Film scores from Ennio Morricone

Warren Beatty once said, `there's nobody better than Ennio to create a haunting theme'. However, Morricone takes a dim view of being considered a catchy tunesmith. He rightly regards himself as an empirical and versatile composer, as capable of creating jazz, rock, folk, electronica and avant-garde scores, as well as classical. With over 100 pieces of non-film music to his credit, beside his 480+ screen items, Morricone is one of the most prolific and proficient artists of the last 50 years.

Having studied trumpet and composition, Morricone eked a living with Roman jazz bands before composing for the theatre and radio. In 1958, he was hired by the RAI television station, only to quit after his first day. Consequently, he was something of an undiscovered talent when former classmate Sergio Leone approached him to score A Fistful of Dollars (1964). In experimenting with unconventional instrumentation and maverick arrangements, Morricone (who adopted the pseudonym Don Savio for the film) established the aural tone of the spaghetti Western that recurred in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Harmonicas, banjos, bells, Jew's harps, trumpets, piccolos and church organs competed with ethereal choruses to provide quizzical counterpoints and pounding emphases alike, while the twangy guitars from the last installment of the `Dollars' trilogy took Hugh Montenegro to the top of the UK charts in 1968.

'The Ecstasy of Gold' from The Good the Bad and The Ugly (click the play button):

Opening theme from The Good The Bad and The Ugly:

However, as the pastiche Jazz Age scores he produced for Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and Brian DePalma's The Untouchables (1987) demonstrated, there was more to Morricone than acoustic audacity. As he once revealed, `I'm not linked to one genre or another. I like to change, so there's no risk of getting bored.' Consequently, he has composed for dramas, romances, comedies, giallo thrillers and period pictures.

Away from the aggressive rhythms, trashy pop hooks and sonic quirkiness, Morricone has shifted between Verdian eloquence and fascistic grandiloquence in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976), brought an evocative darkness to the pastoral mellifluence of Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), combined lustrous strings with indigenous percussion in Roland Joffé's The Mission (1982), captured the nostalgic spirit of the nation in Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988) and borrowed from Scott Joplin and George Gershwin for the piano portions of Tornatore's The Legend of 1900 (1998). And, at 80, he's not finished yet.

Theme from Days of Heaven:

Theme from Cinema Paradiso:

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