More on Italian Composer Ennio Morricone

Morricone mural

Ennio Morricone was born in Rome and enrolled at the city’s Conservatory of Santa Cecilia at the precocious age of 12. Not surprisingly, since his father was a trumpeter, the son began playing and writing music from the age of 6. He enrolled in a fouryear program which he completed in six months. He emerged with a thorough knowledge of the classical tradition, but he found it difficult to earn enough money writing original pieces. After he married and started a family, Morricone found work as a composer and arranger for Italy’s national radio network, wrote music for theater and television, and sometimes worked as a jazz trumpeter. While the world knew him as the man who made spaghetti westerns with Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, Morricone always viewed himself as a composer for whom film work was only a part of his career. Morricone had first met Leone when they both attended the same elementary school, but it was not until 25 years later that their professional partnership began with A Fistful of Dollars in 1964.

So in 1988, it was to Morricone that the writer/ director Giuseppe Tornatore turned when he needed a score for Cinema Paradiso, a haunting paean to the power of cinema as seen through the eyes of a Sicilian boy, which earned a reputation for helping to spur a revival of Italian cinema. He later became a favorite of American director Quentin Tarantino, who was an aficionado of spaghetti westerns and European cinema. Morricone’s influence spread widely throughout various forms of popular music. He wrote pop hits for Zucchero and his music has been sampled by Jay-Z. Morricone conducted the orchestra on the 2004 album Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone. He was knighted in France and awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Morricone performed regularly throughout Europe, and in January 2016 he started a tour, “60 Years of Music,” which visited more than 40 European cities. He played his final concert at the Palazzo Madama in Rome in January. Morricone was also known as a man of great faith.

On the Sunday following his passing, Holy Rosary Church’s organist and musical director, AMHS member Maria Marigliano, played “Gabriel’s Oboe” from The Mission as a Communion meditation piece in Morricone’s memory. His score for The Mission, evoking the music of the 18th century Spanish Jesuit missions in Paraguay, is one of his most popular works with a Catholic theme. He also composed the music for the 1983 film, The Scarlet and the Black, based on the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a Catholic priest who saved the lives of thousands of Jews and escaped Allied POWs in Rome during World War II. Ennio Morricone’s first posthumous album, “Morricone Segreto” (“Secret Morricone”), featuring seven new tracks, was released on November 6, four days before what would have been the composer’s 92nd birthday on November 10. The collection spans the 1960 to ’80s.

(Editor’s note 

— Our last issue featured an article on the passing of famed Italian composer Ennio Morricone and his AMHS connection. Some aspects of Morricone’s life and career were edited from that piece but are included here. Thanks again to AMHS First Vice President Nancy DeSanti for an outstanding article.)