Ennio Morricone
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For the first 30 years of my film music fandom, I was a “semi-fan” — meaning that I loved some of his work, usually the most famous, but was also alienated by a lot of things. I had a few titles — your THE MISSION or LEGEND OF 1900 or MALENA or stuff like that. Managed to see him live twice, in London in 2009, and in Oslo ten years later, in 2019. But then after he died in 2020, my collection exploded. Mostly digital titles, sure, but still. Have some 120 now.
My Morricone love is mostly centered on a) his bittersweet, lyrical writing or b) his loungey stuff. The dissonant Morricone, I’ve never been able to stomach. But maybe some day.
My favourite is the 2005 Holocaust drama FATELESS.
What about you folks? What’s your relationship to the great Italian maestro?
I think that in many ways Morricone was a true genius, but I’m by no means a fan of all his work.
Perhaps other Brits of a certain vintage will remember that the BBC screened the DOLLARS movies around the mid-1970s (but not THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY – that one was too long for the regular time slot), and they were a kind of “rite of passage” for young teen boys. Some of my friends and I had the LP (on the cheap Pickwick label I think – it cost about 1 pound 50) of highlights from the first two films. That was a gateway release for many.
I’m fairly selective when it comes to buying his soundtracks. In general they’re all too long, with a lot of repetition of perhaps two or three themes which go through various subtle changes in instrumentaion. Main Theme 1, Love Theme 1, Dissonant Hell Theme 1, Main Theme 2, Love Theme 2, Dissonant Hell Theme 2, Main Theme 3…. but I have a (how did Thor put it?) high pain threshold with much of that stuff.
Perhaps my favourite Morricones are not even full scores. Those compilations (“Psychedelic Morricone” and so on) are mostly a joy, although there’s ALWAYS at least one very silly track on then, just to annoy Onyabirri I’m sure.
Morricone has always been and he is still my favourite film score composer. I like all his styles, dissonance included. The only thing is that Morricone only composed less than 5% of Italian scores released on CD. While he is arguably the best, there are tons of other good Italian scores too.
Along with John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone was certainly among my “initial” film composer interests, among the first composers who I knew by name and whose records I bought. His music for the Italian western was of course legendary, and he was a “big” name, probably the most famous film composer in his day. My first Varèse Sarabande album of all time was the soundtrack LP for THE ISLAND. Now at that time, I knew Morricone from some of his western scores, and from the cover (I had not seen the movie), I expected the music to by more “twangy”, perhaps with guitars, horror style. Instead, the music opened with warmth and lyrical beauty. It was totally unexpected at that time, but I enjoyed it quite a bit, it became a Morricone favorite. The whole score is not very long (just about 35 minutes), but it’s quite diverse: next to the lyrical main theme, it’s got suspense (“Boarding Party”), action (“Tue-Barbe Hunts Maynard”), pop (“Beth”) and more. The five minute “Island Magic” is quite a set piece.
I was shocked when Varèse Sarabande finally released that on CD, and it was SOLD OUT before I had a chance to get a copy! Fortunately, I was able to trade in a copy at the FSM board some time after that. So now I’ve got the LP and the CD (here they are today):
I always enjoyed Ennio Morricone, I like his inventiveness, he was very good at all kinds of styles.
Apart from THE ISLAND and all the “classics” (Leone Collaborations, The Mission, etc.), other favorites include UN UOMO DA RISPETTARE (a recent favorite), UN GENIO, DUO COMPARI, UN POLLO (one of the most joyful Morricone scores), LOLITA (just beautiful), RED SONJA, and MOSES (the latter is one I often mention as my “favorite” Morricone score, but I like them all. Oh yeah, NOSTROMO is another favorite.
I have over 200 Morricone albums, by no means all, but at least it’s a sizable portion. Included in these are several multi-disc compilation sets, so I should have for quite a few of his movies at least a few tracks.
I also got to knew Morricone via his the italo westerns which I love and primarily the lyrical side first: My father loved both music and the movie ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. That was one of my first soundtrack CDs in the later 80s.
Later I got exposed to a weird re-labeld single named GOLDRAUSCH/TERRA MAGICA (https://www.discogs.com/de/release/3973769-Ennio-Morricone-Terra-Magica-Goldrausch) which was sold and playeed at the visitor center of a limestone cave my parents and I visited (Harz over here I think it was). I only learned some years later that those tracks are actually “Chi Mai” and “Come Maddalena”. Still have that original single.
Later I got this double LP https://www.discogs.com/de/master/48106-Ennio-Morricone-Film-Music-1966-1987 and this best of CD https://www.discogs.com/de/master/238893-Ennio-Morricone-The-Best-Of-Ennio-Morricone.
Now I have some more CDs of him and probably 150+ digital albums now. I do like all of his styles even the dissonant one although I have to be in the mood for that as it is really challenging at times. Even more than anything dissonant Goldsmith.
One of my many favorites is also more lyrical: NUOVO CINEMA PARADISO.Yes, compilations like that were always a great gateway. For me, it was this 2CD set from the 90s that opened my eyes (and ears) to the Morricone BEYOND the famous spaghetti westerns and THE MISSION and things like that, and although my collection didn’t really explode until a couple of decades later, it was very important in that regard:
Morricone is really often a “best of” composer to me. As much as I love his scores lots of his scores do have the same 2-3 themes in minor variations. Not to speak of very direct style revisits.
Yes, Morricone collections are great. I like them a lot, and they introduced me to a lot of his music. I have the “An Ennio Morricone Anthology” pictured by Thor up there, and a number of additional compilations. That’s because Morricone often composed self contained themes, which work great in a collection of individual pieces from individual movies. Compilations are a great way to get to know some of Morricone’s vast output.
I think my first (and I still have it) was this 3LP set, which I picked up in the 80s in Munich (it’s an ebay Link, so I don’t know for how long it will be there)Ennio Morricone – The Italian Western
Funny thing: Over the years, I tried to actually get all the Western scores in this collection.
I got most of them, but UN FIUME DI DOLLARI remains elusive.
Cool set. If you have that, you’re pretty much set for life as far as his westerns are concerned (well, there are obviously many more, but looks to be a representative collection!).
Late to the party on this, but I’m sure I’ll be forgiven…
I was vaguely aware of the music from one or more Dollars films in the early 70s as a kid, including the 1972 album of an English rock band called Babe Ruth which included a cover of the main title from the first film. It’s easily found (and worth seeking out) on YT.
A few years later I picked up the budget Pickwick LP that others have referred to and played the grooves out of it. I think I bought it three times in all for various reasons. Then in (I think) 1976 I sent away for the 2-LP set “I Film Della Violenza”, and it blew me away. Why it’s never been released on CD is a complete mystery to me, but I’ve spent the last 50 years collecting the individual scores from which each track was taken.
The urban crime Morricones immediately took over from the Western Morricones (although I still love them of course) and Revolver, A Man to Respect(The Master Touch in the US), Wake and Kill, Milan Odia (Almost Human) and others became indispensable.
Scores I love from other genres include The Humanoid, Nostromo, Moses the Lawgiver, Orca Killer Whale, Exorcist 2, Frantic – too many to name. I enjoy the Giallo scores notwithstanding the amount of dissonance usually present, and in fact they led me to a fascination with that type of film to the point where I have over 100 on Blu-ray, only a fraction of them scored by Ennio.
I saw him at London’s O2 arena in 2015, a forty-year ambition realised.
Great rundown, TG. If I were to press you on favourites, that’s probably a tall order (for a tall guy)?
Tall orders are my thing! Given the vast amount of film music he wrote, it’s difficult to narrow it down to a handful, and I’d say all the titles in my previous post would qualify. However, you can add Sacco & Vanzetti, Bandits of Rome, both “Once upon a Time”s, Blue-eyed Bandit and The Big Gundown to the list.
In all honesty. I could pick a title from his catalogue at random, and whilst it’s playing consider it a favourite. The ones I’m least fond of are the ones that seem as if they’re written for a lesser Blake Edwards comedy.
In all honesty. I could pick a title from his catalogue at random, and whilst it’s playing consider it a favourite. The ones I’m least fond of are the ones that seem as if they’re written for a lesser Blake Edwards comedy.
If you want to be a little nasty you could say that Morricone re-used as lot of stylisms that are typical for specific years. So you may even confuse some scores at times if you are not paying that much atention 😉
There are some Morricone scores that are like what has been mentioned here, where Morricone wrote a few themes and then you get variations of them, but there are other film scores that are more composed through dramatically or scored to picture, and then there are those Morricone scores where there is hardly any repetition, like, for example THE THING, where every piece is different, or likewise the aforementioned THE ISLAND, where the closing theme is a variation of the opening theme, but all other tracks are different.
No, the music for the soundtrack album of THE THING is 100% Ennio Morricone. For the movie, John Carpenter (not Alan Howarth) recorded some very brief synth cues, but nothing substantial.
Alan Howarth, however, did a recreation of Morricone’s score for BSX and added the Carpenter snippets to it, but that’s it.
The soundtrack album itself is 100% Morricone, and the movie is almost all Morricone, except for the brief John Carpenter synth cues.
So either way, the score is not a “hodgepodge”.
Ah, OK, thanks for the clarification.
I LOVE the film (seen it countless times), but never really latched on to the score as a listening experience, hence why all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans are a bit blurry to me.
It might have been that Howarth helped out Carpenter on the synth music uncredited, as they often collaborated back then. Carpenter has said:
” I cut his [Morricone’s] music into the film and realized that there were places, mostly scenes of tension, in which his music would not work … I secretly ran off and recorded in a couple of days a few pieces to use. My pieces were very simple electronic pieces – it was almost tones. It was not really music at all but just background sounds, something today you might even consider as sound effects.”And those brief “background sounds” are the only non-Morricone pieces you have in the movie. (But they were not on the MCA if Varèse Sarabande or Quartet releases of the soundtrack, but on the re-recording Alan Howarth did.)
I just came back from a screening of the Brazilian, Oscar-nominated O AGENTE SECRETO [THE SECRET AGENT] with Wagner Moura. At almost 3 hours, it was a real slog to get through. I don’t understand what the big deal is. But I was surprised when, about midway, I heard a tracked cue that was unmistakably Morricone. You know, that playful Morricone with those chattering, dada-ist vocalizations he often did. When I came home, I looked it up, and yes – it was indeed Morricone. Apparently a cue called “Guerra e Pace, Pollo e Brace” from the film GRAZIE, ZIA (1968). Never even heard of it. Does that ring a bell, Tall Guy?
Outside Tarantino, it’s relatively rare to hear a tracked Morricone cue in new films these days.
Yes indeed, Thor. It’s on the “I Film Della Violenza” 2-LP set that taught me fifty years ago that there was more to Ennio than whipcracks and whistling.
Cool! As previously noted, it was the 2CD AN ENNIO MORRICONE ANTHOLOGY that served the same purpose for me. But GRACIE, ZIA is only on that compilation, then, not a soundtrack of its own?
Quartet has released a new Morricone album called “Colori”, a compilation of sorts?
I’m kinda scared of the experimental bits, but curious about the more open, melodic segments.
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