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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 Joff└'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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