He has composed and arranged scores for more than 500 film and TV productions and widely acknowledged as one of the most prolific and influential film composers of his era. He is well-known for his long-term collaborations with international acclaimed directors such as Sergio Leone, Brian De Palma, Barry Levinson, and Giuseppe Tornatore.

He wrote the characteristic film scores of Leone's Spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). In the 80s, Morricone composed the scores for John Carpenter's horror movie The Thing (1982), Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988). His more recent compositions include the scores for Oliver Stone's U Turn (1997), Tornatore's The Legend of 1900 (1998) and Malèna (2000), De Palma's Mission to Mars (2000), Lajos Koltai's Fateless (2005), and Tornatore's Baaria - La porta del vento (2009).

Morricone has received two Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, five BAFTAs in 1979–1992, seven David di Donatello, eight Nastro d'Argento, and the Polar Music Prize in 2010. In 2007, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music". The composer also has been nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Original Score during 1979–2001.(Wiki)

Even more so than in the first two Dollars films, Morricone's scores for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Leone's epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) elevated the action to operatic heights. Reaching crescendos in The Good's famous graveyard shootout and West's showdown between Charles Bronson's Harmonica and Henry Fonda's Frank Booth, Morricone and Leone created set pieces that were as powerful musically as visually, placing music on a par with the image rather than subordinating it. Integrating a spectral harmonica into the theme music for Booth as well as Harmonica, the soundtrack hints at their fateful relationship long before the truth is visually revealed. Morricone's scores were so integral to Leone's Westerns that he had Morricone write and record Once Upon a Time in the West's main themes, and then played them during shooting so that the actors could move to the score's rhythms. Morricone and Leone repeated this for their equally effective collaboration on the gangster saga Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

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 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).

Morricone has worked for television, from a single title piece to variety shows and documentaries to TV series, including the US TV Western The Virginian (1971), Moses (1974) and Marco Polo (1982). One notable composition, "Chi Mai" was used in the films, Maddalena (1971)[15] and Le Professionnel (1981)[16] as well as the TV series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981).[15] It was a surprise hit in the UK, almost topping the charts. He wrote the score for the Mafia television series La piovra seasons 2 to 10 from 1985 to 2001, including the themes "Droga e sangue" ("Drugs and Blood"), "La morale", and "L'immorale".[17] Morricone worked as the conductor of seasons 3 to 5 of the series. He also worked as the music supervisor for the television project La bibbia ("The Bible"). In the late 1990s, he collaborated with his son, Andrea, on the Ultimo crime dramas. Their collaboration yielded the BAFTA-winning Nuovo cinema Paradiso. In 2003, Ennio Morricone scored another epic, for Japanese television, called Musashi and was the Taiga drama about Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's legendary warrior. A part of his "applied music" is now applied to Italian television films.

In an interview with Fred Karlin, author of Listening to Movies, Morricone discussed his humble beginnings, stating, "My first films were light comedies or costume movies that required simple musical scores that were easily created, a genre that I never completely abandoned even when I went on to much more important films with major directors."

Yet these "simple musical scores" were inherently ingenious, immediately setting Morricone apart from his contemporaries. The compositions were marked by a blend of rock, jazz, folk, blues, classical music, and "found" sounds—birdcalls, gunshots, footsteps, the lash of a whip, rolling baby carriages, animal noises, and, most notably, the human whistle. Writing for the Village Voice in 1986, Peter Watrous remarked, "[Morricone] has an acute sense for sound, and if it means using lower-class instruments—electric guitars, cheezo keyboards—to gain a specific effect, he'll do it." Morricone's work with director Sergio Leone on the classic 1960s "man with no name" trilogy vaulted both Morricone and actor Clint Eastwood to instant cult stardom. In scores for A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Morricone mirrored the violence, irony, and campy humor pervading the classic Eastwood westerns.

Though westerns established Morricone as a "name" in the film-score business, his work with major directors such as Franco Zeffirelli, Federico Fellini, Roman Polanski, and Roland Joffe put him on par with composers like John Williams, the man who dominated film music in the 1980s with the memorable themes to Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Wars.

In the 1990s, roughly a quarter-century after he first attained prominence, moviegoers would be moved by Morricone's dramatic swells in big-screen epics such as City of Joy, and startled by his jagged strings in thrillers like Wolf. "Morricone, in short, is a postmodernist," wrote Harlan Kennedy in a 1991 interview in American Film. "Every acoustic gewgaw is grist for his mill; every period of musical history may be ransacked for inspiration. No wonder that in the 1990s, at the peak of his form, he's become the musical general in the Italian invasion of American cinema." Still, Morricone is loath to define himself in any category of film composers. He said in American Film, "I can't classify myself. Others must do it. Others, if they wish, can analyze my works."

Morricone has often described his music as being about the pain inside a character. He told American Film contributor Kennedy that the screams, whistles, bells, and whips used in the "man with no name" trilogy were essential because they underlined the quirks of the character played by Eastwood. "I do only what I think is correct," he said. "A composer has the obligation to 'invent and capture' noises, the musical sounds of life."

Perhaps Morricone's most famous single "invention" was the theme song for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which topped the American charts after it was borrowed and slightly altered by Hugo Montenegro—a slight that still irritates the composer. And though he writes almost exclusively for events onscreen, Morricone's soundtracks have endured on their own when released separately, often topping album charts.

Director Leone once told Kennedy that in the beginning of their collaboration, he would invite Morricone to his house and have him work on a piano that was out of tune, because "if a score is good, it must rise above a bad instrument." For the most part, Morricone begins his work on a film score by consulting the director about problem spots in the film and suggesting musical solutions. Only after this collaboration takes place does Morricone begin his work with an orchestra. Watrous explained of Morricone's signature style, "Where Morricone comments on the action, it's wildly imaginative kitsch.... Even without the visuals, the soundtracks are perfectly formed, if small, bits of music reeking sleaze." This down-and-dirty aspect of his work has attracted a devoted following among other musicians, including experimentalist John Zorn, who made his own "cover" versions of some of Morricone's work in the 1980s.

Despite the suggestion that Morricone's music needs no visual accompaniment, the composer told Listening to Movies author Karlin, "Actually, people are little concerned with the musical element if they are watching a film, except when the music is ... particularly emphasized." In fact, Morricone is usually brought in only after a film is completed. Because at this point it is effectively too late to alter the look of the film, some directors rely on the score to smooth over any weak points in the drama. Many films depend heavily on music to establish suspense, for example. Ultimately, the composer is confronted with having his score cut to fit precise moments of the film. (To counter this, Morricone has become active in the release of his works as they were initially conceived, personally overseeing the musical selection and arrangements.)

Musically enhanced cinematic moments, nonetheless, can carry a film. In a 1992 review of the movie Bugsy, an Entertainment Weekly reviewer stated, "Morricone achieves something here that [very few] even try: music that's as integral to the movie's very conception as the dialogue, camera work, and performances." In American Film, Morricone supported this statement by insisting that music in a film add depth to the story and characters; it must "say all that the dialogue, images, effects, etc., cannot say."

If Morricone has a weakness, it is his incredible productivity, which inevitably leads to the occasionally listless score; this was the critical consensus about his work on the generally forgettable films So Fine, Butterfly, and The Thing. Writing for Melody Maker, Frank Owen found the soundtrack to The Mission "just plain dull."

Indeed, Morricone hardly slowed down at all as he entered his eighth decade of life, remaining active on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He showed his range by writing the score for actor-director Warren Beatty's film Bulworth, and also rejoined Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore in 1998 for The Legend of 1900. Morricone's score for Tornatore's 1988 film Cinema Paradiso has remained one of his most beloved, and the new score was hailed for its musical-historical accuracy and for the research its composer had put into the enterprise.

Tornatore and Morricone teamed up once more in 2000 for the Italian melodrama Malena, whose score brought Morricone his fifth Academy Award nomination to go with a host of other cinematic awards. The first four were for Days of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), and Bugsy (1991). To go with these formal accolades, Morricone notched a more modern kind of honor in 2002 when a group of dance music DJs issued an album, Morricone RMX, devoted to remixes of music from his film scores. A similar effort, Ennio Morricone Remixes, appeared on the German label Compost the following year. "I am honored and surprised that this happens," Morricone told London's Independent newspaper.

Morricone continued writing classical music as well, although it was more often heard in Europe than in the United States. Major validation of his music came from the classical world in 2004, when best-selling cellist Yo-Yo Ma recorded an album of arrangements of Morricone's film music. The 76-year-old composer arranged and conducted the music for the album himself. Asked by the London Sunday Telegraph to look back on his career, Morricone pronounced himself "satisfied with what I've done. But I still think I can improve. You can always do better, you know."

Ennio Morricone earned him great honor by way of his hard work and pioneering life
.He received numerous various awards for over the years from Italy, Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Spain, Sweden and other countries. Please see below list (arranged by winning the first order award)

Morricone and Alex North (American composer 1910-1991) are the only composers to receive the honorary Oscar since the award's introduction in 1928.

Ennio Morricone at the United Nations HeadquartersHe made his North American concert debut on January 29, 2007 Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City and four days later at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The previous evening, Morricone had already presented at the United Nations a concert comprising some of his film themes, as well as the cantata Voci dal silenzio to welcome the new Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. A Los Angeles Times review bemoaned the poor acoustics and opined of Morricone: "His stick technique is adequate, but his charisma as a conductor is zero." Morricone, though, has said: "Conducting has never been important to me. If the audience comes for my gestures, they had better stay outside."

On December 12, 2007, Morricone conducted the Roma Sinfonietta at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, presenting a selection of his own works. Together with the Roma Sinfonietta and the Belfast Philharmonic Choir, Morricone performed at the Opening Concerts of the Belfast Festival at Queen's, in the Waterfront Hall on October 17 and 18, 2008. Morricone and Roma Sinfonietta also held a concert at the Belgrade Arena (Belgrade, Serbia) on February 14, 2009.

On April 10, 2010, Morricone conducted a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London with the Roma Sinfonietta and (as in all of his previous London concerts) the Crouch End Festival Chorus. On August 27, 2010, he conducted a concert in Hungary. Two other concerts took place in Verona and Sofia (Bulgaria) on 11 and 17 September 2010.