|
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)
|
