He's a very enigmatic character, even if he doesn't seem like it.
Serious. Very serious.
Always very...
very absorbed.
He's got this amazing quality of always being himself,
but, at the same time, always being someone else.
We're talking about a genius.
Ennio Morricone is the great exception to all the rules.
He has a great talent, very well hidden,
which erupts every time he writes.
I've never seen a marvel like Ennio Morricone.
We’re witnessing, to put it cautiously, a draft of a guaranteed masterpiece.
Well, he is a legend...
working with Ennio Morricone was like getting a medal.
A very peculiar man.
He was crazy.
That's for sure.
Ennio's world has not been totally discovered yet.
I never thought that music would be my destiny.
I wanted to be a doctor.
My father said: "No, he will study the trumpet".
He sent me to the conservatory to study the trumpet.
That's how it went.
It was my dad who decided I was going to be a trumpet player.
I didn't decide anything.
As you can see, I was just a kid.
I was very weak at solfege. In the first quarter, I got a 3 out of 10.
My father became very strict.
During holidays, I wasn't allowed to play any bingo or card games...
And then I improved.
I was six years old when my father taught me the treble clef,
and explained to me the position of the notes on the staff.
His father played the trumpet
in a regimental band.
He played in cinemas where they did variety shows.
There was a record player in my house.
And, since I used to listen to "Il Franco Cacciatore",
I wrote music for hunting, for two horns...
That kind of useless stuff.
When I was ten, I tore it all up.
I started studying the trumpet when I was 11.
I got my diploma at 16.
My father used to tell me that there was a boy,
the son of the trumpeter,
he would go to the pit with his music manuscript,
and fall asleep.
He played the trumpet,
and would often fall asleep when he was not playing.
Mario Riva was the presenter at the Casina delle Rose.
Ennio Morricone's father was there and they played together.
An extraordinary trumpet player,
but my father was very strict.
He was very careful with his spending.
He had the same trumpet his whole life.
When his dad gives him the trumpet and says:
"This instrument allows me to feed you, you'll do the same for your family",
that was it.
He bought me a second-hand trumpet.
It was cheaper and he bought whatever saved him money.
He's a musician and couldn't be anything else.
I remember that when the Germans were here,
and then the Americans,
I went from one hotel to another with a small orchestra.
They only gave us food for playing, they didn't even pay us.
Some of my colleagues used to put a small plate on the drums
for soldiers to make a donation.
The family only lived on the father’s trade.
There was a time when is father became ill, and Ennio, a boy, had to replace him
in nightclubs and in entertainment orchestras.
Playing the trumpet to earn enough to eat
was a terrible humiliation.
And this...
I felt this humiliation.
So, I stopped loving the trumpet.
I took my father's place, and I played until 2, 3 a.m.
I used to get up early in the morning to go the conservatory,
and then I had to do my homework.
I showed up with a split lip to the trumpet exam,
I was... tired.
My exam was...
Nothing special.
I got a 7.5.
was also studying complementary harmony.
I didn't stick to the rules, I enriched them, I made them flourish.
And Roberto Caggiano, my teacher, at the end of the course, told me:
"Now you must study composition".
And I listened to Caggiano.
These...
Goffredo Petrassi, was one of the greatest composers of classical music of 1900.
And he was, for me, an amazing teacher.
When I was in my seventh year,
I had to take a class in advanced composition,
there were two distinguished teachers.
Petrassi was one of them.
Music is an intellectual matter.
I studied his scores, which liked,
the way they were written.
The handwriting, the beauty of the handwriting.
Every unison was not in unison,
because he added something to it.
Those scores were a school themselves.
I chose him, I chose Petrassi.
Morricone has always made it clear,
he had chosen Petrassi as his teacher.
The secretary told me:
"Maestro, it's not possible. Petrassi's class is full of students".
"If you don't send me to Petrassi, I will quit this conservatory."
What you want to do is search for that composer's techniques
and make them your own.
was very shy, at first,
because everyone in that class was good.
Extraordinary composers.
Ennio Morricone's origins were much more humble
compared to his peers.
The conservatory was for the elite.
In front of those giants, I was so small.
I felt almost, almost humiliated.
He felt a bit inferior.
It was unusual for a trumpet player to study composition.
So, Ennio Morricone was, in my opinion, discriminated against.
The first thing that Petrassi asked me to do, for a few months, was dances.
The tarantella.
The bourree.
The jig.
The boogie-woogie.
The samba.
I was not happy.
He didn't give me any indication of his satisfaction.
At beginning I've always had the impression
that even Petrassi underestimated Ennio a bit,
that he was not interested enough in this person.
Finally, once I was done with the dances,
he explained the Ricercare to me.
And he commissioned me a Ricercare.
That was when I stopped making mistakes.
He gave me great satisfaction, as my teacher.
It was a counterpoint, in four parts, five parts,
it was very interesting, the form that preceded the Fugue,
of which Frescobaldi was the leader.
A century before Bach,
he made hints of counterpoint, of two melodies together.
Those famous ten years with Petrassi
are those in which Ennio fed on bread and Palestrina.
Bread and Monteverdi,
therefore he knows counterpoint like nobody else in the world.
Petrassi was so influenced by Stravinsky
that he passed on this passion to Morricone.
I listened to one of Stravinsky’s most sublime pieces.
"Symphony of Psalms".
I heard it conducted by Stravinsky, when I was very young.
At Santa Cecilia. It was a rehearsal.
The door was open, just a crack,
and the orchestra was playing there.
And I...
I have always been impressed by that piece.
When I was studying composition, I didn't show anything to my father.
I stayed in my room, and I wrote,
I wrote and wrote.
He was a very attentive and smart student.
I was happy and also optimistic about his future.
But I was studying, and I was working.
He played the trumpet at the Sistina.
I was the first trumpet added. I played in all the revues.
Walter Chiari, Tognazzi, Rascel, all the comedians.
Dapporto, Wanda Osiris, Macario, Toto...
Something beautiful was the last walkway of the dancers.
I complimented them as they walked over.
I looked at them and named all the titles of the American songs
I had played in the past.
"My Dream."
And they would smile at me.
But when the show ended, I could not miss my trolley bus,
so I put away the trumpet and made a mad dash home.
Music, maestro!
I used to write arrangements on the sly.
Petrassi didn't know.
He found out later.
The first one who called me was Carlo Savina.
Savina once complained
about an arrangement, in a striking way.
He threw the music sheets.
Sometimes, I did some experiments.
Savina would call me angrily, and would tell me:
"The sharp was missing,
the flat was missing,
what’s that note, it's not clear..."
savina was tied to a somewhat old concept.
Whereas Morricone's arrangements were extremely modern.
One, two, three.
My first film experiences were in film orchestras, playing the trumpet.
I played in some beautiful performances with Lavagnino,
Franco D'Achiardi, Enzo Masetti.
One soundtrack in which I played was "Fabiola" by Alessandro Blasetti.
For the final exam in composition we had to write an opera scene.
I did a double Fugue.
Two subjects and two countersubjects,
about Glaucus, who was in a stormy sea and about to land,
And what I wanted to create was something twisted, yet so elegant,
so sinuous, so sensual.
I wanted to make all this... but I couldn't do it.
The committee, included Guido Guerrini, the conservatory’s director,
Goffredo Petrassi and Virgilio Mortari.
Quite opposite personalities.
Guerrini couldn't understand Petrassi's music.
There was a sort of rivalry.
So he asked me a trick question:
"Why did you divide a double bass pizzicato
where you put the open string with the upper octave?"
"Why did you do that?" Petrassi didn't let me answer.
He attacked the director:
"What kind of question is that?"
Petrassi got angry, yes.
I got a 9 and a half.
I remember it well because I got a 9,
and I was very envious of that 9 and a half.
I walked out of the conservatory,
And as always, I accompanied Petrassi
to 181 Germanico Street, his home.
That time...
we both got emotional.
He was crying, and so was I.
H promised me he would find me a job.
He meant as a teacher at the conservatory.
But nothing happened.
"When I went into the military service, the put me in the band right away.
The colonel commissioned me band orchestrations.
We played in the streets.
My girlfriend, Maria, would follow me.
Running.
She was so cute.
He married Maria who was exemplary among us.
because she was just like her husband.
She was a calm woman.
Always smiling We used to call her the Madonna
Always smiling. We used to call her the Madonna.
When I finished the conservatory,
I was like a naked composer facing the world around him.
I wanted to protect myself from this loneliness.
So I wrote my first concerto for orchestra,
When it came to my musical choices, my mother used say:
"Please, Ennio, write me a nice melody,
a beautiful song".
She pestered me saying: "Write a nice song.
She pestered me, saying: "Write a nice song.
You always must make a nice melody
That’s how you will become famous".
I could hear him playing from morning until night.
At that time, he wasn’t composing music for films yet.
He was very poor.
Maria worked for the Christian Democracy party,
and without telling me, she got me hired at RAI.
On my first day, the director of the center on Via Teulada called me.
He said: ''Maestro, I must warn you that you won't have a career here.
Also, as a composer, you cannot be performed at RAI''.
"What am I doing here?" And I immediately quit the job.
Thanks to Petrassi I went to Darmstadt,
to the contemporary music festival.
It was a time of confusion for contemporary music.
John Cage came to Darmstadt to critique it.
He did a concert playing just two notes on the piano,
he turned the radio on, and then off,
he made a bang, turned some pages...
I had the idea,
surrounded by colleagues, which were all composition graduates,
Franco Evangelisti, Boris Porena, Aldo Clementi, Egisto Macchi, and others.
I told them, you'll make a sort of...
a grunt. You make a laryngeal sound.
And then I conducted this...
At that moment, the Nuova Consonanza Improvisation Group was born.
It was a breakthrough group.
They didn't use the traditional techniques of sound emission.
Those techniques were always extreme.
we wanted to make traumatic sounds. That's what we called them.
You weren't supposed to recognise the trumpet.
I played it in different ways,
putting a hand in front of the bell, pushing the pistons in halfway,
so it came out like a strange mewing sound.
It was also awful!
Basically, a different way of making music.
They worked with sound,
rather than melodies.
In fact, melodies were almost banned.
Ennio worked with melody every day.
It seems like a conflict, a cinematic stunt.
I used to do all the arrangements for the Quartetto Cetra.
They would choose the songs.
They used to give me a kind of notebook
and I had to instrument that notebook for the orchestra.
They chose songs that people knew,
but they used different words.
In each episode, there were many songs,
but they only gave me the notebook the day before airing,
and the next morning, we recorded.
So I used to spend the nights writing.
He would be what they called "the slave" in musical slang,
which meant doing arrangements for others.
But his name would never appear. For television or film music.
One of the first was Cicognini,
a great composer who was making a film directed by De Sica.
I arranged and conducted this song and this chorus.
The Maestro Ennio Morricone.
One day a baritone arrived at RCA.
He sang songs from the '30s.
And I heard some amazing arrangements.
Maestro Morricone, famous arranger.
And the name Ennio Morricone came up.
I was called in to save RCA which was going bankrupt.
With "Il Barattolo", it was saved.
There was this sound which is the sound of a can.
Everything sounded very '60s.
But the can is a foreign element that has nothing to do with the context.
The information is a shock to the listener of the song.
Meccia, the singer, was almost scared,
but Ennio was already someone who looked around for cans,
rolling them around.
People were used to melodic music,
Italian music was very melodic up until then,
so these noises were a novelty.
You used a typewriter as a musical instrument.
Yes, exactly. A proper, written part, played by a real performer.
For "Pinne, Fucile ed Occhiali", we used tubs
with water to create the splash effect
which didn't come out how Ennio wanted it.
we tried putting detergent in it, putting covers over it,
because he wanted a dive that sounded like...
A water sound.
Each song had a stroke of genius.
He blended trumpets with female voices and trombones with male voices.
A totally new sound.
He revolutionized RCA.
The arrangers back then were so boring.
The arrangers at RCA were Morricone and Bacalov.
I requested Morricone because I thought he was more brilliant.
I wasn’t wrong.
These things here, very simple,
were very successful.
Then I added some piano.
The dignity of the composer,
that my teacher had taught me,
I felt I had to use it
in the simplest of the professions, even the lowest,
redeeming it with the principles of dodecaphonic music
transposed into tonal music.
He would give colour to these songs, turn the into something else.
I'm not worthy of you.
I don't deserve you anymore.
There was counterpoint in it
There was no reason for it, an accompanying chord was enough.
There was always counterpoint.
I think he basically invented the arrangement.
Until then, songs were just accompanied.
Before Morricone, there was only the accompaniment.
The orchestra followed the chords,
it was the background.
He started personalizing the songs.
I was trying to add something superior to the song itself.
But I didn't think I was an innovator.
I used to see him writing while he was talking on the phone,
he would write the arrangement, the violin part, the trumpet part.
And he would carry on like this, while on the phone.
He stands in front of a piano,
he looks at the keys and writes. He writes the score.
He could imagine the sounds.
He looks at the keys and writes.
Without playing them. He just hears them.
He had the music in here, inside.
The orchestra is conducted by Ennio Morricone.
Can you hear it? There is also a trick.
Many arrangements
start with something very catchy, right at the beginning.
Conducted by Ennio Morricone.
He did an extraordinary arrangement for Paul Anka, with an amazing beginning.
-Ten seconds and you were riveted. -The song started, and he sang.
Ennio came up with musical phrases
that could constantly run after each other.
They became the trademark of the song.
This device immediately identified the song.
The greatest artists of the time wanted Morricone.
I also worked with Chet Baker.
He played the trumpet in an extraordinary way.
So dark that it sounded like a flugelhorn.
My father, at the age of 55, was losing his skills on the trumpet.
I didn’t put trumpets in what I did.
So as not to offend him.
This was a dramatic moment in our relationship.
And my mother used to say: "Why don't you call dad to work?"
And I never told her that he was no longer a great trumpet player.
So I didn't call his colleagues either.
I felt this was the right thing to do.
When he died, I started calling the trumpets again.
All he cared about was music.
He was so absorbed by music, that nothing else mattered.
And he was absent. Continuously absent.
For me he created miracles.
The singles were made with a commercial intent.
So I needed to work on the rhythm.
The albums, very few of them were sold.
So there, I could use my ideas.
He managed to add cultured quotations.
he starts it with Beethoven's ''Moonlight Sonata''.
It was a nocturne, by Beethoven,
I thought it was consistent with a song called ''Voice at Night''.
He did the arrangement of ''Ciribiribin'' for four pianos.
I used the incipit of...
The beginning of the melody,
I took it as a cue for arranging the whole song.
That arrangement was a complete invention.
I remember he once said:
''There is only one arrangement of a song:
the one I created''.
But he would plain to you why.
And 99 times out of 100, he convinced you.
One in 100, he didn't.
Zambrini wrote the song ''In Ginocchio da Te''.
He did the first arrangement of my music.
We went into the recording studio,
Ennio gets on the podium and starts conducting.
And we listen to it.
I could see the lyricist and producer Migliacci from the recording studio
turning his nose up at it.
It was very sweet.
''It's not good, it needs some rhythm.''
''There must be a part with momentum.''
-''So, now what do we do?'' -''We have to redo it.''
He did not bat an eyelid.
He went home, and he wrote again.
The next Friday,
he was already a bit on edge.
He asked me to sing live.
So I start.
And Migliacci on the other side...
He wasn't happy.
''Ennio, this is not good either. It's still too soft.''
I told him: ''Ennio, you need to redo it''.
''But this is a melodic song!''
We said: “In this way it's impossible to dance''
''I won't do it again. Get someone else.''
And they said, ''You have to.''
''Make it desperate, put some rage in it...''
So he calls again everybody.
A group of 40, 50...
backup singers, eight of them,
guitarists, keyboardists, pianists, harpsichordists
and also trombones, horns...
He goes home, mad as hell. He starts writing again.
-The next day... -He shows up.
''It's the last time, I won't try it again.
This is the rubbish you like.''
He throws it on the table.
''Take this pile of crap.''
He gets on the podium and starts.
I remember it very well.
The piano.
Migliacci was like...
''Ennio, this is amazing.''
''No, it's awful. I don't like it.''
But it was great.
Then he added all the responses.
I'll come back..
to you on my knees...
And, of course, they made the film.
And Ennio did the soundtrack.
You could tell that I was a peculiar arranger.
A bit more difficult.
I noticed he was at RCA less and less.
Luciano Salce knew me
and he asked me to compose the score for ''Il Federale''.
It was the first time my name would appear on a film.
It was a debut, for way of saying.
''Gunfight at Red Sands'', and ''Bullets Don't Argue''
are Ennio Morricone's first two westerns,
both from 1963.
Initially, he uses pseudonyms.
Nobody knows that Ennio Morricone is working on these westerns.
Dan Savio was a friend of my wife,
so I used her name.
He doesn't want to reveal to Petrassi and his colleagues
that he is doing westerns.
I remember I made up the horses riding with the guitars.
Sergio Leone called me
because he heard the music of these two westerns.
He came to my house.
He asked me to do his film.
However, I...
I knew that face.
And I said: ''Are you the Leone who went to school at the Carissimi?''
''Yes, that's me.''
''I'm Ennio Morricone.''
They were schoolmates.
There's a beautiful photo,
with all the schoolchildren in their smocks,
and you can recognise Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone.
Two former schoolmates who meet again to work.
And they become inseparable.
On the same afternoon, he took me to see a Japanese film.
He explained to me that ''A Fistful of Dollars''
had something in common with it.
Years earlier, Ennio had written an arrangement for a western record
for an American singer.
I said: ''Let me hear something of yours.''
And he had a record, with a baritone voice.
A very original arrangement for a western song.
I said: ''Why don't you find me the backing track?''
I took the whole arrangement, as I wrote it.
He invented a new melody.
Done with a whistle.
Ennio calls me and says:
''Give me a little whistle, I need to do something''.
Afterwards, I said to him: ''Not quite a little whistle!''
That's how ''A Fistful of Dollars'' began.
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
It was a real turning point.
It was the music of an out-of-the-ordinary composer.
An unprecedented tone.
We'd never heard anything like it.
An electric guitar, the lashes of a whip.
The piffero.
The anvil, the whistle.
-The bell. -He set out a new language.
It was a culture shock, for those times.
When Sergio took me to the editing room to watch it,
for the duel between Volonte and Eastwood he used the ''Deguello''.
The trumpet piece from the movie ''Rio Bravo''.
It fit perfectly.
Leone said to me: ''We'll keep this''.
I said, ''Sorry, Sergio, I can't accept that,
you want to use an existing piece in the main scene,
and I just do the background music''.
And I said: ''I quit''.
Sergio gave up the ''Deguello''.
But he said:
''Please, give me an imitation. It fit so well''.
I thought of a song,
one that I had written years earlier for a TV show.
Sung by one of the great Peter Sisters,
a contralto with a deep, extraordinary voice.
I said: ''I'm going to show Sergio''.
Obviously I instructed Michele Lacerenza, the trumpeter,
to do those flutters on the trumpet.
Like in the ''Deguello''.
For best music score: Ennio Morricone, ''A Fistful of Dollars''.
Morricone, a few words.
A few words with Morricone.
-You didn't expect this award. -No.
-Is this your first award? -Yes.
Do you often work on background music for film?
He looked very young to me.
He had this round face and these glasses,
like one of the Peanuts,
like Charlie Brown, or a grown-up Linus.
Ennio was present in a lot of Italian films.
And I used to have a lot of fun listening and imagining
how he had worked with the director.
FISTS IN THE POCKET
I took big risks with first-time directors.
I tried to make different music.
Ennio is reserved, a believer.
I was impressed
by how he became very involved, in an anti-religious film.
I wrote a lullaby, sung by a female voice,
immersed in dissonant sounds
of a metallic, vibrating surface.
I'm happy I did those kinds of films.
They weren't as commercial as the others.
Time later Sergio Leone and I went to see again ''A Fistful of Dollars''.
And we admitted to each other that we didn't like it.
I never loved the music of this film.
I always encouraged Sergio, in later films, to forget it.
But he insisted: ''Give me some trumpet, do the whistle''.
FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
There was friendship between them,
there was complicity,
but also a lot of discussions.
Also, let's say, violent ones.
Cut it.
In the scene where Sergio wanted the trumpet,
I had the idea to quote the opening of Bach's ''Toccata and Fugue
in D minor''..
The music of his westerns, which he considers basic,
had a structure,
a wisdom, a deliberate architecture, which was impressive.
Sergio Leone, with ''For a Few Dollars More'',
began to understand the importance of the soundtrack
by Ennio Morricone in his films.
And he realised that Morricone was beginning to have an audience.
After a long time, I met Petrassi and he told me
that he liked my music for the cinema very much.
And he mentioned a film that I didn't expect.
''For a Few Dollars More''.
And I was shocked.
Because I thought I had written better music than that.
And he said: ''However, I know that you will make up for it.
I know that you will make up for it.''
I don't think Petrassi appreciated this work he did.
Same as I didn't appreciate it very much.
We really were, in a way,
archaic.
What do you think about the collaboration
between composer and director in film music?
I would define it totally anti-artistic.
Composers who came out of Petrassi's school
never had a good opinion of my profession.
My work with the cinema.
And this sort of isolated me.
He once phoned me, when he was young,
and it was very moving.
He said I was a purist while he was a traitor.
He was divided, also because the environment forced him to be.
Who are you? Are you this or are you that?
Ennio had a kind of inferiority complex.
For having given up the purity of the composer,
the vision of Petrassi.
But Petrassi betrayed that idea too, more than once.
Petrassi also did soundtracks.
However, while Petrassi never thought that film music was real music,
Ennio thought it was.
Petrassi couldn't understand
what was special about Ennio.
His ability to identify with a situation, a scene.
Petrassi probably couldn't do that, just like I couldn't.
And I think that even Petrassi was not entirely free
from an inferiority complex.
I also did ''The Bible''
directed by a certain director called, I think, Huston.
He put a lot of effort into writing that music.
But Huston didn't accept it,
because, according to him, it was too difficult.
So I think it's the end of my work with the cinema.
It almost seemed like fate, and an unjust fate.
I was called by Dino De Laurentiis...
to replace my teacher, Petrassi.
The musical production was a co-production between
RCA and Dino De Laurentiis.
And Dino said to me: ''Do a piece on the Creation.
We'll give it to Huston, if he likes it, you'll do the whole film.''
I simulated the light,
a trickle of water, which then widened and swelled,
and then it burst with the fire.
Then the animals, the birds...
All this dynamism. Then it started again.
Maria went to a synagogue
and took some ancient Hebrew texts which Ennio set to music.
Huston came several times. De Laurentiis came several times.
They all seemed very happy.
I got the job.
At that point, De Laurentiis said to me: ''What do we care about RCA?
Just do the film with me''.
And I said: ''I have an exclusive with RCA,
I can't do this rudeness to them''.
I went to RCA and talked to the president.
I said: ''This is a great opportunity for me, unique, rare.
Let me do 'The Bible'''.
''No, you can't do it. You have a contract with us.''
And I didn't do it. Of course, I didn't.
Despite everything, Petrassi's point is clear.
He states that writing for the cinema, for commercial music,
is, for an academic musician, like prostitution.
So he is morally condemned.
Guilty.
At first, I felt guilty,
but I slowly redeemed this feeling.
So much so that by writing, I wanted my revenge.
I wanted to conquer...
this...
guilt.
Gillo Pontecorvo wanted to meet me.
I didn't expect such an important director.
I was intimidated because he was different from the others.
He was a big guy.
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
And I wrote even this piece...
It was one of my variations on Frescobaldi's theme.
There were three notes: A, B flat and B natural.
And then the contrary motion: F sharp, F natural, E.
It's about what I had learned.
I am made up of everything that music was,
the music I studied.
A little to your left.
Pasolini already, had a list of records that I had to put in the film.
He said to Ennio: ''So, maestro,
I would like this Bach part here.
I said, ''Excuse me, but I'm a composer who writes music,
I don't take other people's music and put in a movie,
this is not possible.
I have to refuse''.
And he said: ''In that case, do what you want''.
I wrote that rhyme,
between serious and funny.
there was ''music by Ennio Morricone'' and I sang...
sang, kind of, a laugh.
Until that moment, Pasolini only used Bach's music.
Then, he switched to Morricone.
The music in Sergio Leone's first films felt below what I could do,
because I was a slave to Sergio's vices,
then I came up with the theme which was the coyote's howl.
And I went...
It's dramatic but fun, and he liked it very much.
THE GOOD
THE UGLY
THE BAD
Let's focus on Ennio Morricone.
Ennio, do you realise that your story is unique
in the history of Italian music? You created two best sellers in two years,
two records with movie soundtracks
that were two incredible, tremendous hits.
I was lucky.
I don't think so. You are good.
I went to spy,
I bribed the projectionist,
I went to the copyist and tried to look at his score.
Following his work, I know he's an artist who never sought fame.
This is Maestro Morricone.
You may not recognise his face, but you know his name.
Morricone specialized in music for western movies.
Obviously, every western from that period came to me,
and I had to work on them, because that was my destiny at the time.
A funny story about Ennio:
you make a movie, you show it to him.
The first time he watches the movie, he falls asleep.
He falls asleep like the gunslingers in the West,
who seemed asleep, but then they shot you first.
He had watched it anyway, he already knew,
what he said was already right on the mark.
''The Great Silence'' by Sergio Corbucci was set all on snow...
All on snow.
Horses galloped without making any noise.
The leading character was mute.
Corbucci said to me:
''This is the best music you've created for me.''
I said: ''Thanks Sergio, it's because you can hear it.''
In the movies, mixing sound without a balance
can damage the movie and the music,
which is an abstract element added to the film and it's not necessary.
But when we want to hear it, we need to let it be free.
There was a period when I tried to reduce the notes
in order to communicate something the audience could remember.
I had one of my first ideas while I was paying the gas bill.
It was the song ''Se Telefonando''
that Mina asked me for.
And there I tried out the three notes for the first time.
They were three and in 4/4 time.
The stress never falls on the same note.
It was a very important discovery for tonal music,
because it also became catchier.
See, it's another note.
The three notes...
It's always there, but it's different for each measure.
He could repeat the same thing without making it stale.
I never abandoned the experience with fewer notes,
because I always liked to have a little fun.
Ennio was at the piano and told me:
''Now I'll play you two themes that cross each other.''
I often write two themes without realizing it,
One theme into the other to make them more agile.
And he played me two themes that cross each other.
I am not ashamed to say that I didn't like that theme.
I told the director, Peppino Patroni Griffi:
''I would discard this. Be patient and listen to me.''
And he told me I was mad.
'''Love Circle'' I find brilliant.
Because it's minimalist, what's trending now in music.
Peppino was right,
because I can't judge my own themes.
That's why, from that moment on,
I made my wife listen all the themes I wrote.
If she liked them, I played them for the director.
Directors only heard the pieces that my wife liked.
I remember that Ennio was never alone.
Maria was always with Ennio.
This woman who was a mother, a wife, and a partner,
but who watched over his talent in a wonderful way.
Because it's a sacrifice. For love, she was his first applause.
She, not knowing about music, could give me an honest opinion,
so that's what I've been doing for years.
She created a defensive perimeter
so that Ennio Morricone's genius could be free.
I always wondered how Ennio could be both
a movie musician and an experimental musician.
When I write for movies, I am a composer.
When I am write for myself I am someone else,
so I become a very diverse and opposite composer,
that it feels like I have a double face.
''Suoni per Dino'', written by Ennio Morricone
for Dino Asciolla and tape recorder,
musically expresses what the author thinks
about the disturbing issues that trouble today's society.
They interviewed him: ''How can a composer of spaghetti western music
have this experimental nature?''
He never gave up experimental music,
he even tried to use it in movies.
When Elio Petri met me for the first time he told me:
''I only work once with a composer,
so bear in mind that this is the first and last movie that we'll make together.''
I created very difficult music,
but the main character was a painter who was existentially confused
and it felt right to call the Nuova Consonanza Improvisation Group,
in which I played,
and use my previous composition for 11 violins,
to which I added percussion and a female voice.
We improvised in front of the movie, in sync with the mad painter's dreams,
so paints were spilling, boards fell over,
and the music somehow replaced the noises.
The movie and the music were critically acclaimed,
but the movie flopped.
I felt responsible for this failure.
During a concert in Florence, a stage-hand got on stage,
took a ladder and started shaking it.
The old wood made a sound...
After ten minutes, that man got off and left, the concert was over.
I told that to Sergio... and he understood.
The first 20 minutes of ''Once Upon a Time in the West'' are concrete music.
It was the result of what happened with the ladder in Florence.
Somehow, the noises were music.
That character plays the harmonica more than he speaks,
so it is a voice.
Entrusting so much of that character to Ennio meant putting yourself in his hands,
and it's no coincidence that my father never worked with another musician.
It's an extremely seductive music.
It seduces you, envelops you,
gets stuck in your head.
They gave me the music and I just read and performed.
I didn't practice it first.
I heard that it was a beautiful melody.
Music that we've kept listening to all our lives.
It became part of the fabric of our daily lives.
The voices, the sounds, the noises the tone, the mood,
the short phrases.
Ennio uses them for what they are.
Notes are like construction materials for a building.
The bricks are the same in all buildings, but the buildings are not the same.
Those were the bricks he used to build his cathedrals.
I didn't want to be categorised as someone who only composes music for westerns.
Lattuada encouraged me to write symphonic music.
They're all violins played divisi, then all the strings, but especially violins.
And I tried for truly symphonic music.
Actually, my most difficult piece is a different one.
The score for ''The Sicilian Clan'' took a great effort.
Good evening Mr. Malanese,
I hope you're not too surprise to see me.
I told to you, to come when you wanted.
There's the first exposition of the main theme...
And then I added as a second counterpoint Bach's name.
B is for B flat, A is for A, C is for C, and H is B natural.
Which is Bach.
He created a counterpoint that managed to combine
each part with its own voice, the drums, the double bass,
and air the instruments that come in.
That's Bach's name, I changed the order.
And behind..
The funny thing
on the theme that supported Bach's name, there is a Sicilian theme.
At a first listen it seems like a piece...
but no, it hides an immense amount of knowledge.
All the composers were fascinated by this B A C H,
but that doesn't matter.
Notes are no longer important.
What's important is what a composer makes out of them.
The names, the names!
I had already edited the music for ''I Cannibali'' by Liliana Cavani.
In the same building Gillo was editing ''Queimada'',
and from afar he heard a choir of that music.
When Liliana Cavani was not there he went to the editing room
and took her tape with that piece,
put it over his beach scene and it fit perfectly
That music in my movie felt like a secular hymn to freedom.
We got in a fight.
He wanted me to take that piece away from Liliana Cavani and use it in ''Queimada''.
Exhausted Gillo told me: ''Fine, then write me something similar.''
I noticed, when I watched Pontecorvo's movie,
that the theme was from ''I Cannibali''.
It was clear they were similar! They were different, but similar.
I was in the crossfire.
I remember a time when he said to me: ''Do you want to improvise Abolisson?''
Just like that, with no notice, as I was about to go on stage.
Of course!
The human voice is very magical, because it comes out of our body,
without needing an instrument.
By the end of the '60s,
Ennio Morricone was a guarantee for producers and directors.
In 1969 alone, 21 movies with his music were released.
Ennio's huge success made people envious.
They weren't only envious, but they copied him too.
Then envy turned into slander.
''You made 18 movies in one year, how's that possible?
You didn't do all of them, right?''
He sat like this.
He was so fast at writing music that it seemed like he was writing a letter.
He had a clarity of ideas when he imagined music.
He was clear, simple.
How many film scores did you compose?
I don't... I never counted.
I was sure Elio Petri and I wouldn't work together again,
but then he called me for all of his next movies.
For ''Investigation of a citizen above suspicion'' I wrote a little arpeggio.
During the mixing Elio called me and showed me the first part.
And I said: ''Elio, what a damn is this?''
He had changed the music.
He had used the music I had composed years before for an horrible movie.
Elio said to me: ''It's great.
Look, Bolkan is about to be killed,
look how well the choir works.''
Ruggero Mastroianni, the editor, was there on my left.
He said: ''Ennio, don't you see that's extraordinary?''
And I replied: ''How can you like this music for this scene?
It doesn't fit with it.''
I slowly gave up.
I told him: ''Do as you like.''
The lights went on,
and Elio said something that still moves me when I think of it.
''You created the best music I could ever imagine.
You should slap me in the face.''
A brilliant idea that weaves together
everything that Ennio had done until then
and that launches him towards his future is ''Investigation of a Citizen''.
I was traumatised by ''Investigation''.
It ma e me realise at it was possible to create very different music
from what even Morricone did until then.
I remember the music more than the movie.
In fact, the music carries the movie.
He invented a musical format which is film music.
He may be the inventor of film music.
How will you kill me this time?
I will cut your throat.
Kubrick liked that music and called me for ''A Clockwork Orange.''
He liked that music so much that he wanted me to do an imitation of it.
We agreed, but Kubrick called Leone,
who t him that I couldn't do it because I was working.
My composer Ennio Morricone is working on
my ne movie called: ''A Fistful of Dynamite.''
But it wasn't true. I was mixing ''A Fistful of Dynamite''.
The music was done,
so Kubrick gave up on me without even calling.
It's my only regret about a movie that I didn't work on.
One, two, one two three four.
I dreamed about being in a Morricone theme.
Wonderful, wow.
But instead, there were four people in the recording studio.
So he passed one scene and said...
He gave instructions and then recorded...
Ennio developed multiple scores
and tried them out in a certain type of thriller movie.
and iriad mam oui in a certain type of thriller movie.
He looked at me, a little bit angry,
and asked: ''What are those?''
I told him: ''They are records... In case we need inspiration...''
''Throw them away.''
Please, open up!
I experimented with a writing style I'd never tried.
He wrote music in scores, in strips.
Musicians in the studio improvised on Ennio's outline,
he was playing the trumpet...
Based on what was happening on-screen
he pointed to the number of the strip to be played
by a specific musician.
So I have him start, then I have her start,
and everyone needs to have their instrument ready
to start at any time, because it's not written.
So when a director would say, ''That's good'',
I couldn't do it the same way again.
This allowed me to do the unexpected in movies.
After the third movie, Salvatore, Dario's father,
said to me: ''What are you doing? It's all the same music.''
He said:.''You made the same music for three movies.''
It wasn't true.
Ennio defended himself saying: ''I don't make the same music.''
But it seemed the same.
Because dissonant music destabilises the senses.
But I applied this idea to other movies.
and got to the 23rd multiple score.
Maybe at a certain point he overdid it a little.
He start receiving his first rejections or warnings, because they told him:
''Ennio, if you keep writing like this, you won't have a job anymore.''
Obviously I changed my writing style.
Morricone was already a myth.
Joan Baez was one of the greatest symbols of American youth.
Ennio speaks English, sort of,
and Baez speaks Italian, sort of,
but music is a universal language.
She sang on a temporary piano and drums,
so I put the orchestra over her voice.
And she told me:
''Nobody, not knowing me directly,
could have written to this exact point of my best vocal range.''
She said: ''It's a miracle.''
That song soon became a hit
and we kept asking ourselves: ''Why? How was this possible?''
The fact that my melodies were successful
doesn't mean that I was wrong to be against the traditional melody.
I think that we are out of melodic combinations.
Supposedly, Ennio Morricone doesn't love melody.
He said so.
But he is a musician with a very strong melodic vein,
that comes out the more he tries to suppress it.
Melody? Someone who is so good at creating it can't despise it.
He's lying.
But maybe, it's in what we could playfully call composer schizophrenia,
that lies that totally different spark.
One of his rules is strictness applied to creation,
and the fact that he plays chess proves it.
I mean, he lives in a mathematical, geometrical world.
It's an almost transcendental, spiritual approach.
His pieces with the greatest impact play on an exhausting tension,
whose resolution is almost ecstatic for the viewer.
I myself had to give up on listening analytically
and just let go.
His music makes each of us feel like it was secretly written for us.
Why do people remember Morricone's music?
Because when you listen to it you can't forget it.
My head is full of music, something I will have to write,
then I get an interesting, important idea.
So I often seem reserved, like someone who doesn't like to talk.
He's an extremely timid person,
with a profound determination.
So speaking to him about music is to speak with the abyss inside him.
He believes in his music,
that it's never a servant to the image.
In fact, Ennio says: ''I am like a chameleon,
I change colour depending on the director I work with,
but I am always myself.''
I think that he always tried to understand
the director he was with and then work on their soul.
In this respect, Ennio was a good psychologist,
because to be able to deal with personalities which were so complex
and sometimes so troubled, you have to be a very good psychologist.
With Pasolini and the other directors he worked with
he always found a way to express himself.
He is truly a dictionary.
If ten good composers work with the same director
and write for the same movie,
they will all write very different music.
This dramatic reasoning means
how difficult it is to write movie scores.
Because if there are that many solutions,
the hardest part of a composer's job is:
what is the right music, which one fits the best?
This is the composer's agony.
For ''Allonsanfan'' we said: ''Ennio, in the end there's a dance.
We need music for shooting that.''
He did the accompaniment for us.
And we liked it very much.
So we thought that accompaniment was the music of the dance.
And they shot the movie with that rythm.
But when we edit a movie,
we can't proceed without music.
So we put together the most varied music,
the most diverse musicians.
Then Ennio came to see the editing and said: ''That's good, but why am I here?''
And he left.
To imitate the others music.
I didn't like not being able to think by myself.
I never liked it.
We ran down the stairs.
''No, you have to do it.''
''I'm not doing it.''
Eventually I accepted, but I'll create the music by myself.
When we were in the recording studio for the final dance,
Ennio said: ''I prepared a melody for you.''
''No! We don't want a melody. We like it like this, Ennio.''
''Just listen.''
We jumped on him, because it was even better.
The director oversees everything:
screenplay, set designs, costumes,
acting, lights, framing.
But not the music.
He sat at the piano and did the melody with his voice...
I have a bad voice, it's definitely not good.
He played some music for me on the piano, but I didn't understand a thing.
The film director couldn't know the orchestration I'm going to do.
I didn't dare doubt what Morricone improvised at the piano,
I knew that that sound would become strings, winds.
A director can't understand the final result from a description.
You cannot describe music, it needs to be listened to.
Some movies inspired me straight away
to write a certain music, of a certain type.
During the first screening of ''1900'', a rough cut,
Ennio started writing the theme immediately.
It was dark, I happened to have a piece of paper and I started writing notes.
I wrote that.
It seemed like he created, with music, a parallel movie.
Ennio moves inside the music.
There's nothing he cannot give you.
If, while he's recording, you say to him:
''Why don't you make this into a piece that resembles Verdi?
His talent instanty gushes out.
He can instantly create a song like Verdi and you wonder what opera it's from.
But it's not an opera.
It's Ennio.
''1900'' received heavy criticism
and someone faulted the music too.
Zurlini called me and said:
''I will write an article in your defence.''
It was really nice of him.
The Tartars are the dreams of youth that are lost.
At a certain point Zurlini wanted to hear the themes so I played with the piano...
And he went: ''That's enough, it's good.''
It's incredible not knowing how the theme developed,
not even the orchestration, he knew nothing.
But when a director trusts you, he trusts you.
Farewell, Drogo.
I invented the piece with the five war trumpets
that suggested that an army was coming
but didn't.
The last time that I played the trumpet
was when Gillo Pontecorvo got married at the Campidoglio.
He asked me if I could play the wedding march.
I took the trumpet, even though I hadn't practised in a long time, and played...
On the trumpet. He was very happy.
Terrence Malick was an important director for me.
I went to watch the movie
and when I got back to Italy I wrote 18 ideas.
When we analysed the movie,
he had me create a piece that was really important to me.
It was a kind of symphony of fire.
I never had an epistolary relationship like the one I had with him.
A movie musician has to be able to do anything,
from symphonies to popular songs.
Listen, honey, all you had to do, did you do it?
Sergio Leone produced my first movies.
During the production of ''Un Sacco Bello'', Leone told him:
''You should do something like Titina,
but sweeter, more like Chaplin.''
Morricone said: ''Listen, it's better if you just give me the screenplay.
I'll read it and get a sense of it.''
Maestro, what do you want me to do for you?
And he answered: ''Love, love.''
We went back two days later.
Morricone played five or six notes.
Leone said to Morricone:
''See? I gave you a good tip.''
''But that's Titina, what does Titina have to do with this?''
''No, but it's around there.''
I remember when Morricone came and Leone said:
''I want that pan flute all over the movie.''
Morricone replied: ''We will use it where it's right, Sergio.
You can't put the pan flute on everything.''
''But the pan flute is...''
''Let me take care of putting the pan flute to good use.''
Ennio and Sergio were partners in life.
Sergio went to him to tell him about the movies he wanted to write.
The collaboration with Sergio began when he described the movie to me.
He described it to me in great detail, even explaining the framing.
I think that my father depended on Ennio's music,
and wanted his movies to depend on music.
The music in my father's movies was much more than a soundtrack.
It essentially was the dialogue of the movie.
Often Sergio made me start writing some musical themes
before he started filming.
I remember Ennio playing the music from ''Once Upon a Time in America''
many years before the movie was made.
During those years, Sergio had many doubts
and sometimes he asked: ''Let me hear the other theme.''
It was a theme made of silences and pauses...
things that I love.
It is a theme that I wrote, in America,
for the movie ''Endless Love'' by Zeffirelli.
For a certain scene, he told me:
''Here there is a song written by another composer.''
So I refused to make that movie, because it had a song by someone else.
-And I'm not okay with that. -Dad often asked Ennio
to bring him even the discarded themes. The unused ones.
I made him listen to Zeffirelli's theme which became Deborah's theme.
He loved it.
And I must say, I still like it too.
Without that music...
I couldn't imagine it any other way.
If had to see the movie without hearing that music...
Leone wanted Ennio's music to echo during the filming.
And that even the speakers would spread Ennio's music.
The actors shot their scenes with the background music.
On set there was Morricone's music. It was crazy.
Camera.
Ready, mark, 144, 18 take one.
Action.
Listening the music on shooting affected everybody.
It affected the actors, the crew.
You feel like you've already,
I wouldn't say watched the movie, but felt it.
Great actors such as De Niro, who are very attentive to live recording
with the background music, said: ''I keep the music, it helps me''.
In the field of high-brow music, Ennio Morricone
was a familiar name but it didn't arouse any particular interest.
But that was my world.
The great academic musicians of the previous generation
have struggled to recognise Ennio Morricone's talent.
In this sense, the definitive revelation was ''Once Upon a Time in America''.
This music cannot be written by someone who isn't deeply a musician.
Here, his music fascinated me on a higher level.
It's a music that doesn't pass over things superficially.
But it gets inside, it creates them.
And when I realised that, then I understood Morricone too.
Not before.
Boris Porena wrote to Ennio a letter of apology.
But it wasn't an apology to Morricone. It was an apology to a historical period
to himself, to...
for not being able to grasp it,
for being so blind, so deaf in the face of the power of ideology.
He belonged to another world. Essentially, he had snubbed him.
And it took some time before many of them...
would bow... to his genius.
When I read this letter to Ennio,
he stood up
and he cried. Liberated, in a way.
I remember when I came out of the movie, I said: ''Damn...
there is something here
that goes beyond what we normally think of as music for movies.''
I was grieving over the massacre of the Indians and the Jesuits.
But the movie was so beautiful, without music.
I could only ruin it.
''You don't need music for this movie''.
''No, impossible!
''The Mission'' comes at a particular time in Ennio's life
in which he decided to leave film music.
And this movie comes along by surprise
in his existential decision.
''This is Ennio''
''I thought...
I have a little idea''.
It's very strange, my behaviour in writing ''The Mission''.
I almost didn't control it.
I wrote this music without controlling myself.
For a piece of absolute music
Ennio could even write for a year.
And a score like ''The Mission'' two months.
Here, this is another example of Ennio's secret rooms.
I mean, you're seeing something pretty phenomenal.
I first wrote the oboe theme.
But since the movie takes place in 1750
I was also influenced by the ornamentations of the time.
The double mordent, the double gruppetto
the acciaccatura, the appoggiatura. All these elements
that enriched the melody.
Mordent...
Acciaccatura..
The mordents.
And it seemed right to give the film a motet.
Following the rules of the Second Vatican Council.
And then..
the ethnic theme of the Indians... a primitive music.
So within the motet
I wrote another theme,
a rhythmic one.
The amazing thing
is that the oboe theme
was combined with the motet.
The theme of the motet was combined with the ethnic part.
The ethnic part could be combined with the oboe theme.
So all three themes could be combined together.
All of this happened unintentionally.
Almost as if there was something
that suggested it to me, the music... its logic.
Herbie Hancock.
Good jazz musician, good composer, good pianist. I don't dispute that.
But the main character played existing pieces.
So the music was half repertoire
and should not have been in Original Music category.
In fact, when the Oscar was announced
the audience protested.
I left quickly.
He was the best. Everybody knew he was the best.
However, he didn't get the recognitions he deserved.
Because ultimately, they didn't understand him.
You switch between movie music
and chamber music compositions.
I've been increasing this activity for a while now.
I'd given it up for the movies but now I'm doing it again.
Also because I don't want to die only working for the cinema.
For years up to now
he also worked as a composer of cultured music.
With compositions of great value, of a high artistic and aesthetic level.
Petrassi was in the front row at one of Ennio's concerts.
And seeing Ennio so respectful
of his master, it was clear that he'd never really cut the umbilical cord.
When producer Franco Cristaldi called him to offer him ''Cinema Paradiso'',
Ennio at first said no.
Franco called me back shortly after. He said: ''Read the script.
And then you'll tell me''.
The house phone rang.
''I am Ennio Morricone, can we meet?''
Please.
I went there, very excited.
He asked me if I wanted Sicilian music, folk music.
I didn't think about anything like that.
Then he looked at me
and he said: ''I'll do the movie''.
It was ''Cinema Paradiso''.
And I thoroughly enjoyed doing it.
It was a life lesson.
Because Ennio treated me as an equal, and I was just a newcomer.
While he already done 350 of his 500 films.
And the more he sought to get away from the cinema
the more the cinema pursued him.
For the ''Untouchables'',
I wrote all the themes in New York and De Palma was always enthusiastic.
The last day when we had to say goodbye
he surprises me and says: ''I need a triumphal piece for the police''.
I say: ''All right, I'll write it in Rome and then I'll send it to you''.
I sent him nine demos, with a letter where I said:
''Please don't choose number six.
Because it's really the one I like the least''.
Which did he choose? Number six.
Ennio's greatness stems from
not only the music he writes for a certain scene,
but also his approach to the scene.
When he represents violence, he doesn't match the image.
He's totally detached.
Hi ability lies in showing you another point of view.
With the scene at the station, I decided to put in waltz.
This waltz with the carillon, gave me the chance
to slightly change the very tense development of the scene.
De Palma did not agree.
But, as many directors do, he accepted it.
A few months later I got a statement he made in a newspaper.
Saying that my choice was right, and he had...
criticised it.
Giving me great satisfaction and great professional honesty.
Ennio Morricone got the nomination for the third time.
for this film by De Palma.
-Are you excited, Maestro. -I don't get so excited about it anymore.
By the third time, I'm used to it. In fact, I'm sure I won't get it.
Why do I like chess?
Because it teaches the struggle of life.
The sense of resistance.
The desire to improve.
Resistance to contrary things like what comes from the opponent.
Who tries to win and I try to win.
In a non-bloody way.
He wanted me to do the same thing again.
The problem is that Ennio, compared to us directors and editors,
has a more interesting capacity for interpreting cinema than we do.
To find an idea right away
means that is it attached to the movie.
With the images there's a real marriage, like love at first sight.
Sometimes this didn't happen.
And it was very hard for me.
During ''Sostiene Pereira'', he was pretty upset about this movie.
Ennio says: ''I didn't know where to turn to find an idea.
One day, right below Ennio's house
there was a demonstration with people banging on drums.
There was a strike and I heard the famous percussion...
I took this beat and I used it for the whole movie.
Listen, boy, sit down.
The Ten Commandments don't say it. But I say it.
The reasons of the heart...
are the most important.
He takes up the rhythmic formula of '68.
''Ce n'est qu'un Debut Continuons le Combat'',
He transforms it into the framework of the musical part.
And it becomes Pereira's determination.
Those rhythms
gave him the input to make music
which contained something... revolutionary.
I said: ''I'd like a song from that era,'' one I had found. That's when we argued.
But he was right. He had created a wonderful song.
In my opinion, a score must be meaningful itself
In order to provide a good service to the film to which it is applied.
He can awaken in your soul
energies you didn't know you had and that were asleep.
During the sessions with the orchestra
he came into the control room and threw himself on the couch.
And he could sleep for 20 seconds, like Napoleon.
''Do not disturb the Maestro, he's sleeping''.
In 20 seconds, he was ready, and he was back in there.
Conducting like a lion.
For ''The Legend of 900''
he began to compose the themes while I wrote the script.
We went hand in hand constantly consulting each other.
Even during the shooting.
It was like, for some mysterious reason,
Ennio identified with the character of the young pianist
who would have never abandoned the ship of his music.
On the wave of grief in New York, Ennio Morricone composed...
The symphony that Ennio Morricone has dedicated to the tragedy of Sept 11, 2001.
It was a composition born under the tragic impact
of the attack on the Twin Towers.
In memory of all the massacres in human history.
A big orchestra
a choir, someone who says a few words
and these tapes of ethnic music.
Look how many disciplines are together.
Listening to that music, I felt
everything we saw in our homes
during what was happening in New York.
He knows how to express the feelings he feels inside,
through the music staff, like nobody else.
I don't regret writing music for cinema.
If anything, I came gradually
to find convergences between absolute music and film music.
One rubbed off on the other.
These convergences, even in concept,
are fundamental and important in my life.
At a certain point
the two souls... met.
I want to thank the Academy
for this honour you've given me. Giving me this coveted award.
I dedicate this Oscar to my wife Maria who loves me very much.
She's been there for me all these years.
And I love her the same way.
This award is for her, too.
At the Royal Albert Hall in London
as soon as he came on stage, the whole audience stood up
and gave him a really long applause. It gives you goosebumps.
It's an honour for Italy in the world.
Truly a giant, an extraordinary artist
The Maestro
Ennio Morricone.
There really isn't any place in the world, from South America to Asia,
not to mention Europe, where he is not welcomed...
in a huge way, like a pop star.
On the occasion of his 40-year career Morricone will conduct the...
I remember one of his film music concerts in Paris
with the audience going wild.
When I went to his dressing room, I decided to say:
''Ennio, are you convinced that this
is the great music of the 20th century,
tout court?''
And he said: ''I'm thinking about it''.
At first I thought that music applied to cinema was humiliating.
Then little by little, no.
In fact, today I think that film music
is full-fledged contemporary music.
It was a turning point in maturity.
He found an impressive artistic youth.
And he convinced me.
He brings his musical loves with him.
The beginning of the fugue of Stravinsky's ''Symphony of Psalms''.
Tarantino was obviously crazy about Leone's movies so
he probably expected a different kind of music.
What could I have written so as not to travel the same road?
I wrote a symphony, a true symphony.
Morricone was a good chess player, and brought Tarantino to his own turf.
I felt like I was avenging myself on the Western movie
to cut it short with the past.
Tarantino... is hyperbolic.
Ennio gave him the answer:
''To determine if one is Mozart or Beethoven 200 years must pass.''
When you open a page by Beethoven
maybe you can't play it.
But the writing is clear. With Ennio, everything is clear.
Chopin, Tchaikovsky they've endured for so long.
Why not Ennio Morricone's music scores?
I agree with Tarantino.
I think he achieved an extraordinary position.
For his ability to look back, and his ability to look forward.
To music as it was, and to music as it will be.
Ennio taught us how to behave with one's own legend.
Something extraordinary happened to him
to be recognized as a world Maestro,
at the height of his creativity.
And that made him a happy composer.
He deserves that and more.
Because he's hard-working, he's a great musician.
Without acting like an artist.
We went to do some concerts.
He was shocked that, in Israel,
the passport man knew who he was.
He's not someone with big head, but by now he's like some kind of icon.
It is so evident to the people.
To the people of the world.
And then they also use
little themes of mine within their creations.
I believe that he has alwa s been ahead with language.
In fact, he dictated the language.
And so he can only be seen as a precursor.
He is the precursor of cross-disciplines.
Ennio's music also grabs the kids.
He is honest.
To recreate the colour he wanted
certain sounds were
reproduced, sampled
used in various albums of pop rock artists.
They don't deny their personality, in this mysterious liking
that they have for my work.
Without Ennio Morricone
most of us wouldn't be here.
Linguistically we would be different, poorer.
His lesson is speechless, because no one ever went to a class by Ennio.
If you listen to a lot of music, you always find something Ennio-like.
Someone who used strings the way he does.
Piano the way he does. But it's not him.
He is the music.
The music that comes out no matter what. Whatever he writes.
Maybe even independently of his consciousness.
When I did the first film, it was 1961.
I said to my wife: ''In 1970 I will quit cinema''.
Then in 1970 I said: ''I'll quit in 1980''.
In 1980 I said: ''I'll quit in 1990''.
In 1990 I said: ''I'll quit in 2000''.
Now, I don't say anything.
Ennio managed to merge
prose and poetry.
It completely disrupted up the mould.
The normality that becomes exceptional.
Ennio almost always has an elevation. Something that makes you think...
that makes you float.
Ennio's music transcends
and so it travels to other galaxies.
The God of music speaks through him as if he were possessed.
His music is... eternal.
When you start to describe him, you realize that
a lifetime would not be enough.
He will go down in history
and there will always be Ennio's music.
He's part of our family.
He's like a relative.
Music should be thought before it is written.
It's a problem.
It's a problem that is always there when you begin a composition.
And in front of the composer sits a blank page.
What do we put down?
On that page.
What do we put on that page?
There's a thought there
that must be developed
and it has to go forward.
In search... of what?
We don't know.