This astoundingly prolific Italian composer's alternately dreamily hypnotic, bracingly dissonant and tensely pulsating scores have graced nearly 400 films and TV programs since the early 1960s. Ennio Morricone first came to international prominence with a haunting score that whined and whistled through the parched and dusty streets of Sergio Leone's landmark "spaghetti" Western, "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964)--the first of six collaborations between the two. Several of his musical underscores have proven popular in the USA, particularly those for Roland Joffe's "The Mission" (1986) and Brian De Palma's "The Untouchables" (1987), but he may be most famous for the rousing theme to Leone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (1966-Italy; 1968-USA).
Morricone's work has often been cited for its wit, invention and quirkily experimental instrumentation. He combined electric guitars and harmonicas with orchestras long before such pairings became fashionable. Morricone has also favored unconventional percussion (e.g., church bells, bullwhips cracking and pistol shots) and vocalists that chant, whistle and/or hum.
The Leone-Morricone collaboration numbers among the closest and most significant in film history. One cannot imagine seeing Leone's Cinemascope closeups or landscapes without hearing Morricone's music that added layers of emotional meaning. The composer greatly enhanced the operatic feel of films by often providing memorable leitmotivs for Leone's pistol-packing trios, most famously in "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1969).
Morricone has also worked extensively with such notable Italian filmmakers as Bernardo Bertolucci ("1900" 1977), Pier Paolo Pasolini ("The Decameron" 1971), Gillo Pontecorvo ("Burn!" 1969) and Dario Argento ("Four Flies on Gray Velvet" 1971). He has also lent his formidable skills to a host of Hollywood and international productions. He garnered Oscar nominations for Best Original Score for Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven" (1978), "The Mission", "The Untouchables" and Barry Levinson's "Bugsy" (1991).
A child prodigy, Morricone began composing music as a six-year-old. At age 12, his parents enrolled him in a four-year harmony program at Accademia di Santa Cecilia, a Roman music conservatory. A fast-learner, young Morricone finished the program in a mere two years (or an amazing six months if one believes some reports!) and graduated with honors while finding time to study the trumpet as well. (His father was a jazz trumpeter.) Morricone went on to perform as a trumpet player in Roman night clubs before composing and arranging scores for RAI television by the mid-1950s. Morricone also worked for RCA record company from the late 50s through mid- 1960s, arranging songs for the likes of Mario Lanza, Renato Rascel and Rita Pavone. In his spare moments, he managed to provide incidental music for a number of plays, contributed songs to a revue and scored a ballet. Morricone began composing film scores with 1961's "Il Federale/The Fascist". He also joined an experimental music group called Nuova Consonanza in 1965. Consequently Morricone had less time to devote to his compositions of chamber and orchestral music. In a 1985 European tour, he conducted concerts of his music.
Though he concedes that television isn't a medium that generally uses the dialogue-free moments of reflection for which film music is so perfectly suited, Morricone's sweeping melodies have been increasingly evident on American TV over the last two decades. Beginning with the miniseries "Moses--the Lawgiver" (CBS, 1975), he has gravitated toward large scale historical subjects, often of a Biblical nature, usually in the miniseries format. These credits include "Marco Polo" (NBC, 1982), "Abraham" (TNT, 1994), "Jacob" (TNT, 1994), "Joseph" (TNT, 1995) and "Moses" (TNT, 1996).
Morricone's American feature credits of the 1990s include Wolfgang Peterson's 1993 blockbuster "In the Line of Fire" (which reteamed him with Leone's spaghetti western star Clint Eastwood), Mike Nichols' "Wolf", "Love Affair" and "Disclosure" (all 1994). In true form, Morricone helped set the eerie tone for the unsettling 1997 releases "Lolita" and "U-Turn" as well as Dario Argento's irreverent 1998 remake "The Phantom of the Opera" (released in the USA in 1999). While Morricone has spoken out against pop songs as film scores in lieu of the more evocative but less radio friendly symphonic instrumental pieces, his music for Warren Beatty's "Bulworth" (1998) meshed well with the film's pivotal hip-hop soundtrack. 1998's fantastical period piece "The Legend of 1900/The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean" (released in the USA in 1999) challenged Morricone to come up with fresh yet authentic jazz pieces for this tale of a ship-bound musical prodigy. Both academically and evocatively, the efforts were a success, allowing this classically-trained Italian musician to pay homage to his father as well as proving he could tackle the free form American style. 2000 saw the prolific and influential composer score Brian De Palma's flop "Mission to Mars" as well as frequent collaborator Roland Joffe's "Vatel" and Giuseppe Tornatore's "Malena", the latter garnering Morricone his fifth Oscar nomination.