Honorary
Oscar 2006 goes to composer Ennio Morricone
congratulations
Morricone most heartily
Ennio Morricone Mini biography: A classmate
of director Sergio Leone with whom he would form one of the
great director/composer partnerships (right up there with
Eisenstein & Prokofiev, Hitchcock & Herrmann, Fellini
& Rota), Ennio Morricone studied at Rome's Santa Cecilia
Conservatory, where he specialised in trumpet. His first film
scores were relatively undistinguished, but he was hired by
Leone for Per un pugno di dollari (1964) on the strength of
some of his song arrangements. His score for that film, with
its sparse arrangements, unorthodox instrumentation (bells,
electric guitars, harmonicas, the distinctive twang of the
jew's harp) and memorable tunes, revolutionised the way music
would be used in Westerns, and it is hard to think of a post-Morricone
Western score that doesn't in some way reflect his influence.
Although his name will always be synonymous with the spaghetti
Western, Morricone has also contributed to a huge range of
other film genres: comedies, dramas, thrillers, horror films,
romances, art movies, exploitation movies -making him one
of the film world's most versatile artists. He has written
nearly 400 film scores, so a brief summary is impossible,
but his most memorable work includes the Leone films, Gillo
Pontecorvos _Battaglia di Algeri, La (1965)_ , Roland Joffé's
The Mission (1986), Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987)
and Giuseppe Tornatore's Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988), plus
a rare example of sung opening credits for Pier Paolo Pasolini's
Uccellacci e uccellini (1966). It must be stressed that he
is *not* behind the work of the entirely separate composers
Bruno Nicolai and Nicola Piovani despite allegations made
by more than one supposedly reputable film guide!
(see
here)
|