Ennio
Morricone gave an interview to a Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya
Pravda about his work in 72 Metra as well as about the rest of
his career. The interview is in Russian, but we have translated
it into English for you!
Ennio Morricone: 72 Meters - this
is the Russian answer to American K-19.
Popular Italian movie composer wrote music for the new Vladimir
Khotinenko film. He gave an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda
at the film festival in Locarno.
Not everyone will immediately recall the names and the subjects
of many of the 480 films, music to which was written by Ennio
Morricone, but the melodies are instantly recognizable. Millions
of copies have been released. They can be heard from the television
screens and from the store fronts in Italy, in America, and in
Russia. Here, perhaps, people most of all remember television
series The Octopus and Once Upon A Time In America...
He was invited to the festival in Locarno, Switzerland, to give
a lecture with an all-encompassing title Aspects and Problems
of the Creation of a Composer in Our Times. Having said what was
expected of him, Morricone moved to a grand piano to play a musical
theme from the film Battle for Algeria, which is by far more famous
than the film itself. Unfortunately, I cannot sing it for you
from a newspaper page. Instead, I can reproduce our conversation
with the maestro.
I am not called omnivorous for nothing.
- Mr. Ennio, why you did undertake to write music for the sub
par films?
- Well, I didn't request scripts from directors. Some of them
I I agreed to do simply out of the love for the cinema... Yes,
they call me omnivorous, but I don't care. For example, it is
terribly boring to write music only for westerns.
- You like chess. But what is the use of it for a composer?
- In chess you fight as in boxing, but with your brains, not with
your fists. Each piece has its role, its time of action. Same
in the orchestra - a tube will begin to play at a specific moment,
trombone will enter at the end. I conduct chess pieces as I do
musicians in the orchestra... Great Russian chess players demonstrated
significant talent for music and could master foreign language
in several weeks. Everything is interrelated...
I don't want to burden the listener with
complex music.
- Your music is arranged by different bands. Heavy metal band
Metallica used to open their concerts with your theme from the
film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
- I like it. By the way, Quentin Tarantino in the new film Kill
Bill uses my music as well as the composition of Ulrich's Larsa
by the same Metallica. My compositions are generally easy to strum
on the guitar even for a nonprofessional player, since at the
basis of the compositions is a simple harmonics. I do not want
to burden my listener, whose life, most likely, is complex even
without me . I try to write simple music.
- Is that why your film music became so popular?
- I carefully watched the films, which used the music by Bach,
Mozart, Mahler, and posed myself a question: "They did not
write specially for the cinema, so why, for example, Mahler sounds
so magnificently in Visconti's Death in Venice?" Cinema music
is remembered, if this is actual music. Real music. Even if it
seems simple.
Russians Italians have similar temperaments
- You composed musical score to the new picture by Russian director
Vladimir Khotinenko 72 Metra...
- Yes, I was touched by its story of male friendship, faithfulness
to their oath and to their duty. The film is about the crew of
a Russian submarine, which came to belong to the Ukraine after
the collapse of the USSR. Seamen refused to take the oath to another
state, and they leave it. But the Russian submarine, which they
are given, perishes because of the negligence of the technical
personnel. (The film features Sergey Makovetskiy, Sergey Garmash,
Marat Basharov, Chulpan Khamatova. - S. T.)... On the whole, as
far as I see it, this is a Russian answer to the American film
K-19. And just as the American film, this one is also based at
the real events.
- Did you write the music in the Russian style?
- No, I did not have to imitate it. Indeed, it had been noted
long ago that Russians and Italians have similar temperaments.
