Ennio Morricone has died
hollywoodreporter.com
hollywoodreporter.com
However, I can see a similar approach in Masaru Satō's music for Kurosawa's Samurai movies with its sparse instrumentation and inclusion of jazz elements. The whole score is in stark contrast to the music of earlier Jidai-geki movies, which also favoured large sweeping orchestral music.
Given the fact that "A Fistful of Dollars" was basically a remake of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", I have been wondering if Morricone had been influenced by Satō in any way.
That makes sense.
Another thing I noticed is that the harmonic and melodic language Morricone's early Italo Western music has striking similarities to instrumental guitar tunes of the 60s by artists like The Shadows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgbcyfJgfQ) or Neil LeVang (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir7fjfqzcOM).
Anyway, like most great artists, Morricone borrowed from various sources to create his own unique style. Even Mozart, whose style many people would nowadays describe as very "pure", was accused by contemporary critics of being too eclectic.
He was very well aware of the contemporary classical/experimental music scene and you can hear the influence in his scores.
Guess that makes "Once Upon A Time In The West" the one where he fused the US-American style with his own
Your first big film success was A Fist Full of Dollars, whose score is very different from that of the Hollywood Westerns. Your cultural perspective is obviously different. What were the stimuli?
The stimulus was the film itself. Leone had made an ironic and, in a certain sense, a grotesque film in that it was funny, a caricature. It was necessary to respect the clarity that Leone wanted for his characters. Besides, I was not, and am not, a specialist in American folk music, so what sense was there in my treating the characters like Americans? If that is required, use an American composer. So, I treated Leone’s characters by attempting to re-invent, in my way, American folk, bearing in mind certain musical and technical data. And then the caricatured treatment of the characters encouraged me to introduce strange sounds into the score so that the character would have the charisma Leone wanted.
Not that I know much about it, but I find music in some old japanese movies very interesting, like Woman In The Dunes (https://youtu.be/UFbJ9iDeZgg) or Kwaidan (https://youtu.be/v_OFoOwzPZY)
BTW, the film music for both movies you've linked has been written by Tōru Takemitsu, one of the most important contemporary classical composers of Japan in the 20th century. He is also quite well known outside of Japan (at least in New Music circles).
Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone has to be one of the greatest partnerships in film history, so many unforgetable moments:
Here is a very good old interview, with several references to their collaboration:
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2016/12/11/morricone-interview...
Their last film together:
Hear hear, one of the most evocative pieces ever written, sends shivers down my spine every time. A real masterpiece.
This was one of few movies from the west that was allowed behind iron curtain, it became part of my childhood. I've seen it at least 15 times, it never gets boring even for a second. Timeless story, character, and the music... Leone/Morricone understood (in similar vein as George Lucas and others) that music can make one hell of atmosphere for the movie, much better than just awesome visuals and something mediocre in the background.
I like it even better than rest of Leone's movies, maybe a bit sentimental remainder from my childhood.
It's easy to miss that there was a lot of truly great art wrapped up with what we were taught was kitsch, camp, and schmaltz.
YMMV, but there is a Morricone highlight reel in there, along with some other epic stuff. If you are a Quentin Tarantino fan, you'll recognize things like L'Arena and others from Kill Bill, with a bunch of other homages.
I had a similar revelation seeing Don Rickles perform about 12 years ago. I went to see Rickles with a friend, but my primary motivation was to feel superior by basking in the kitsch of a dinosaur comedian from my parents' generation.
What I ended up seeing was a remarkably talented man who could sing, dance (in his 80s!), tell a joke, and hold the audience in the palm of his hand.
* edit: I also love this song by Morricone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G54OHh8lib0
The first track on the Dawnrazor album is a cover/rework of Morricone's "The Harmonica Man" which sets the album up quite nicely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLkqtb_AVjQ
As an aside from the Morricone thing, they were one of the best live bands I've seen in all my gig going history having been to see them aroun 10-12 times over the years.
While he was prolific (350+ movie scores credits on imdb), I really feel as I am re-experiencing the movie while listening to Morricone's soundtracks, more than from any other composer, especially for "Cinema Paradiso", "Frantic" and, I think, the most meaningful Spaghetti Western, "Duck, You Sucker" (!).
1. I have distinct childhood memories of the score from Once Upon a Time in the West from when my dad watched it (and then watching it myself). It still stirs something deep, that's not just nostalgia.
2. Following Mike Patton's musical journey and finding the haunting version The Ballad of Hank McCain in collaboration with John Zorn - from an album composed entirely of covers of Ennio Morricone tracks (The Big Gundown).
I'll need to educate myself further.
He was for me the biggest composer of the second half of 20th century, which just happened to do music for films (also for some Italian pop music, but it was less prolific there).
Requiescat in Pace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3SAOQfMA44
My thought exactly. He actually made film music a genre by itself - even though I like to think of film music the other way round and tend to consider that it's actually the last refuge of well-written, and in that sense "classical", music. Come to think of it, it's actually film music that unifies the wildly different, highly creative, rich and thoughtful music from Glass to Legrand, from Vangelis to Morricone, from Sakamoto to Metheny.
Metallica introduced me to his music and then I explored a lot. Had a privilege to witness his performance live once. Ennio Morricone is a legend! RIP Maestro!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hmtzRo-Qro8
Anyone who hasn't been in a Metallica concert, it is totally worth it, especially their (always the same) intro!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKypYslGEA8
Although it was enough to get me to pick up "Yo-yo Ma plays Ennio Morricone" that I also recommend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQCGvfBc-oI&list=PL2D68C2EE4...
Despite the huge list of movies he has composed for, the only one I might have seen is "Lorenzo's Oil", and I'm not sure if I actually saw it or just heard the name quite a bit due to living in Pittsburgh at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Ennio_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ecstasy_of_Gold
"American metal band Metallica has used "The Ecstasy of Gold" as the introductory music for its concerts since 1984."
Fun fact: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly did not receive an academy award nomination in any category.
He probably never cared for public fame.
His death is now a major headline on news sites from several different countries, too.
Actually it is not Morricone public recognition that we should worry about since it is already quite wide, but the fact that he's almost the only Italian composer to get all the fame, while there is so many of them that deserve better recognition, including Morricone collaborators such as Bruno Nicolai and Allessandroni which is responsible for the infamous whistling in Morricone scores.
For the generation who grew up with the Fistful series, they probably know Ennio Morricone is extricably linked to Sergio Leone, much in the same way my generation knows John Williams and George Lucas are linked.
Great cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIipUjO2ckk
1. How did Adam and the Ants never get sued over "Jolly Roger"? [1] The melody and even the arrangement are pretty much a straight copy of Morricone's "The March of the MacGregors" [2] from the movie "7 Guns for the MacGregors". Morricone should have at least got songwriting credit on "Jolly Roger", but it is just credited to Marco Pirroni and Adam Ant.
2. There are some interesting covers of Morricone songs. The Ramones did "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" in some of their live shows. Their version was pretty straightforward...if you heard it in isolation you would not have thought "Ramones".
Wall of Voodoo did "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly". Their version sounded like a Wall of Voodoo song.
Great music stays great even if arranged for and played on instruments quite different from what it was written for. An example of that is the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain's version of "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" [3].
3. If all that comes to mind when you hear the name Ennio Morricone is a bunch of great spaghetti western music, it is worth getting a compilation or two of his work and listening to it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR4n-oo32Jg
I can't find it now, but in an interview Carpenter said something like that when he first worked with Morricone on this film, the latter came up with a very flowery, melodic theme, and Carpenter went to visit him but had trouble getting his ideas across to Morricone because of the language barrier, so he just said (through a translator): "Less notes"[2], and this is what Morricone came up with.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfcc9U35hPY
[2] - Which reminds me of the "too many notes" scene from Amadeus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6_eqxh-Qok), but unlike Mozart, who took offense, Morricone seems to have taken the suggestion in stride and come up with a classic.
I’ve listened to Morricone scores more often than I can count. This is very sad news. He was still working too.
Fagen: But isn't it true that the Leone films, with their elevation of mythic structures, their comic book visual style and extreme irony, are now perceived as signaling an aesthetic transmutation by a generation of artists and filmmakers? And isn't it also true that your music for those films reflected and abetted Leone's vision by drawing on the same eerie catalog of genres - Hollywood western, Japanese samurai, American pop, and Italian Opera? That your scores functioned both "inside" the film as a narrative voice and "outside" the film as the commentary of a winking jester? Put it all together and doesn't it spell "postmodern", in the sense that there has been a grotesque encroachment of the devices of art and, in fact, an establishment of a new narrative plane founded on the devices themselves? Isn't that what's attracting lower Manhattan?
Morricone: [ shrugs ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JPnR7C8mZQ
Such a haunting piece of music.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/song?s=t
But in all seriousness, I'm sorry that happened to you, that's terrible.
For essentially every Italian, in Italy or abroad, Morricone is one of these timeless figures.
His work is considered by many so inspirational and innovative in its own way; and if you pick one of the many contributions he made to music or cinema, you will find layers and layers of details to unveil, often to reveal important aspects of Italy's culture of the second half of the 20th century.
As an example: he composed "Se telefonando" [0], performed by Mina and written by Maurizio Costanzo.
Mina is "the female voice" of Italy's economic boom (1950-1970). He was then ostracized by every media outlet (TV, newspapers, etc) because he had a son without being married, and the Church heavily condemned it.
Maurizio Costanzo is one of the most important figures in Italian TV, and has had a show, the "Maurizio Costanzo show", for decades. Think of him as the Italian Oprah.
You can do this hundreds of times with many pieces that Morricone composed or arranged.
He kept performing at concerts until recently, despite his old age. In Italy people often remember his last appearance at La Scala (the most iconic theatre in Milan, considered to be THE place for Opera and high music, among other things), and concerts at Arena di Verona (a smaller Colosseum in Verona, hometown of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet), the Colosseum in Rome, and the "Terme di Caracalla" also in Rome (ancient public bath houses, the second largest ever built).
He will be truly missed.
So long.
Absolutely beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbHP9NtSnB0
Seeing a coloratura soprano do The Ecstasy Of Gold right before me was mindblowing.
Wish more young people knew his stuff, but kids really get bombarded with John Williams' stuff when they watch Star Wars.
But yeah, Ennio Morricone is every bit as important and influential as John Williams.
I think though this usage has fallen out of favor and at any rate was probably more common among poor critics, I think nowadays it is understood that quantity of output might be necessary for some creators to achieve their best work (by producing some that is not as great as their best)
on edit: so the word is sometimes sort of a snob-whistle, ooh prolific, well they're saying he's not that good then. But I doubt that is the way it is being used here.
Also, I think nobody would use it as their company name if that word was even remotely related to low quality:) http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/index.aspx
I just thought it was unlikely that anyone would consider the kind of snobbish attitude that I described as a deterrent to picking their name, or that they would even be necessarily familiar with it, as that would mean spending a lot of time reading somewhat antiquated literary theory.
but I guess I caused good people to waste their time, thereby.
So you agree that it's not an indication of quality, but claim that it's pejorative. Why?
> Morricone was more than prolific;
But he was prolific.
Wikipedia on Mozart:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart[a] (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart,[b] was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period.
British Library on Beethoven:
Ludwig van Beethoven was a very prolific composer, producing many symphonies, concertos, piano sonatas, violin sonatas, an opera, masses and several overtures.
NY Times on Bach:
If any measure of quality is applied to such a comparison, as it must be, Bach was one of the most prolific composers who ever lived; that meager output from Cöthen, for example, includes the “Brandenburg” Concertos, the orchestral suites, other concertos and the astounding solo works for violin and for cello.