Ennio Morricone is a famous composer, famous director and arranger from Italy. Most know him as the author of music tracks for films and television programs. The musician's many years of fruitful work was awarded the Ordine al merito della Repubblica Italiana award. Nine times he was nominated for the national movie award Ente David di Donatello for musical compositions for films. Three times nominated by the Hollywood Press Association for the Golden Globe Award. Has many other awards and prizes.
Biography
Ennio Morricone was born on November 10, 1928 in Rome.
The head of the family, Mario Morricone, was a jazz trumpeter, and his mother, Libera Ridolfi, did housework.
Ennio is the first-born in the family, subsequently the parents decided to give birth to four more children.
Education
The profession of the father influenced the choice of occupation of the eldest son and at age 12 the boy enters the State Roman Conservatory of Santa Cecilia (Conservatorio statale di musica "Santa Cecilia"), where his teacher is Goffredo Petrassi (Goffredo Petrassi). Studying there for eleven years, the young man finishes three departments.
He receives diplomas in the class of trumpet, orchestra and composition.
First work
At the age of 16, during the year, the young man plays in the musical group Alberto Flamini, replacing his father, who worked there before him. Musicians earn money by playing in Roman casinos, restaurants and other public places.
At the age of 17, the young man begins to work as a musician in one of the Roman theaters, a year later he becomes a theater composer there.
While studying at the conservatory since the 1950s. Ennio is trying to write his own music, and work is also beginning to adapt folk songs and songs by fashionable composers for radio and television shows. True, at first his name was not mentioned in the credits, where it was preferable to indicate more recognized composers.
At the age of 33, Morricone begins to write compositions for Italian Westerns. The first motion picture in which Ennio was a full-fledged composer was The Fascist Leader (Il Federale, 1961). Within 3 years, 24 films were created together with Morricone.
Springboard to world fame
Once, a man came to the composer’s home and asked Ennio to pick up music for his future painting. The director's appearance seemed familiar to the owner of the house and he asked what school he attended. It turned out that the guest had once attended elementary school with Ennio and his name was Sergio Leone.
Leone's films subsequently glorified a talented musician throughout the world. The box office of his Western handful of dollars (Per un pugno di dollari) with Clint Eastwood in the title role reached $ 3.5 million. The film sounded unusual then electric guitars, street bells and Pan's flute.
But even in this film, the name Morricone was not in the credits, he took the pseudonym Leo Nichols (Leo Nichols), and subsequently changed it to Dan Savio (Dan Savio).
Work with celebrities
Throughout the composer's rich creative career, Ennio Morricone’s music has sounded not only in European films, but also in Hollywood films. He worked with directors:
- Bernardo Bertolucci (Bernardo Bertolucci) in the film "Twentieth Century" ("Novecento", 1976);
- Paolo Pasolini (Paolo Pasolini) in the painting "Fat, or 120 days of Sodoma" ("Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma", 1975);
- Roman Polanski (Roman Polanski) in the film "Indomitable" ("Frantic", 1987);
- Oliver Stone (Oliver Stone) in the film "Turn" ("U Turn", 1997);
- Damiano Damiani in the series Octopus (La Piovra, 1984);
- Quentin Tarantino (Quentin Tarantino) in the movie "The Hateful Eight" ("The Hateful Eight", 2015) and others.
Since 1964, Ennio Morricone has signed a contract with the RCA Recording Studio, where he works with Gianni Morandi, Mario Lanza, Miranda Martino and other performers.
Best Morricone Music Movies
- The list is rightfully headed by the aforementioned film by Sergio Leone, "For a Fistful of Dollars." This picture glorified Ennio as a composer all over the world. The film marked the beginning of many years of collaboration between two former classmates.
- In 1966, Leone-Morricone's next work, “Good, Bad, Evil” (“Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo”) was included in the list of five best films by IMDb.
- One of Morricone’s most beautiful compositions is in the movie by Sergio Leone and Tonino Valerii “My Name Is Nobody” (“Il mio nome e Nessuno”, 1973)
- The chilling melody of Ennio Morricone made John Boorman's film Exorcist II: The Heretic 1977 the box office leader in 1977.
- The musical accompaniment of Ennio Morricone from the movie “Professional” (Le Professionnel, 1981) directed by Georges Lautner brought fame and fame to the composer among Soviet viewers. For this film featuring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Morricone was awarded the César National Film Award.
- In 1983, Leone’s final motion picture Once Upon a Time in America (1984) featured another Morricone track for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. But the composer only got the “Silver Ribbon” (“Nastro d'argento”).
- The music of Ennio Morricone from the Octopus series became popular not only in the Italian homeland, but also in the Soviet Union. The confrontation between the Sicilian mafia and the Italian police has long held the attention of many fans of the series.
- In 2000, the composer was awarded an Oscar for his composition for Giuseppe Tornatore's The Legend of the Pianist (La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano, 1998).
- In 2001, Morricone was awarded an Oscar for the movie Tornatore Malena (Malena, 2000).
- In 2016, the composer received an Oscar for musical accompaniment to Quentin Tarantino's film The Abominable Eight.
Family
In 1957, the musician married his wife, Maria Travia, to whom she never tire of devoting music to her whole subsequent life.
The closest relatives of the musician are his wife and children. Elder Andrea (Andrea) continued the musical dynasty and composes music for movies. The second son of Marco (Marco) is an organization for the protection of authors' rights. Alessandra's daughter studied at a medical university as a surgeon. Junior Giovanni works as a director at Universal.
Interesting Facts
- The master does not know the number of compositions he wrote, he says that their number is approaching 500, and the number of films with his music has exceeded four hundred.
- In 1985, the composer went on a tour of Europe as a conductor with a concert of chamber instrumental music of his own composition.
- One of Morricone's long-standing hobbies is chess. He had tournaments with Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.
- The talented Italian writes not only music, but also books. In 1996, his work “Our Rome” (“RomaNostra”), published jointly with Augusto de Luca (AugustoDe Luca) was awarded the prize “Cities of Rome”.
- A huge number of written compositions provokes some unscrupulous musicians to outright plagiarism. So, Alexei Shelygin used the motif from Once Upon a Time in the Wild West (C'era una volta il West, 1968) in the cult TV series The Brigade (2002), and in the series “Gangster Petersburg” (2000-2007), the similarity of the musical theme from the movie Georges Lautner “Professional” (“Le Professionnel”, 1981) with the works of Ennio Morricone is captured.
- In November 2016, the composer will turn 88 years old, but he looks great and feels great. Observes the daily routine and eats properly. He gets up at 4 in the morning, does exercises and at 8 o'clock gets to work. He spends a lot of time in the fresh air and does not drink alcohol at all.
- The musician is very superstitious, afraid of the 17th, Fridays and purple. Once he refused an interview with a journalist wearing a jacket of a color he didn’t like.
- The musical preferences of the composer are very diverse. He writes jazz music, sometimes avant-garde. It happens that Ennio Morricone sees the best in rock and roll or in avant-garde music. He also has many classic pieces.
- In 2004, a military film-drama directed by Vladimir Khotinenko “72 meters” was released on Russian screens, telling about the death of a submarine. Morricone was invited to write the music for the film and he did not refuse. Prior to this, the composer had written music for the film “Red Tent” by Mikhail Kalatozov.
