of South America’s musical melting

pot. –