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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!
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