Ennio Morricone has made the world dream and, ideally, the world has shown its gratitude by finally awarding him with the Oscar award for lifetime achievement, the only prestigious trophy that was still missing from an exceptional award list obtained in over a half century of activity.
“I have received many awards, both in Italy and around the world. I don’t even know how many: all extremely important, of moral value, from the Italian President, the British “Bafta”, the Golden Globes to the Grammy. But the absence of an Oscar was like a hole right there in the middle, a hole that
bothered me, I must confess. Tonight that hole has been filled”. And to complete the triumph, a memorable evening was to be had with a standing ovation at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Not to mention a commemorative record, not produced by himself this time but by musicians and singers as important as Bruce Springsteen, Quincy Jones, Celine Dion that decided to play a tribute of their fondness and regard towards the
Roman maestro by entitling the CD “We all love Ennio Morricone”. “The idea for this record – as later declared by Morricone – seemed to me insane and utopian. I even advised against producing it, because it is impossible to mix together artists with tones and sensitivities so diverse. But producer
Luigi Caiola is stubborn and carried on with the project. I must say that the style discontinuity and lack of homogeneity seem like a quality now. I don’t want to express any preferences, although deep down I have a few. Let’s just say that Celine Dion sang one of the pieces with great commotion and
intensity”.

Recently the Maestro has revealed that as a child he wanted to become a doctor. If Italy had lost an excellent doctor and gained a world renown composer it is due to his elementary school teacher who “during music classes (he) noticed in me a certain natural familiarity with notes and told me: you should take some lessons. From that moment on music had gained
more and more space in my life”.

Born in Rome on November 10 1928, Morricone graduated from Santa Cecilia Conservatory of Music specializing in trumpet, composition, instrumentation, band direction and choral music. Orchestra maestro, made his cinema debut with Luciano Salce’s Il Federale (The Fascist, 1961), but it is through Sergio
Leone’s mythical spaghetti westerns and titles like For a fistful of dollars, The good, the bad and the ugly and Once upon a time in the west that his music became known around the world, creating a unique style combined with Leone’s extreme close ups, giving his sonority a breath of epic and a sense of large historical perspective. “Leone –Morricone recalls – had an excellent ear for music and some of the pieces I have written for his westerns came out of his intuition.

I have always enjoyed playing around with unusual instruments to introduce in the scores, like the Jew’s harp, the harmonica or the “whistle” which has later become like an identification mark”. He holds good memories of the directors he has worked with: “With all or almost all of them I have always found an agreement, whether they had a precise idea on what my line of work should have been or whether they relied completely on me”.

Once, he remembers, “I had to write some scores for one of Mauro Bolognini's films and I was directing the orchestra in the rehearsal room while Bolognini was sitting aside with his head down and drawing on some sheets of paper. I was playing and he was drawing, so I finally went over to ask him if he liked the music, and I noticed he was drawing faces of crying women. He looked at me and said, with a somber look: I am not liking any of it. Many years later I ran into him at Piazza di Spagna, he huged me and said: you know, that time you were right, that music was beautiful”.

Among many musical innovations created by Morricone one must remember the use of the human voice (a woman’s voice, by Edda Dell’Orso, which become legendary in the scene that greets Claudia Cardinale’s arrival at the train station from Once upon a time in the west) or the insistent progressions as in Metti una sera a cena (Love Circle, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, 1969). Also to be remembered were the exceptional contributions given to the cinema of the then rising Italian thriller maestro Dario Argento, with the use of progressive and hardly decodable music mingled with lullabies or nursery rhymes in movies like Il gatto a nove code (The cat o’ nine tales) and Quattro mosche di velluto grigio (Four flies on grey velvet). An exceptional creativity of which the Maestro itself gives the following explanation: “It is the mystery of any composer or any creative profession: where does the inspiration come from? I believe it comes from everywhere: from the brain, from preparation and music theories, from the requirements of the movie itself, in the case of a musical score, and from considerations with the director that sometimes leads to unexpected results”.

Having worked with the elite of Italian cinema and with many European and American directors, Morricone has his preferences: among the directors he appreciates most is Giuseppe Tornatore who “from the first score that I wrote for him, in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, up to the last one, in La sconosciuta
(The unknown woman), has improved enormously in his musical competence. To me the director’s figure is fundamental. I must gain appreciation and esteem for him so that I can enjoy working with the same director again”. Now that the last goal has been reached, the Oscar, Ennio Morricone wants to compose less scores and, maybe to regain lost time, direct and compose “absolute music”: “Nowadays I write less for cinema and more for my music, the most concealed side of my production. I just can’t do everything. Many years ago I used to accept challenges for any movie, but today I pay more attention, and it’s not only because I am judging the film’s quality.

Today I need important directors that rely on me and that I can rely on”. And, even though he won’t admit it, it is likely that the Maestro wants a little more available time for another one of his passions, the game of chess. Few people know, in fact, that he is a great player: “I wouldn’t say great, because I never study. You must study to be great. Let’s say that once I played with the great champion Boris Spasskij and I tied. It went well: it was a draw by threefold repetition from his part. But I lost to Anatolij Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Peter Leko. All great champions. Starting a chess game is like starting a music score, you don’t really know how it will end. The general idea is improved and corrected along the way. In chess the project changes according to the opponent’s replies. On the other hand, in music you are alone with yourself, there is no adversary”.