Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone was one of the greatest film composers of all time.

Born in Rome on November 11, 1928, as a child he found himself in the same elementary school class as Sergio Leone, with whom he would later write a chapter of cinema history, from A Fistful of Dollars (1964), the first installment of the "spaghetti western" saga, to the melancholy gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

His long and successful artistic career spans very different genres, ranging from absolute music, which he never stopped composing, to applied music; he worked as an orchestrator and conductor in the recording industry and later as a composer for theatre, radio and film. In 1946 he earned his diploma in trumpet, and in 1954 he obtained his diploma in Composition at the Conservatory under the guidance of maestro Goffredo Petrassi. His first concert compositions date back to the late 1950s, after which he worked as an arranger for RAI and RCA-Italy.

His career as a film composer officially began in 1961 with the film directed by Luciano Salce, Il Federale, and worldwide fame arrived with his scores for Sergio Leone's western films: 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 Duck, You Sucker (1971).

In 1965 Morricone joined the improvisation group "Nuova Consonanza". Starting in 1961, Morricone composed the music for more than 450 films, collaborating with numerous 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, Henri Verneuil, Pedro Almodóvar and Roland Joffé).

Among his most famous films (in addition to the aforementioned Italian westerns) are: The Battle of Algiers; Sacco and Vanzetti; Cinema Paradiso; The Legend of 1900; Malèna; The Untouchables; Once Upon a Time in America; Mission and U-Turn. His output of absolute music includes more than 100 pieces composed from 1946 to the present, among which are: Concerto for Orchestra No. 1 (1957); Frammenti di Eros (1985); Cantata per l'Europa (1988); UT, for trumpet, strings and percussion (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 an intense concert activity, conducting his film compositions and his concert music for symphony orchestra and polyphonic choir, giving more than 100 concerts across Europe, Asia, the United States, Central America and South America.

Over his long career as a composer of film music, Ennio Morricone won numerous awards and honours, including the Golden Lion and the Honorary Oscar, 8 Nastri d'Argento, 5 BAFTAs, 5 Oscar nominations, 7 David di Donatello awards, 3 Golden Globes, 1 Grammy and 1 European Film Award. In 2009, the then President of the French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, signed a decree appointing Ennio Morricone a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

On the recording side, Morricone won 27 Gold Records, 7 Platinum Records, 3 Golden Plates and the "Record Critics'" award for the score of the film Il Prato. The soundtrack of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize.

Among his most recent works are the scores for the television series Karol e The End of a Mystery, 72 Meters and Fateless. In the 21st century, many of Morricone's works have been reused in television and film by artists of the calibre of Quentin Tarantino, who used several of Morricone's pieces in Kill Bill (2003), Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012). In 2007, Morricone was awarded the Honorary Oscar "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music".

In November 2013, Morricone began a tour to celebrate 50 years of his career in film, conducting concerts in cities such as Moscow (Crocus City Hall), Santiago, Chile, Berlin (O2 World), Budapest and Vienna (Stadthalle). On February 6, 2014, Riccardo Muti conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Ennio Morricone's Voci dal silenzio, a cantata he composed in response to the tragic events of September 11 to give voice to the innocent victims. In the autumn of 2014, Morricone took part in the filming of a documentary about him made by director Giuseppe Tornatore, released in 2016.

The European tour resumed between February and March 2015 with concerts in 20 cities across 12 different countries, in Europe's largest arenas, including the O2 in London and the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. With almost every date sold out and a total of 150,000 tickets sold, Maestro Morricone's European tour, My Life in Music, was an unprecedented success.

On 12 June 2015, at the Chiesa del Gesù in Rome, Morricone conducted a mass he had composed in honour of Pope Francis, commissioned from him by the Jesuit Order to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Order's Restoration.

2015 marks Morricone's first collaboration with Quentin Tarantino, for whom he wrote the original score for the film The Hateful Eight. Premiered in Los Angeles on 7 December, the following day the film received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score

La Corrispondenza by Giuseppe Tornatore, featuring Morricone's original score, was released in Italian cinemas on 15 January 2016.

Ennio Morricone died in Rome on 6 July 2020 from complications following a fall that caused a fractured femur. Director Giuseppe Tornatore dedicated the documentary “Ennio” (2022) to him.