ENNIO MORRICONE
10/11/1928 - 06/07/2020

Sad news this week with the announcement a few days ago of the death of the legendary composer Ennio Morricone, who has left us at the grand old age of 91. An absolute master of his craft, Morricone will go down in history - if he hasn't already - as arguably the greatest movie composer of all time. The architects of your favourite film themes of the past forty years or so - John Williams, James Horner, Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newman, Alan Silvestri, Michael Giacchino, Clint Mansell - all of them owe a debt to the Italian maestro. He was, without doubt, the best there ever was.

Born in Rome and spending his entire life in Italy, Morricone was taught by his trumpet-playing father to master a number of instruments, before entering the local conservatory at the age of 12 to enrol in a four-year program which he completed in just 6 months. After subsequently obtaining several diplomas in orchestral composition, Morricone found himself composing, writing and arranging pieces for theatre and radio dramas before moving into film composing in the early 50's. To supplement his income, he also at this time found himself playing in jazz bands and writing songs for a number of successful Italian artists such as Gianni Morandi, Jimmy Fontana and Rita Pavone. In later years he would also work with Paul Anka, Francois Hardy, Demis Roussos and even British synth-pop heroes The Pet Shop Boys.

Morricone's first major forays into movie scores were with standard Italian comedies that were big hits with younger movie fans, but it was his collaboration with his fellow Italian Sergio Leone - who was just making waves in the mid-60's with his so-called 'Spaghetti Westerns' - that broke Morricone through into the wider consciousness. His scores for the Clint Eastwood starring A Fistful Of Dollars, A Few Dollars More and the peerless The Good, The Bad And The Ugly were remarkable pieces - all twanging guitars, sweeping strings, thunderous drums and eerie whistles and howls. There is unlikely to be any movie fan alive who doesn't know where the "Aieee, aiee, aiii!" theme comes from. The final stretch of that third movie's score - the extraordinary 'Ecstasy Of Gold' - has probably become Morricone's most famous piece of music, used as it has been by the world's biggest rock band Metallica as their walk-on music for every gig they've played since 1984. (After Ennio's death, Metallica frontman James Hetfield tweeted that Morricone would always be part of the Metallica family). Morricone's scores for Leone - which also included the later classics Once Upon A Time In The West and Once Upon A Time In America - opened the Hollywood door for him and he grabbed his chance with both hands. Later scores included such remarkable work as Two Mules For Sister Sara, The Battle Of Algiers, Days Of Heaven, The Mission, The Untouchables, Casualties Of War, Frantic, Hamlet, State Of Grace, Malena and Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight. On top of all this, he also found the time to score a multitude of TV shows as well as continuing with his membership of the avant-garde, psychedelia inspired collaborative The Group And New Consonance who specialised in free improvisation. Truly, the man was a musical marvel.

Across his career, Morricone composed nigh on 500 scores, and received a plethora of awards including various certificates and commendations as well as seven Grammy nominations and six Oscar nods, finally winning for The Hateful Eight in 2016 - although he had won an honorary Oscar ten years previously. For myself personally, it's extremely difficult to pick a favourite score of his but his work with Leone on the 'Dollars' trilogy would certainly be up there. Also, the Bridge Shootout theme in The Untouchables takes some beating. There's also 'Gabriel's Oboe' from The Mission, 'Cockeye's Song' from Once Upon A Time In America, 'Red Rock' from The Hateful Eight, and his astonishingly tense and dramatic score for John Carpenter's The Thing from 1983. For pure, unadulterated Morricone magic though, look no further than the utterly outstanding track 'Guerra e Pace, Pollo e Brace' which, if you can find it, will change your life. A head-spinninng rush of crashing percussion, flowing funk guitars and a screeching children's choir, it was released as part of a soundtrack package to the 1968 psychological Italian drama 'Grazie Zia' and is a crate-digger's dream. Basically, the man could do everything and he was utterly brilliant at all of it.
Arrividerci, Ennio.
Grazie.