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)
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