morricone film history tour

Travel the World With Ennio Morricone’s Evocative Film Scores

Celebrate the maestro’s first Oscar with a musical trip across the continents

Jackie Mansky

It’s taken decades, but after composing more than 450 film scores by his count (IMDB clocks him in at more than 500), Ennio Morricone is finally getting his due in Hollywood. Last night, Il maestro , as he is fondly known, accepted his first competitive Oscar for the score of The Hateful Eight , becoming one of the oldest— if not the oldest —Academy Award winners of all time.

He may be best known for scoring some of Hollywood’s most popular Westerns, but the 87-year-old composer’s career is truly global. Morricone was born in Rome in 1928 and studied the trumpet at the city's National Academy of Santa Cecilia. At first, he played in an experimental jazz band and arranged music for pop acts, but Sergio Leone, a budding film director who also happened to be a former classmate of Morricone's, changed the musician's path. Morricone's work on Leone’s Dollars trilogy— A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly —changed perceptions of what a Western could be and put the composer on the radar of the world's greatest filmmakers.

Today, Westerns amount to only a sliver of his vast body of work. But whether he's composing and arranging music for a drama, horror or sci-fi picture, Morricone has a singular ability to create scores that establish audiences in a particular place. He achieves the effect by creating familiar, yet new sounds, borrowing musical inspirations from anywhere and everywhere.

His scores are integral to the images that run alongside them. "Soundtrack follows the image reading,” Morricone explained to London’s Radio One . “Subsequently, [the] director changes the film editing to make it fit perfectly with the music composed for the film. It’s a reciprocal interaction between music and image that should always follow this order.”

That perfect dance between image and music has finally earned the composer the Academy recognition he deserves. (Though it should be noted that he previously won an honorary Oscar at the 2007 Academy Awards.) The prolific composer shows no signs of slowing down. Last year, he went on tour as an orchestra conductor, celebrating 60 years of his music , this month, he was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he has already committed to scoring Quentin Tarantino's next project .

Morricone’s evocative scores are like a trip around the world. From the distinctive “ah-ee-ah-ee-ah” coyote howl from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that calls to mind a dusty shoot-'em-up town in the American West to the sweeping “Love Theme” piano ballad from Cinema Paradiso that brings a secluded Sicilian village to life, the maestro’s music crisscrosses the globe. Follow along on a tour of his most memorable scores and the locations that inspired them.

Almeria, Spain

Sergio Leone's  Dollars trilogy is synonymous with America’s Wild West. But in reality, the “spaghetti Westerns” (a phrase that Morricone found "annoying and unpleasant" ) borrowed most of their visuals from Spain.

Morricone's soaring, playful score, whether it's those quieting whistles or chaotic electric guitar notes, was designed to evoke the landscape of a desert in Almeria, Spain. Tabernas, which is Europe's only desert, is no stranger to the movie-making world. Travelers who pay a visit to “Mini-Hollywood,” as it is called, can check out three sites that pay homage to the trilogy: the Oasys Theme Park , Fort Bravo and Western Leone . 

Sicily, Italy

Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 Cinema Paradiso  is both a love note to film and a tribute to Italy, the native country of both the director and Morricone.

The film's setting is the fictional Sicilian village of Giancaldo, inspired by Bagheria, Tornatore's birthplace. Viewers looking to find the place that fits the sweet, haunting score, composed by Morricone with his son Andrea, need look no further than Via Nino Bixio, where much of the film was shot. Though the set itself has been taken down, some filming locations still remain.

But the best place to capture the feel of the film is  Cefalù , located on Sicily's north coast. Its Porta Marina is the site of one of the film's pivotal romantic moments when an outdoor screening of Ulysses is interrupted by the rain. There's plenty more romance to be found in this storybook seaside resort, which is set against the beautiful backdrop of La Rocca .

The border of Argentina and Brazil

Morricone fused Spanish and Guaraní instruments and sounds to create the emotional backdrop of  The Mission . The story follows Jesuit missionaries who travel to South America to convert Guaraní people to Christianity in the 18th century. Morricone relied heavily on the oboe to create the Oscar-nominated score, as he told  National Catholic Register 's Edward Pentin . 

While the film itself is problematic— critics slammed it  for its violence and its portrayal of enslaved indigenous peoples—its settings are striking. Roger Ebert writes that its locations within the borderlands of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil are "spectacular—especially a waterfall that supplies the great opening image of a crucified missionary floating to his doom."

The waterfall is Iguazu Falls , which straddles Brazil and Argentina. The falls' 275 individual drops are so incredible that when Eleanor Roosevelt saw them, she allegedly commented , "Poor Niagara."

Casbah of Algiers

Director  Gillo Pontecorvo didn't incorporate newsreel footage into his semi-documentary The Battle of Algiers , which records Algeria’s struggle against French rule in 1954, but he did film where the events actually took place, mostly in the Casbah of Algiers.

This is one of the few films in which Morricone shares his composer credit, alongside Pontecorvo. Morricone credits the director with coming up with those four notes that “ became the essence of the film, ” but IndieWire 's Nikola Grozdanovic adds that " it was the Maestro himself who arranged them into the score."

Today, the Casbah of Algiers is a Unesco World Heritage Site . Located on the Mediterranean coast, it is filled with historic mosques and Ottoman-style palaces built around the citadel and contains remains of the trading post first established there in the 4th century B.C.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Morricone's Oscar-nominated score for Bugsy captures the seedy glamour of Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel, the 1940s mob boss who helped turn Las Vegas into a city of sin. The film's most powerful number, "Bugsy (Act of Faith)" has a haunting trumpet solo that sticks around long after the song, and film, ends.

Those looking to experience Sin City the way Siegel did can visit the hotel he helped create: the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino . Visitors can see a  bronze plaque memorializing Siegel near the hotel's wedding chapel or choose to stay where Siegel did, in the "Presidential Suite." When the mobster was in residence there , the suite contained bulletproof windows and a secret ladder in the closet—a direct route to the garage, where a getaway car was always at the ready.

Lower East Side, New York

For Sergio Leone's masterful gangster film, Once Upon a Time in America , Morricone mixed things up with pan pipes that paint an unforgettable picture of Manhattan's Lower East Side.

While the movie's famous bar, Fat Moe's, isn't real—it was created in Rome for the film, where a meticulous recreation of New York's Lower East Side was built— rumor has it that it was modeled after a real bar . It's the one where Leone first met the author of The Hoods , the book upon which Once Upon a Time in America is based. Today the area is much more gentrified than when Grey and Leone shared a drink, but Morricone's score preserves a sense of the city's run-down past.

Chicago, Illinois

Prohibition-era Chicago is on full display in the 1987 film The Untouchables , a gangster film that follows the struggles between lawman Eliot Ness and fabled mobster Al Capone. Morricone elevates the brutal, bloody period piece with a stylish, triumphant score.

Many historic Chicago locations add color to the music. As Vincent Canby writes in his review for the New York Times , the film "make extensive use of locations to be found only in Chicago." Recapture the movie's intrigue with visits to the  Auditorium Hotel and Theater , the Balaban & Katz Chicago Theater , which was used as Capone's hotel, and  The Rookery , an architectural masterpiece that served as the Chicago police headquarters in the film. 

Alberta, Canada

Terrence Malick's drama Days of Heaven captures the beauty of Texas prairies lovingly—and lavishly. The film has racked up its share of critiques for a lackluster plot, but that doesn't take away from its aesthetics.  The Village Voice called it "the most gorgeously photographed film ever made." But it's impossible to talk about the film without mentioning Morricone's equally beautiful score .

Like the Dollar franchise, Malick's drama wasn't shot in the Texas panhandle. Rather, its beautiful shots of wheat are captured in Canada—mostly Alberta, along with Calgary's Heritage Park . For those looking to run through four-foot-tall fields of wheat , Alberta’s golden-hued crops are the thing to visit. They  take over this northern destination in the fall.

Antarctica is one of Earth's most remote, far-flung locations—a location which captures the mood of John Carpenter's sci-fi horror movie, The Thing. The plot follows the horror that the title creature unleashes when it's thawed by researchers after being entombed in ice for thousands of years. Fittingly, Morricone's iconic score is full of paranoia, creating a slowly building sense of terror in the isolated Antarctic setting.

In an interesting pop culture wrinkle, when Quentin Tarantino approached Morricone to score The Hateful Eight , the composer was booked and couldn't commit to a full original score. But he realized that unused music from the Carpenter film could work in a new way to capture the dark, wintery setting of Tarantino's flick. It worked—as Morricone's new Oscar proves.

While the continent is famously inhospitable, intrepid adventurers looking for the chilling aesthetic Morricone captures in his score can join the approximately 37,000 visitors that make the trip to Antarctica each year. The number one way to go? Work for one of Antarctica's research stations, Outside magazine's Eric Larsen writes . Just don't thaw out any suspicious creatures during your stay.

Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.

Jackie Mansky | | READ MORE

Jacqueline Mansky is a freelance writer and editor living in Los Angeles. She was previously the assistant web editor, humanities, for Smithsonian magazine.

morricone film history

The Movie History in an outstanding performance

Morricone Film History retraces the extraordinary career of the great Italian composer who recently passed away, through his most famous and meaningful soundtracks.

From Sergio Leone's westerns to the last works for Tarantino's Hateful Eight, a journey into the history of cinema that celebrates the intensity of an artist in constant evolution, always ready to explore and to seek the perfect musical key for any movie. An outstanding career awarded with two Oscars and a star on the Walk Of Fame.

Morricone Film History is the final step of an artistic and research path begun by Stage11 in 2016. Today the show reaches its highest point bringing on stage a homage to the genius of cinema music with a 30-piece orchestra. The show is more than an occasion to listen to the music of the master live, it allows the audience to take part to the historical change of his creations, thanks to video projections that follow the evolution of his collaborations.

Morricone Film History is the special event that pays tribute to the master's extraordinary career with the music that is part of our history.

Orchestra & band: 31 elements Length: 100 min. Production / Aug 2020

Produced by - Emiliano Galigani, Simone Giusti, Federica Moretti A production - 9 Muse, Rockopera Directed by - Emiliano Galigani Video Production - Domenico Zazzara Production manager - Claudia Sturlini Booking - Francesco Bertoncini

GO TO THE PRIVATE AREA

The other shows.

Advertisement

Supported by

Critic’s Pick

‘Ennio’ Review: Morricone and His Mastery of Film Scores

A lively, absorbing documentary about the Italian composer whose music is featured in hundreds of movies, from “A Fistful of Dollars” to “Kill Bill.”

• Share full article

By Manohla Dargis

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “Days of Heaven,” “Before the Revolution,” “1900,” “The Untouchables,” “Kill Bill,” “Django Unchained,” “The Mission,” “The Thing,” “Fists in the Pocket,” “The Battle of Algiers,” “The Bird With the Crystal Plumage,” “Bugsy,” “Bulworth,” “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” — if you’ve watched a movie in the last half century there’s a good chance that you’ve heard music by Ennio Morricone, the titanic Italian composer and arranger who helped define films as we know and hear them.

When Morricone died at the age of 91 in 2020 , it seemed almost hard to believe given how expansive his reach had been and, well, how long he’d been part of my movie life. (His death was announced with a statement he titled: “I, Ennio Morricone, am dead.”) When I was a kid, we had an LP of his soundtrack for Gillo Pontecorvo’s “Burn!” (1970), a period epic about a British intelligence officer (Marlon Brando) who’s sent to a fictional Portuguese colony to stir up trouble. A audiocassette of the soundtrack is stashed somewhere in my house; every so often, I listen to it on Spotify and am again transported by Morricone’s soaring music.

In “Ennio,” a lively, absorbing documentary about the composer, Morricone discusses his work on “Burn!” and so many other films. Written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, it is a crowded, hyperventilated portrait stuffed with archival and original material, including interviews with Morricone shot in 2015 and 2016. Like several other filmmakers, Tornatore worked repeatedly with Morricone, a partnership that began with “Cinema Paradiso ” (1990), the director’s soppy heart-tugger about a friendship between a theater projectionist and the boy he schools who becomes a filmmaker. It’s perhaps no surprise that “Ennio” is another cinephilic paean.

6 Films Our Critics Are Talking About

Critic’s Pick | Not rated | Drama

Two lonely souls repeatedly encounter each other in this muted Belgian drama.

Read our full review.

Not rated | Comedy, drama

A director is compelled to take his cast and crew captive to shoot one more scene.

Out of Darkness

Critic’s Pick | R | Thriller

A Stone Age tribe is hunted by an unseen entity in this wondrously atmospheric survival thriller.

Laura Chinn’s film fictionalizes her brother’s slow death at the same time as Terri Schiavo’s ordeal.

Molli and Max in the Future

Critic’s Pick | Not rated | Romance, Sci-fi

In this sci-fi rom-com, two people meet-cute when their spaceships collide near an asteroid field.

Not rated | Comedy, thriller

Camila Morrone and Joe Keery play partners in crime in this comedy/thriller.

With help from Morricone, whose interviews anchor the documentary, Tornatore ably fills in the composer’s family history, though the details become sketchier as the musician’s fame steadily grows. Morricone’s father, Mario, was a trumpet player, and soon Ennio was playing it, too. He began composing music as a child and studied it formally at a conservatory in Rome, where one of his teachers was the composer Goffredo Petrassi . A force in Italian modernist music, Petrassi became a towering figure for his student, the embodiment of a serious patrimony that seemed (to some) at odds with Morricone’s commercial work.

One of the movie’s nice surprises is that Morricone turns out to be a total charmer, a low-key showman with a demure gaze that he works like a vamp and an impish smile that routinely punctuates one of his anecdotes. The movie opens with him speed walking in a circle inside a spacious, elegantly shambolic apartment before pausing to execute some calisthenics. It’s an amusing introduction that suggests Morricone’s vitality and determination, as if he were preparing for another leg in the extraordinary marathon of his life. Or maybe he was warming up for this movie, which runs 2 hours and 36 minutes, though never feels like a slog, even with its frustratingly unmodulated pacing. There’s much to see and to hear, most of it delightful.

Among the most engaging sections are those involving Morricone’s work with Sergio Leone. They first collaborated on Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars,” a western set in Mexico, shot in Spain and starring a television actor on hiatus, straight from Hollywood, named Clint Eastwood. Although Morricone and Leone shared some history, they were not initially on the same wavelength when they started work on the film. Leone was reinventing the genre and drawing liberally from many of his adored influences. He lifted the story from Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” (Kurosawa later sued), and Leone told Morricone that he wanted to use some music from Howard Hawks’s “Rio Bravo” for the climatic duel in “Dollars.”

Affronted that Leone would use someone else’s music, Morricone threatened to quit, but then, as happened throughout his life, he had a stroke of brilliance: He dusted off an old lullaby he’d written to which he added a choir and a lonely trumpet, creating a piece of music that was at once distinct and evoked what Leone admired in “Rio Bravo.” It had wit, drama, mystery and genre provenance. And it seemed to emerge from the character: As Eastwood’s gunslinger arrives to face his enemies in a town square, the trumpet mixes with the sounds of the hard-blowing wind and the character’s rhythmic footfalls, conveying his isolation and resolve. Like the film’s main theme — with its whistling and cracking whips — it also expresses Morricone.

It took a while for the world to catch up with what he was doing — and the way he bridged musical realms and blurred the lines between the serious and the pop until those lines became immaterial. It’s worth remembering that most American film critics hated “A Fistful of Dollars” when opened in the United States in 1967, three years after it blew up the Italian box office. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther was outraged by its violence, its “cool, non-hero” and absence of moralism. He and others also went after Morricone’s music, with Crowther writing that it “betrays tricks and themes that sound derivative.”

Crowther would probably have been surprised at the parade of Morricone true believers from every corner of the music and film worlds Tornatore has gathered in the movie: musicians like Joan Baez and Bruce Springsteen, directors like Quentin Tarantino and Wong Kar Wai, compatriots like John Williams and Quincy Jones. Eastwood is here, too, as he should be, and appears in some old behind-the-scenes footage and in a more recent interview in which he talks about “A Fistful of Dollars.” Morricone’s music, he says, helped “dramatize me, which is hard to do.” Eastwood delivers the line with a chuckle and with perfect timing that Morricone would surely have appreciated — genius like recognizes like.

Ennio Not rated. Viewers should know that the documentary includes disturbing images from Sept. 11. Running time: 2 hours 36 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell speak about how “Anyone but You” beat the rom-com odds. Here are their takeaways after the film , debuting on Netflix, went from box office miss to runaway hit.

The vampire ballerina in the new movie “Abigail” has a long pop culture lineage . She and her sisters are obsessed, tormented and likely to cause harm.

In a joint interview, the actors Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough discuss “Under the Bridge,” their new true-crime series  based on a teenager’s brutal killing in British Columbia.

The movie “Civil War” has tapped into a dark set of national angst . In polls and in interviews, a segment of voters say they fear the country’s divides may lead to actual, not just rhetorical, battles.

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A documentary on the legendary film composer Ennio Morricone. A documentary on the legendary film composer Ennio Morricone. A documentary on the legendary film composer Ennio Morricone.

• Giuseppe Tornatore
• Clint Eastwood
• Quentin Tarantino
• Hans Zimmer
• 31 User reviews
• 78 Critic reviews
• 75 Metascore
• 10 wins & 6 nominations

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Although the film had its world premiere in the 2021 Venice Festival, the passing of Ennio Morricone in 2020 - aged 91 - is purposely not acknowledged.
• Connections Features Fabiola (1949)

User reviews 31

• krzysiektom
• Jul 11, 2022

April 2024 TV and Streaming Premiere Dates

• How long is Ennio? Powered by Alexa
• February 17, 2022 (Italy)
• Netherlands
• Official site (Japan)
• The Glance of Music
• Rome, Lazio, Italy
• Piano b Produzioni
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Feb 11, 2024

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 36 minutes

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

A New Documentary Will Explore the Good, the Better, and the Best of Ennio Morricone

By Kory Grow

“At first, I thought making music for the cinema was humiliating,” the late film composer Ennio Morricone once said. “By writing, I got my revenge.” That comeuppance came in the form of an Oscar for his score to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight , several previous Oscar nominations, and a great public appreciation for his scores to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly , The Thing , and The Mission , among others.

Morricone’s full career, including his early Italian pop songs and his beloved scores, is the focus of Ennio , a new documentary by Giuseppe Tornatore, who directed Cinema Paradiso (which featured a Morricone score.) Clint Eastwood, Terrence Malick, Hans Zimmer, Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Metallica’s James Hetfield, and others all took part in interviews for the film, which will open theatrically at New York City’s Film Forum on Feb. 9.

“You hear his music, and you know it is Ennio,” composer John Williams says.

Ted Cruz Wants Airlines to Keep Your Cash When They Cancel Your Flight

Supreme court puppet master’s consulting firm clients exposed in leak, rolling stones kick-start 'hackney diamonds' tour with thrilling houston concert, viral mystery song 'everyone knows that' identified thanks to eighties porno.

“I wanted to make Ennio to make Morricone’s story known to audiences all over the world who love his music,” Tornatore said in a statement. “It was not just a matter of having him tell me about his life and his magical relationship with music, but also of searching in archives around the world for interviews and other images relating to the innumerable collaborations carried out in the past by Morricone with filmmakers.”

In the trailer, Morricone explains how he scored his first film in 1961, thinking he’d quit in 1970, and then after some success, he moved that to 1980 … “Now I don’t say anything,” he says. Ultimately, he won two Oscars and provided music to around 500 films.

Ariana Madix Wants Out of Raquel Leviss ‘Revenge Porn’ Lawsuit, Denies Sharing Video

• Courts and Crime
• By Nancy Dillon

Gerard Depardieu to Stand Trial on Criminal Sexual Assault Charges

• Depardieu Allegations
• By Jon Blistein

How Josh O'Connor Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Playing a Jerk

• Holding Court
• By CT Jones

Blue Ivy Carter Is Lioness Kiara in New 'Mufasa: The Lion King' Trailer

• Circle of Life
• By Kalia Richardson

Watch Selena Gomez Struggle to Follow Wolfgang Puck's Direction in 'Selena + Restaurant' Clip

• Big Miss Steak
• By Tomás Mier

Most Popular

Nicole kidman's daughters make their red carpet debut at afi life achievement award gala, louvre considers moving mona lisa to underground chamber to end 'public disappointment', pauly shore 'was up all night crying' after richard simmons said 'i don't approve' of biopic, asks for meeting as 'you haven't even heard the pitch', sources gave an update on hugh jackman's 'love life' after fans raised concerns about his well-being, you might also like, dandelooo acquires global rights to korean animated series ‘pongpong dino’, adidas beats expectations in q1 2024, returns to profitability, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, martin freeman defends ‘miller’s girl’ role over jenna ortega age gap backlash: ‘we’re not saying it’s great’, harris, blitzer add flag football operator to unrivaled portfolio.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Drips, pop and Dollars: the music that made Ennio Morricone

At 88, Morricone is a towering presence in film history. As he celebrates 60 years in music, the Italian composer talks shoots, scores and the masterpieces we missed

In the extended title sequence of Sergio Leone’s epic 1968 western Once Upon a Time in the West , three vengeful-looking gunslingers await the arrival of the next train at the remote Cattle Corner Station. Not a word is shared between them. Instead, caught in vivid closeup like the lines ingrained on the weathered skin of their faces, it’s the sounds that tell a story: chalk screeches across a blackboard; water drips on to the brim of a hat and, in the dead stillness of the desert outside, a windpump gently squeaks. Even before knuckles are cracked, pistols are cocked and the man they’ve been waiting to kill announces his arrival with three mournful notes on a harmonica, it’s clear that things are about to turn ugly.

This month, that haunting harmonica is back, as Ennio Morricone celebrates 60 years in music with a concert tour of his film scores and a new album of his best-known themes. Yet like so much of Morricone’s music, the melancholic motif – whether inhabiting the dreamy soundscapes of the Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds” or Bruce Springsteen’s cowboy epic “Outlaw Pete” – now breathes with a life of its own. “It’s very gratifying that people are enjoying my music even though they don’t see it accompanied by scenes on film,” says Morricone, when we meet at his apartment in Rome. “Usually nobody thinks about the film composer – a movie could be silent; it could have music or not – whereas in concerts it’s different because the audience is there to listen to my music alone.”

Having just turned 88, and with around 500 soundtracks to his name, Morricone is one of cinema’s most prolific and stylistically diverse composers. On tour, as on disc, he conducts the baroque-styled choruses and lyrical oboe theme of The Mission alongside the paired down coyote-inspired howls of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and the tenderly sentimental piano and string motifs of “Nuovo”, written for Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso . The disc also includes themes for Quentin Tarantino’s high-tension western The Hateful Eight , which won Morricone an Academy award earlier this year. It was his first for an original score following five previous nominations, but he laughs when I suggest he take his tour to the US. “I don’t feel like flying and going all the way to America,” he says. “I didn’t even want to go and pick up the Oscar. The producer and the director asked me to please go.” He had to cancel three concerts earlier this year due to back problems, but throws open his arms in a broad show of generosity. “OK, I would go to America if they pay me loads of money.”

It’s from Rome that Morricone has made his name as one of Hollywood’s top-earning score writers, and it was here that he found his feet as a composer. He grew up in the Trastevere district, and began composing at the age of six, copying down works, such as Weber’s Der Freischütz overture , that he’d heard on the radio. His father, an accomplished trumpeter, supported the family by performing in local jazz clubs and on film soundtracks, and Ennio would dutifully follow in his footsteps: at the age of 10, he entered the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia to study trumpet, later also studying composition. At night he would play the clubs as a jazz trumpeter, stepping in for his father when he was ill.

Those war years were decisive for Morricone, as he discovered how light music could bring happiness during bleak times. In the late 1950s and early 60s he arranged hundreds of songs, and it was the whipcracks, bells and galloping rhythms of his arrangement of California-born folk singer Peter Tevis’s hit single “Pastures of Plenty” that impressed his former elementary-school classmate Leone when they reunited to discuss their first film together, A Fistful of Dollars .

Morricone prefers not to talk about his Leone projects, and has often pointed out that during the heyday of his western-scoring, between 1963 and 1980, a mere 35 of his 300 films were about cowboys. But it was their collaborations, and in particular the Dollars trilogy – A Fistful of Dollars , For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – that established his reputation and allowed him to pursue other projects. Rather than writing music to fit Leone’s footage, Morricone would start composing before filming began, with the director using the music on set to get his characters into the mood of the film. His scores build in three stages, from earthy percussion and humble folkish instruments – such as harmonica, panpipes or the Jew’s harp and whistles of For a Few Dollars More – to rock-influenced electronic guitars to orchestrations, featuring trumpets for the final showdowns, and expansive strings and chorus that perfectly match the epic journeys and widescreen compositions of Leone’s films. Instrumental colour is key. Conveying a distinct sense of character and place, these ramped-up themes deliver us into the world of the Old American West, where Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” – a man so quick on the draw he’ll put his order in with the local coffin maker on his way into town, and add to it, after the shootout, on his way out – loom both heroically and absurdly larger than life. But the reason his tunes have lasted so well, says Morricone, is that the musical ideas are complete in themselves: “I learned by observing the use of Mozart and Bach and Mahler in movies. I said, ‘This is solid, it has integrity; I want to do something similar.’ That is why I started writing my music before the film was shot.”

The opening 13 minutes of Once Upon a Time are a playful reminder of how Morricone was grounded in experimental music, in particular the philosophy of John Cage. A member of the avant-garde ensemble Nuova Consonanza, Morricone was a firm advocate of challenging the boundaries between noise and music, and of the tone-row techniques of the Second Viennese School – his early compositions are atonal and complex. In all, he has written more than 100 concert works, often taking time out of his film schedule to focus on what he calls “the highest ideals of composition”; but still, he says, only 5% of his output is music that he aspires to write. “I’m not turning my back on film music; I’m not saying that I reject it,” he explains. “What I mean is that 95% of my music was written for the public at large, because a movie has to be understood by ordinary people who don’t necessarily understand complex music.” The 5% that does meet his ideals, he says, is “difficult music that I’ve experimented with, that I was really into but that I was strongly advised to leave behind. I had to leave it because it was too difficult. That doesn’t mean that 95% of my music is inane or trivial … it’s music catering to simple needs.”

It’s easy to imagine that cocooned in the silky strings of his early 80s charts hit Chi Mai is a classical composer just wriggling to get out. On film, he will often pay homage to classical repertoire, reinterpreting themes with a Stravinsky-like ease – augmenting Beethoven’s Für Elise melody in The Big Gundown, for example , to create the suspenseful motif that Tarantino would borrow for the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds . But Morricone’s relationship with the classical music tradition goes much deeper than style. When asked whether he arranges his works for concert performance, he says that his choice of instruments is integral to the themes he writes, so they are the same live as when you hear them on film: “When Beethoven wrote a symphony, that was that,” he says. “He didn’t adapt it to the theatre in which it was performed. If it was not appropriate, then he wouldn’t perform it there.”

As with Bernard Herrmann, who had aspirations to be taken seriously in the concert hall but would be forever thought of as Alfred Hitchcock’s composer, Morricone has formed close long-term relationships with directors who respect his vision. He has scored all of Tornatore’s films over the last three decades – including his forthcoming Jeremy Irons and Olga Kurylenko romance, Correspondence – and enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini, who showed him the power of using classical works on screen. Meanwhile, Morricone’s darker atonal sounds have found a natural home in the horror films of Dario Argento, and his more complex ideas continue to resurface – most recently his music for John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing re-emerged in Tarantino’s Hateful Eight . “I haven’t had a problem with working in a risk-averse industry,” he says. “I always felt free and obviously directors call me because they hold me in the highest esteem.”

Perhaps that’s why, six decades on, Morricone seems to harbour none of the resentments or frustrations that his early ambitions to become an avant-garde composer might have left him with. Yes, he has made decisions he regrets, such as turning down Eastwood’s initial requests to work with him when the actor turned his hand to directing; and of the 500 films not all could be great (Michael Anderson’s post- Jaws film Orca , for example, always seemed destined to sink). But he has reached out to more listeners than most. When asked whether he would rather his new disc had been of his concert hall works, instead of music catering to “simple needs”, he laughs and excuses himself from the room. “I’ll give you one CD of mine,” he says, returning with a recording of his works written for children’s choir. “I produce and pay for the CDs that nobody will buy.” One day, he hopes, we’ll begin mining that 5%.

• Classical music
• Ennio Morricone
• Quentin Tarantino

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

10 Grand Canal Street Upper, Dublin

[email protected]

• marieclaire053

The Morricone Experience Tour

A tribute to the late maestro of film music, Ennio Morricone who wrote over 400 film compositions in his lifetime, including the scores for audience favourites “The Mission”, “Cinema Paradiso”, “A Fistful of Dollars”, “The Good the Bad and the Ugly" and more.

The Morricone Experience ensemble comprises acclaimed solo international artists residing in Ireland. These include Dundalk locals Annemarie McGahon (viola), Francesca De Nardi (violin), Davide Forti (cello) and Annalisa Monticelli (piano) and Dubliners Katy Kelly (soprano) and Morgan Crowley (tenor).

Tickets are selling fast for their tour. Book now on venues linked above.

• Up-Coming Tours
• Tour Announcements

Recent Posts

Kerbdog Celebrate 30th Anniversary of Self-titled Debut Album with New Irish Shows this Autumn

Wild Roots Festival 2024 Line Up is Here!

ELEPHANT SESSIONS - Tour of Ireland - November 2024

Commentaires

Most features of this page require JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your browser.

TicketOne dà molta importanza alla protezione dei dati. Per leggere la nostra Informativa sulla Privacy clicca qui

• Vai al carrello

• Tributo a Morricone - Film History

Un’orchestra di 30 elementi e più belle colonne sonore della storia del cinema. Scopri i dettagli e acquista il tuo biglietto!

• Cancella testo
• Sorry, no results found. Please change your search request.
• Milano (1) verificato
• Seravezza (1) verificato
• Morricone Film History
• Teatro Arcimboldi (Teatro degli Arcimboldi)
• Tributo a Morricone Film History
• Mediceo Live Festival

Info evento

Tributo a morricone - film history fan-report: valutazioni e recensioni, congratulazioni sei il primo a lasciare una recensione per tributo a morricone - film history..

La tua opinione è importante per i futuri spettatori che decideranno di partecipare a un evento. Condividi la tua esperienza e ricorda di prestare attenzione alle condizioni di partecipazione. I fan report sono pubblicati dai nostri redattori. Ci riserviamo il diritto di non pubblicare recensioni che violano le nostre regole.

0 Recensioni

I tuoi vantaggi.

Sicurezza dei tuoi dati

Biglietti originali garantiti

Corriere Espresso

Raccomandati per te

Artisti simili

Il tuo browser non autorizza i cookies di terza parte. Per poter procedere con l'acquisto è necessario installare i cookies. Clicca sul bottone di seguito per aprire il sito in una nuova finestra.

Your browser does not allow cookies. To make an order, please change the cookie settings of your browser and reload this page.

• Tutti gli eventi
• VIETATO L’INGRESSO
• INFO E BIGLIETTERIA
• COME ARRIVARE
• EaTAM: Ristoranti e Bar
• QUBOutique TAM Concept Store
• Accessibilità
• TAM TOGETHER
• Sostenibilità
• Centro di produzione
• Info tecniche
• TRASPARENZA
• TAM ON TOUR
• Rassegna Stampa
• Photo Gallery
• Video Gallery
• Organizza il tuo evento
• Diventa Partner

MORRICONE FILM HISTORY

22 maggio 2023, h21

Un’orchestra di 40 elementi e un coro di 50 voci:   questo è “Morricone Film History”: uno spettacolo interamente dedicato al premio Oscar Ennio Morricone.

“Morricone Film History” è uno spettacolo che ripercorre le tappe salienti della carriera del Maestro dalle prime collaborazioni con Sergio Leone, fino alle musiche realizzate per Hollywood, che hanno consacrato il compositore quale icona mondiale con una stella sulla Walk Of Fame.

Con un'orchestra di 40 elementi e la partecipazione di un coro di 50 elementi (EVA-ENSEMBLE VOCALE AMBROSIANO onlus), lo spettacolo non sarà solo un modo di ascoltare dal vivo le musiche del maestro, ma anche di vedere il percorso storico delle sue creazioni, grazie a videoproiezioni che seguiranno l’evoluzione delle collaborazioni che Morricone ha realizzato a partire dagli anni sessanta fino al suo secondo Oscar, per la colonna sonora di The Hateful Eight, di Quentin Tarantino.

Brani tratti da: Metti una sera a cena / Indagine su di un cittadino... / Giù la testa / Sacco e Vanzetti / Per qualche dollaro in più / Per un pugno di dollari / Il buono, il brutto e il cattivo / C'era una volta il west / Il clan dei siciliani / The Hateful eight / Nuovo Cinema Paradiso / Mission / C'era una volta in America / La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano e tanti altri …

Una produzione Stage11

in definizione

Direttore d’Orchestra: Simone Giusti Soprano: Costanza Gallo Regia: Emiliano Galigani

Coro: EVA-ENSEMBLE VOCALE AMBROSIANO onlus

⌄ INFO E RIDUZIONI

Non sono previste riduzioni per questo evento.

Gruppi Non sono previste riduzioni per questo evento.

Spettatori con disabilità

Se hai difficoltà di deambulazione scopri qui i servizi dedicati e informa la biglietteria e il nostro personale

Ti potrebbe piacere anche…

Teatro Arcimboldi Milano

• Come arrivare

Viale dell’Innovazione 20 20126 Milano

Qualunque sia il tuo veicolo preferito, ecco alcuni dei percorsi diretti che ti consigliamo per raggiungere il TAM in pochi minuti.

Saremo lieti di rispondere alle tue domande su una prenotazione o sugli eventi al TAM se ci contatterai tramite e-mail all’indirizzo [email protected]

Per prenotazioni di gruppo, contatta [email protected] o invia una richiesta utilizzando il nostro modulo online.

I nostri guardaroba sono situati nel foyer principale all’ingresso del teatro.

Gli zaini e le valigie devono essere lasciati  obbligatoriamente  in guardaroba, per motivi di sicurezza.

Per ogni informazione o necessità rivolgiti al nostro personale di accoglienza.

Scopri qui dove parcheggiare e prenotare in anticipo, usufruendo delle nostre convenzioni. Accedi a questa pagina per saperne di più.

Al TAM non manca certo il posto per rilassarti e rifocillarti in ogni momento della tua giornata: dalla colazione alla pausa caffè, dall’aperitivo alla cena, scopri qui la variegata offerta food & beverage.

BOEUCC BISTROT

Se non sei sicuro di dove indirizzare la tua richiesta, contattaci scrivici una e-mail all’indirizzo [email protected]

Ci impegniamo perché la tua visita al TAM diventi un’esperienza indimenticabile. Lasciaci un tuo   feedback positivo o negativo, inviandoci un'e-mail a [email protected]

ISCRIVITI ALLA NEWSLETTER

- Acquista in anteprima i biglietti per i tuoi eventi preferiti - Accedi a offerti esclusive - Ricevi in anteprima le notizie sui tuoi eventi e i tuoi artisti preferiti

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Privacy Overview

Essaying the pop culture that matters since 1999

Photo: Ivan Selimbegovic

Ennio Morricone Farewell Tour in Berlin: Grazie, Maestro!

In celebration of his 90th birthday, Ennio Morricone gives a breathtaking show and bids goodbye to live performances through a career-spanning thematic tour.

Photo: Ivan Selimbegović

Most journalistic articles are opinion pieces, and all art reviews certainly are opinion pieces, at least to a degree. When retelling a live music show, more often than not the narrative is filled with platitudes and exaggerations: “legendary”, “epic”, “genius”, and “unique” are the buzzwords often used to describe your favorite musician’s tunes, performances, or their career in itself. While for many narrators this feels like the Truth, when faced with a concert genuinely deserving of such words – one feels at a loss for what to say.

Such a brilliant torment occurred on Jan 21 at the Mercedes Benz Arena in Berlin, where Ennio Morricone celebrated his 90th birthday by staging a 150-plus-minute performance, involving 200 musicians and spanning his 65-year-long, still ongoing, career . To say that the legendary composer’s epic performance which lasted more than two and a half hours, full of genius melodies spanning his uniquely long and productive career, was brilliant, would be a foolish understatement. Morricone’s enduring symbiosis with cinema, which birthed his ability to create exceptionally vivid imagery through sound, still evokes an overwhelming diapason of emotions and takes one’s soul to exciting and unexpected places.

Since 1950, the famed Roman instrumentalist has penned the scores for more than 500 films, continuously shaping the ways music meshes with dancing images. His impossible versatility and the embroidering of numerous cultures and traditions in his works, are to thank for bringing movie soundtracks into the global mainstream, and also for generously helping this composing niche be perceived as serious art today. Morricone’s collaborations with Sergio Leone and other notable directors from the golden age of the (spaghetti) Western, along with the adoration that the likes of Brian De Palma and Barry Levinson had for him, is common knowledge of every film geek around the globe. While his influence on scoring films can be elegantly summed up in a paragraph, adequately describing the breadth of Morricone’s output, his other ventures are all but impossible to illustrate succinctly.

A classically trained trumpeter, Morricone kicked off his remarkable career by composing music for radio dramas in the 1940s. During those years, he also provided for his family by playing jazz in a local Italian band and arranging pop songs for RAI (where he had also been employed for one full day prior to quitting upon finding out that the television station prohibited the broadcasting of music composed by the employees). However, during this period he also started ghost writing film scores for renowned Italian composers. Word about his talent got out fast and the beginning of 1960s saw him deliver his first “legitimate” film scores. The rest is history we know well , but even as a prolific movie soundtrack architect, Morricone, to this day, continues to also write classical music and explore the boundaries of modern composition. In fact, as one of the ringleaders of the Italian avant-garde, from 1964 until 1980, he was a part of Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza (G.I.N.C.), widely considered to be the first experimental composers collective. Their seven studio albums are held in high regard in the avant-garde music circles to this day.

His professional eclecticism and achievements have undoubtedly become made their mark on music history, but Morricone’s personal character is just as fascinating as his work. A devout Roman, he refused to move to Hollywood or learn fluent English, staying true to his hometown until this day. Married to the lyricist Maria Travia since 1956, he is the father of four and a committed family man, a peculiar and admirable fate for a person who consistently managed to remain one of contemporary music’s most productive authors, over the course of more than 60 years.

This strength of character and diversity spring to life magnificently in Berlin’s sold-out Mercedes Benz arena, where some 11,000 people spared no expense (the average ticket price was around $120) to bid the grand maestro a rapturous goodbye. Though Morricone performed well over 400 concerts in the past 20 years (for clarity, this was all at the age of 70 or over), this time around a (somewhat) crowd-pleasing and thematically segmented retrospective of his work felt particularly poignant.

Sitting in front of the Czech National Orchestra and the Hungarian Kodály Choir of 75 singers, Morricone conducted the 24 beloved compositions with attentiveness and vigor, and a relaxed hand of a man who has truly accomplished everything one can accomplish in their lifetime. Promptly springing upward to turn to the audience and take a bow after nearly every tune, his face, while conveying gratitude for people’s enduring interest in his work, shows a humble look of a man whose experience of life is well beyond what a 30-year-old or even a 60-year-old can imagine. And the concert itself was wonderful, at turns grandiose, playful, and solemn.

The majority of the crowd was around 50 or over, but there were also plenty of young faces present, and they seemed the most mesmerized by the show. Evidently, the massive sports hall is not the most acoustically refined venue for such an impressive orchestra and, admittedly, the glorious Berlin Philharmonie would have been a far more appropriate choice, but a large enough space had to be provided to honor Morricone and this was Berlin’s only safe bet. The sound itself was good enough, although the magnificent voices of soprano Susanna Rigacci and the fado diva Dulce Pontes were often overpowered and drowned out by the orchestra.

Split by a 15-minute intermission, the program is divided into two parts and several thematic wholes. The “Historical Epic” kickoff was a deliberate slow start, with the solemn, naturalist themes from The Untouchables and The Red Tent . “Novecento” from Giuseppe Tornatore’s revered drama The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean, and “¡Átame!”, from Pedro Almodóvar ‘s dark comedy, provide further insight into Morricone’s eclecticism. The diversity of his tunes and themes is unprecedented in contemporary classical music and nearly all songs were greeted with standing ovations. Susanna Rigacci excelled in “Nostromo”, but it was the succeeding “The Modernity of the Myth”, an homage to Sergio Leone’s most famous films, that got nearly everyone to move to the edges of their seats in excitement and awe. “The Man with the Harmonica”, with its drawn out, pained harmonica howls morphing into a visceral, guitar-driven march, remains one of the most intense and compelling film songs of all time, but hearing “The Ecstacy of Gold” live, with a class soprano and a 150 musicians bringing the galloping thunder to the masses, is an experience which renders any attempt at a retelling futile.

Morricone is well aware of the power of his compositions, and has always measured his penchant for the dramatic and grandiose with gusto. The bombastic, faster second half, sees the world music diva Dulce Pontes at her best, owning the Social Cinema theme with emotion only found in fado people. “ Last Stage Coach to Red Rock “, from The Hateful Eight (also the first film which brought Morricone an Academy Award) is as brilliant as any of his earlier works, but the grand finale is saved for the epic, lively “Abolição”, the theme from Burn . Here all 75 singers support Pontes, who chants dancingly to the uniquely Brazilian hymn of love and life. The final three tunes are all from The Mission , one of Morricone’s most-loved non-Western soundtracks.

One may think The Mission melodies not pompous enough for a final bow – and one would be right. After a lengthy standing ovation and cries from the audience, Morricone happily returns to the stage and launches – but of course – “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso”. That he chose to repeat “The Ecstacy of Gold” and “Abolição” (barely 20 minutes after it had been initially played) as the actually final couple of songs for the encore, is unsurprising – despite the fact that Morricone composed well over 2,000 hours worth of music. The sheer magnitude of those two epic tunes is only ever appropriately portrayed like this – with 200 musicians storming the venue in musical fury. Both for older lifelong fans, and the young generations alike, this night offered a unique insight into the mind – and soul – of one of the greatest composers alive. We will miss him sorely, but not for long, as Morricone doesn’t plan on retiring and wants to focus on classical music exclusively from now. Even at 90, he still has enough dedication left in him to continue to inspire us, in more ways than one. Thank you for all the life lessons, nostro Gran Maestro .

• "They're All My Children": An Interview with Ennio Morricone ...
• Ennio Morricone review – a rapturous farewell to the maestro | Music ...
• Maestro Ennio Morricone - Home | Facebook
• Ennio Morricone on Spotify
• Ennio Morricone - IMDb
• Ennio Morricone | Official website

Publish with PopMatters

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered [MUSIC] May-August 2024

PopMatters Seeks Book Critics and Essayists

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – FILM Winter 2023-24

Submit an Essay, Review, Interview, or List to PopMatters

PopMatters Seeks Music Writers

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to footer

Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli

Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli Cremona

Thursday 4 May 2023 h. 21:00

TRIBUTO A MORRICONE FILM HISTORY

Stage 11 PRESENTS TRIBUTO a MORRICONE FILM HISTORY

Description

TRIBUTO A MORRICONE FILM HISTORY retrace the main stages of the Maestro’s career, from the first collaboration with Sergio Leone to the music realized for Hollywood, that legitimized the composer as a worldwide icon with a star on the Walk Of Fame. The show won’t ve just a way to live listen to Maestro’s music, but also to remember the historical path of his creation, thanks to graphics and projections, that will follow the evolution of the collaboration that Morricone realized starting from the Sixties to his second Academy Award, for the soundtrack of The Hateful Eight , by Quentin Tarantino.

Pieces from:

Metti una sera a cena / Indagine su di un cittadino… / Giù la testa / Sacco e Vanzetti / Per qualche dollaro in più / Per un pugno di dollari / Il buono, il brutto e il cattivo / C’era una volta il west / Il clan dei siciliani / The Hateful eight / Nuovo Cinema Paradiso / Mission / C’era una volta in America / La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano ed altri

conductor Simone Giusti soprano Costanza Gallo direction Emiliano Galigani

Season name

04.05.2023 - h. 21:00

Tickets on sale at the Theatre ticket office at the usual opening times and on the online circuits vivaticket and ticketone.

stalls € 52,00 + € 7,80 presale rights central boxes € 47,00 + € 7,00 presale rights side boxes € 42,00 + € 6,30 presale rights gallery € 35,00 + € 5,25 presale rights loggione € 30,00 + € 4,50 presale rights

Come to the Theatre!

Further information

With the support of:

• TikTok icon

Fondazione Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli - Cremona | Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 52, 26100 Cremona CR - Telefono: 0372 022000 - PEC: teatroponchielli@raccomandata- ar.com - Cod.Fis. 93040420197 - P.Iva 01285150197 - REA CR – 180031 presso la C.C.I.A.A. di CREMONA

Manage cookie settings | Cookie Policy | Privacy Policy | Clients and Suppliers Notice | WebSite by Black Studio

• The man BIOGRAPHY, PRESS & AWARDS
• The music ABSOLUTE MUSIC, FILM MUSIC & CONCERT WORKS
• The artist TOUR DATES & CONCERTS

Ennio Morricone was born in Rome on 10 November 1928. His long artistic career includes a wide range of composition genres, from absolute concert music to applied music, working as orchestrator, conductor and composer for theatre, radio and cinema. In 1946, Ennio received his trumpet diploma and in 1954 he received his diploma in Composition at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia under the guidance of Goffredo Petrassi. He wrote his first concert works at the end of the 1950s, then worked as arranger for RAI (the Italian broadcasting company) and RCA-Italy. He started his career as a film music composer in 1961 with the film Il Federale directed by Luciano Salce. World fame followed through the Sergio Leone westerns:  A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in The West (1968) and A Fistful of Dynamite (1971).

In 1965, Morricone joined the improvisation group Nuova Consonanza. Since 1960, Morricone has scored over 450 films working with many Italian and international directors including Sergio Leone, Gillo Pontecorvo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuliano Montaldo, Lina Wertmuller, Giuseppe Tornatore, Brian De Palma, Roman Polanski, Warren Beatty, Adrian Lyne, Oliver Stone, Margarethe Von Trotta, Henry Verneuil, Pedro Almodovar and Roland Joffè. His most famous films (other than the Italian westerns) include: The Battle of Algiers ; Sacco and Vanzetti ; Cinema Paradiso ; The Legend of 1900 , Malena ; The Untouchables;   Once Upon a Time in America ; The Mission and U-Turn . His absolute music production includes over 100 pieces composed from 1946 to the present day. Titles include Concerto per Orchestra n.1 (1957); Frammenti di Eros (1985); Cantata per L’Europa (1988); UT , per tromba, archi e percussioni (1991); Ombra di lontana presenza (1997); Voci dal silenzio (2002); Sicilo ed altri frammenti (2007); Vuoto d’anima piena (2008). In 2001, Ennio Morricone began a period of intense concert activity, conducting his film music and concert works for symphony orchestra and polyphonic choir in more than 100 concerts across Europe, Asia, USA, Central and South America.

During his long career, Ennio Morricone has also received many awards. As well as the Golden Lion and the honorary Oscar he was awarded in 2003, he has been presented with eight Nastri D’argento, five BAFTAs, five Oscar nominations, seven David Di Donatellos, three Golden Globes, one Grammy Award and one European Film Award. In 2009, the then President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, also signed a decree appointing Morricone to the rank of Knight in the Order of the Legion of Honor.

In the recording field, Morricone has received 27 gold discs, seven platinum discs, three Golden Plates and the Critica discografica award for the music of the film Il Prato . The soundtrack from the film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009 while Morricone himself was awarded the prestigious Polar Music prize the following year.

His more recent works include scores for the television series Karol and The End of a Mystery , 72 Meters and Fateless . In the 21st century, Morricone’s music has been reused countless times for television and in movies including Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003), Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012). In 2007, Morricone received the Academy Honorary Award “for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music”.

In November 2013, he began a world tour to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his film music career and performed in locations such as the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, Santiago, Chile, Berlin, Germany (O2 World), Budapest, Hungary, and Vienna’s Stadhalle. On 6 February 2014, Riccardo Mutti conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing Morricone’s Voices from the Silence , a cantata Morricone composed in response to 9/11 to give voice to innocent victims. In Autumn 2014, Morricone participated in the recording of a documentary about himself by Giuseppe Tornatore, which is yet to be released.

His European tour resumed from February 2015 to March 2015, with 20 concerts in 12 countries, in Europe’s largest arenas, such as the O2 in London and the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. Playing to a total of 150,000 spectators and with most of the shows sold out, Maestro Morricone’s My Life in Music European Arena Tour was a resounding success.

On 12 June 2015, Morricone conducted a mass composed in dedication to Pope Francis. It was commissioned by the Jesuit Order to commemorate the 200 year anniversary of the recongregation of the Jesuit Order at the Jesuit Church in Rome.

2015 also saw Morricone collaborate with Quentin Tarantino on an original soundtrack for the very first time. On December 7th 2015, The Hateful Eight had its world premiere followed by a Golden Globe nomination in the Best Original Score category the very next day.

Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Correspondence , with an original soundtrack composition by Morricone, is being released on January 15th 2016

A Masterful Career

As Bernard Herrmann is to Hitchcock, Nino Rota to Fellini, John Barry to James Bond and John Williams to Spielberg, Ennio Morricone is to Sergio Leone. It is impossible to recall Leone’s films in the mind’s eye or ear – from A Fistful of Dollars (1964) via The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) to the very different Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984) – without Morricone’s music.

So close was the creative partnership of composer and director that Leone once described it as “a marriage like Catholics used to be married before the divorce laws”. Morricone returned the complement by saying, “Leone wanted more from music than other directors – he always gave it more space”. The resulting films were mythical melodramas, with Morricone supplying the melo.

From the early whipcracks, bells, whistles, Italian folk instruments, incomprehensible lyrics and Fender Stratocaster riffs – which may have been distant spin-offs from Morricone’s researches into John Cage and the idea that all sounds can belong to the realm of music – to the romantic score from America with its wistful Eastern European pan-pipes and dense orchestral textures, the work of these two artists ran on parallel lines.

The opening bars of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly , with their “Ay-ee-ay-ee-ay” coyote howl, are among the most instantly recognisable in the history of the movies. But Morricone has often been at pains to point out that even during his most prolific period in the 1960s and 1970s – when as Bernardo Bertolucci once joked “you barely saw a major Italian movie without music by Ennio” – he only scored thirty-five Westerns out of four hundred and fifty films, just over eight percent of his astonishing output. Only thirty-five! That’s more than Elmer Bernstein, Dimitri Tiomkin and Jerome Moross combined.

No-one is quite sure exactly how many films Morricone has scored in total, since his first credit in 1961; certainly over 400, maybe as many as 450. Since he always writes down every note himself (unlike some film composers I could mention) and sees composition and orchestration as part of a single process, the achievement really is astonishing – more mainstream film scores than any other composer, ever.

Apart from the Westerns, there have been revolutionary anthems for Queimada (1969) and Novecento (1976), horrors for Argento and Carpenter, gangster films from The Sicilian Clan (1969) to The Untouchables (1987), plus countless love themes which tend to go for baroque, atonal action sequences, nostalgic elegies, lyrical hymns, ominous strings, strident adventures, and an Italian hit parade of main title songs. He seems equally at home with genre films (allgenres) as with smaller-scale, more personal projects. In The Mission (1986), he created a beautiful score which is about the power of music itself – as a means of salvation on the one hand, and of colonial oppression on the other: the film ends with a broken violin floating down river.

Throughout his near 50 year career as a film composer, across the board, his signature ideas have included simple ideas (easy to hum) in complex arrangements, unusual instrumentation, concrete sounds, the use of the human voice as part of the orchestra, long silences, musical gags and single notes sustained for ever.

Giuseppe Tornatore, of Cinema Paradiso fame, has said of him “he is not just a great film composer he is a great composer”.

By Sir Christopher Frayling, Former Chairman, Arts Council England

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy

MORRICONE FILM HISTORY

Morricone Film History tour, which will come to Wrocław, or more precisely to the Orbita Hall. During the concert, the 30-strong Italian Movie Orchestra, under the masterful direction of maestro Simone Giusti, will perform Ennio Morricone’s indelible musical works, which served as soundtracks to many films.

• + Add to Google Calendar
• + iCal / Outlook export

Share this event

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

• Hotels in Verona
• Bed and Breakfast in Verona
• Aparments in Verona
• Hostels in Verona
• Most popular
• Hotel 5 star Verona
• Hotel 4 star Verona
• Hotel 3 star Verona
• Hotel 2 star Verona
• Verona guide
• Top destinations
• Verona Arena
• Teatro Romano
• Juliet's house
• Ponte Pietra
• Piazza delle Erbe
• Juliet's tomb
• Torre dei Lamberti
• Castel San Pietro
• Castelvecchio
• Verona Cathedral
• Castelvecchio Bridge
• Palazzo della Ragione
• Giusti Garden
• Verona Events
• Attractions

Morricone Film History

Teatro arcimboldi (teatro degli arcimboldi), 05/06/2024 21:00, tributo a morricone - film history, city cards:, what to do in milano, how to reach teatro arcimboldi (teatro degli arcimboldi):.