Ennio (2021) Movie Script

He's a very enigmatic character,
even if he doesn't seem like it.
Serious. Very serious.
Always very...
very absorbed.
He's got this amazing quality
of always being himself,
but, at the same time,
always being someone else.
We're talking about a genius.
Ennio Morricone is the great exception
to all the rules.
He has a great talent,
very well hidden,
which erupts every time he writes.
I've never seen a marvel
like Ennio Morricone.
We're witnessing, to put it cautiously,
a draft of a guaranteed masterpiece.
Well, he is a legend...
working with Ennio Morricone
was like getting a medal.
A very peculiar man.
He was crazy.
That's for sure.
Ennio's world has not been
totally discovered yet.
I never thought
that music would be my destiny.
I wanted to be a doctor.
My father said,
"No, he will study the trumpet".
He sent me to the conservatory
to study the trumpet. That's how it went.
It was my dad who decided
I was going to be a trumpet player.
I didn't decide anything.
As you can see,
I was just a kid.
I was very weak at solfge.
In the first quarter,
I got a three out of 10.
My father became very strict.
During holidays, I wasn't allowed
to play any bingo or card games...
and then I improved.
I was six years old
when my father taught me the treble clef,
and explained to me
the position of the notes on the staff.
His father played the trumpet
in a regimental band.
He played in cinemas
where they did variety shows.
There was a record player in my house,
and since I used to listen to
Il Franco Cacciatore,
I wrote music for hunting,
for two horns...
That kind of useless stuff.
When I was ten, I tore it all up.
I started studying the trumpet
when I was 11.
I got my diploma at 16.
My father used to tell me
that there was a boy,
the son of the trumpeter,
he would go to the pit with his
music manuscript, and fall asleep.
He played the trumpet,
and would often fall asleep
when he was not playing.
Mario Riva was the presenter
at the Casina delle Rose.
Ennio Morricone's father was there
and they played together.
An extraordinary trumpet player,
but my father was very strict.
He was very careful with his spending.
He had the same trumpet his whole life.
When his dad gives him
the trumpet and says,
"This instrument
allows me to feed you,
you'll do the same for your family",
that was it.
He bought me a second-hand trumpet.
It was cheaper,
and he bought whatever saved him money.
He's a musician
and couldn't be anything else.
I remember that when the Germans
were here, and then the Americans,
I went from one hotel to another
with a small orchestra.
They only gave us food for playing,
they didn't even pay us.
Some of my colleagues
used to put a small plate on the drums
for soldiers to make a donation.
The family only lived
on the father's trade.
There was a time
when his father became ill,
and Ennio, a boy,
had to replace him in nightclubs
and in entertainment orchestras.
Playing the trumpet
to earn enough to eat,
was a terrible humiliation.
And this...
I felt this humiliation.
So, I stopped loving the trumpet.
I took my father's place,
and I played until 2am or 3am.
I used to get up early in the morning
to go to the conservatory,
and then I had to do my homework.
I showed up with a split lip to
the trumpet exam, I was... tired.
My exam was...
nothing special.
I got a 7.5.
I was also studying complementary harmony.
I didn't stick to the rules,
I enriched them, I made them flourish.
And Roberto Caggiano, my teacher,
at the end of the course, told me,
"Now you must study composition".
And I listened to Caggiano.
These...
Goffredo Petrassi, was one of the greatest
composers of classical music of 1900,
and he was, for me, an amazing teacher.
When I was in my seventh year,
I had to take a class
in advanced composition.
There were two distinguished teachers,
Petrassi was one of them.
Music is an intellectual matter.
I studied his scores,
I liked the way they were written.
The handwriting,
the beauty of the handwriting.
Every unison was not in unison,
because he added something to it.
Those scores were a school in themselves.
I chose him, I chose Petrassi.
Morricone has always made it clear,
he had chosen Petrassi as his teacher.
The secretary told me,
"Maestro, it's not possible.
Petrassi's class is full."
I replied,
"If you don't send me to Petrassi,
"I will quit this conservatory."
What you want to do,
is search for that composer's techniques,
and make them your own.
I was very shy at first,
because everyone in that class was good.
Extraordinary composers.
Ennio Morricone's origins were much
more humble, compared to his peers.
The conservatory was for the elite.
In front of those giants, I was so small.
I felt almost, almost humiliated.
He felt a bit inferior.
It was unusual for a trumpet player
to study composition.
So Morricone was,
in my opinion, discriminated against.
The first thing that Petrassi asked me
to do, for a few months, was dances.
The tarantella.
The bourree.
The jig.
The boogie-woogie.
The samba.
I was not happy.
He didn't give me any indication
of his satisfaction.
At the beginning,
I've always had the impression,
that even Petrassi
underestimated Ennio a bit,
that he was not interested enough
in this person.
Finally, once I was done with the dances,
he explained the Ricercare to me,
and he commissioned me a Ricercare.
That was when I stopped making mistakes.
He gave me great satisfaction,
as my teacher.
It was a counterpoint,
in four parts, five parts,
it was very interesting,
the form that preceded the Fugue,
of which Frescobaldi was the leader.
A century before Bach,
he made hints of counterpoint,
of two melodies together.
Those famous ten years with Petrassi
are those in which Ennio fed on
bread and Palestrina,
bread and Monteverdi,
therefore he knows counterpoint
like nobody else in the world.
Petrassi was so influenced by Stravinsky
that he passed on this passion
to Morricone for Stravinsky.
I listened to one of Stravinsky's
most sublime pieces.
Symphony of Psalms.
I heard it conducted by Stravinsky,
when I was very young.
At Santa Cecilia. It was a rehearsal.
The door was open, just a crack,
and the orchestra was playing there.
And I...
I have always been
impressed by that piece.
When I was studying composition,
I didn't show anything to my father.
I stayed in my room, and I wrote,
I wrote and wrote.
He was a very attentive and smart student.
I was happy and also optimistic
about his future.
But I was studying,
and I was working.
He played the trumpet at the Sistina.
I was the first trumpet added.
I played in all the revues.
Walter Chiari, Tognazzi,
Rascel, all the comedians.
Dapporto, Wanda Osiris, Macario, Toto.
Something beautiful was
the last walkway of the dancers.
I complimented them as they walked over.
I looked at them, and named them
all the titles of the American songs
I had played in the past.
"My Dream."
And they would smile at me.
But when the show ended,
I could not miss my trolley bus,
so I put away the trumpet,
and made a mad dash home.
Music, maestro!
I used to write arrangements on the sly.
Petrassi didn't know,
he found out later.
The first one who called me
was Carlo Savina.
Savina once complained about
an arrangement, in a striking way.
He threw the music sheets.
Sometimes I did some experiments.
Savina would call me angrily,
and would tell me, "The sharp is missing,
"the flat is missing.
What's that note? It's not clear."
Savina was tied to a somewhat old concept.
Whereas Morricone's arrangements
were extremely modern.
One, two, three.
My first film experiences were
in film orchestras, playing the trumpet.
I played in some beautiful performances
with Lavagnino,
Franco D'Achiardi, Enzo Masetti.
One soundtrack in which I played
was Fabiola by Alessandro Blasetti.
For the final exam in composition,
we had to write an opera scene.
I did a double Fugue.
Two subjects and two countersubjects,
about Glaucus, who was in a stormy sea
and about to land,
What I wanted to create was
something twisted, yet so elegant,
so sinuous, so sensual.
I wanted to make all this...
but I couldn't do it.
The committee, included Guido Guerrini,
the conservatory's director,
Goffredo Petrassi and Virgilio Mortari.
Quite opposite personalities.
Guerrini couldn't understand
Petrassi's music.
There was a sort of rivalry.
So he asked me a trick question:
"Why did you divide
a double bass pizzicato,
"where you put the open string
with the upper octave?"
"Why did you do that?"
Petrassi didn't let me answer.
He attacked the director:
"What kind of question is that?"
Petrassi got angry, yes.
I got a nine and a half.
I remember it well because I got a nine,
and I was very envious
of that nine and a half.
I walked out of the conservatory,
And as always, I accompanied Petrassi
to 181 Germanico Street, his home.
That time...
we both got emotional.
He was crying, and so was I.
He promised me
he would find me a job.
He meant as a teacher at the conservatory.
But nothing happened.
When I went into the military service,
they put me in the band right away.
The colonel commissioned me
to do band orchestrations.
We played in the streets.
My girlfriend, Maria, would follow me...
running.
She was so cute.
He married Maria,
who was exemplary among us
because she was just like her husband.
She was a calm woman, always smiling.
We used to call her the Madonna.
When I finished at the conservatory,
I was like a naked composer
facing the world around him.
I wanted to protect myself
from this loneliness,
so I wrote my first concerto
for orchestra.
When it came to my musical choices,
my mother used say,
"Please, Ennio, write me a nice melody,
"a beautiful song."
She pestered me, saying,
"Write a nice song.
"You must always make a nice melody.
"That's how you will become famous."
I could hear him playing
from morning until night.
At that time, he wasn't composing
music for films yet.
He was very poor.
Maria worked
for the Christian Democracy party,
and without telling me,
she got me hired at RAI.
On my first day, the director
of the center on Via Teulada called me.
He said, "Maestro, I must warn you
that you won't have a career here.
"Also, as a composer,
you cannot be performed at RAI."
I said, "What am I doing here?"
And I immediately quit the job.
Thanks to Petrassi, I went to Darmstadt,
to the contemporary music festival.
It was a time of confusion
for contemporary music.
John Cage came to Darmstadt
to critique it.
He did a concert
playing just two notes on the piano,
he turned the radio on, and then off,
he made a bang, turned some pages...
I had the idea,
surrounded by colleagues,
which were all composition graduates,
Franco Evangelisti, Boris Porena,
Aldo Clementi, Egisto Macchi, and others,
I told them,
"You make a sort of... a grunt.
"You make a laryngeal sound."
And then I conducted this...
At that moment, the Nuova Consonanza
Improvisation Group was born.
It was a breakthrough group.
They didn't use the traditional techniques
of sound emission.
Those techniques were always extreme.
We wanted to make traumatic sounds.
That's what we called them.
You weren't supposed
to recognise the trumpet.
I played it in different ways,
putting a hand in front of the bell,
pushing the pistons in halfway,
so it came out
like a strange mewing sound.
It was also awful!
Basically, a different way
of making music.
They worked with sound,
rather than melodies.
In fact, melodies were almost banned.
Ennio worked with melody every day.
It seems like a conflict,
a cinematic stunt.
I used to do all the arrangements
for the Quartetto Cetra.
They would choose the songs.
They used to give me a kind of notebook
and I had to instrument
that notebook for the orchestra.
They chose songs that people knew,
but they used different words.
In each episode,
there were many songs,
but they only gave me the notebook
the day before airing,
and the next morning, we recorded.
So I used to spend the nights writing.
He would be, what they called
"the slave" in musical slang,
which meant doing arrangements for others.
But his name would never appear
for television or film music.
One of the first was Cicognini,
a great composer who was making
a film directed by De Sica.
I arranged and conducted
this song and this chorus.
The Maestro Ennio Morricone.
One day a baritone arrived at RCA.
He sang songs from the '30s,
and I heard some amazing arrangements.
Maestro Morricone, famous arranger.
And the name Ennio Morricone came up.
I was called in to save RCA
which was going bankrupt.
With Il Barattolo, it was saved.
There was this sound
which is the sound of a can.
Everything sounded very '60s.
But the can is a foreign element
that has nothing to do with the context.
The information is a shock
to the listener of the song.
Meccia, the singer, was almost scared,
but Ennio was already someone
who looked around for cans,
rolling them around.
People were used to melodic music,
Italian music was very melodic
up until then,
so these noises were a novelty.
You used a typewriter
as a musical instrument.
Yes, exactly. A proper, written part,
played by a real performer.
For Pinne, Fucile ed Occhiali,
we used tubs with water
to create the splash effect
which didn't come out how Ennio wanted it.
We tried putting detergent in it,
putting covers over it,
because he wanted a dive
that sounded like...
A water sound.
Each song had a stroke of genius.
He blended trumpets with female voices
and trombones with male voices.
A totally new sound.
He revolutionized RCA.
The arrangers back then were so boring.
The arrangers at RCA were
Morricone and Bacalov.
I requested Morricone
because I thought he was more brilliant.
I wasn't wrong.
These things here, very simple,
were very successful.
Then I added some piano.
The dignity of the composer,
that my teacher had taught me,
I felt I had to use it in the simplest
of the professions, even the lowest,
redeeming it with the principles
of dodecaphonic music,
transposed into tonal music.
He would give colour to these songs,
turn them into something else.
I'm not worthy of you
I don't deserve you anymore
There was counterpoint in it.
There was no reason for it,
an accompanying chord was enough.
There was always counterpoint.
I think he basically
invented the arrangement.
Until then, songs were just accompanied.
Before Morricone,
there was only the accompaniment.
The orchestra followed the chords,
it was the background.
He started personalizing the songs.
I was trying to add something
superior to the song itself.
But I didn't think I was an innovator.
I used to see him writing
while he was talking on the phone,
he would write the arrangement,
the violin part, the trumpet part.
And he would carry on like this,
while on the phone.
He stands in front of a piano,
he looks at the keys and writes.
He writes the score.
He could imagine the sounds.
He looks at the keys and writes.
Without playing them.
He just hears them.
He had the music in here, inside.
The orchestra is conducted
by Ennio Morricone.
Can you hear it?
There is also a trick.
Many arrangements start with something
very catchy, right at the beginning.
Conducted by Ennio Morricone.
He did an extraordinary arrangement
for Paul Anka, with an amazing beginning.
Ten seconds and you were riveted.
The song started, and he sang.
Ennio came up with musical phrases
that could constantly
run after each other.
They became the trademark of the song.
This device immediately
identified the song.
The greatest artists of the time
wanted Morricone.
I also worked with Chet Baker.
He played the trumpet
in an extraordinary way.
So dark that it sounded like a flugelhorn.
My father, at the age of 55,
was losing his skills on the trumpet.
I didn't put trumpets in what I did.
So as not to offend him.
This was a dramatic moment
in our relationship,
and my mother used to say,
"Why don't you call Dad to work?"
And I never told her that
he was no longer a great trumpet player.
So I didn't call his colleagues either.
I felt this was the right thing to do.
When he died,
I started calling the trumpets again.
All he cared about was music.
He was so absorbed by music,
that nothing else mattered.
And he was absent.
Continuously absent.
For me, he created miracles:
Non son degno di te, In ginocchio da te
Se non avessi pi te, La fisarmonica
The singles were made
with a commercial intent,
so I needed to work on the rhythm.
The albums, very few of them were sold.
So there, I could use my ideas.
He managed to add cultured quotations.
He starts it
with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
It was a nocturne, by Beethoven,
I thought it was consistent
with a song called Voice at Night.
He did the arrangement of Ciribiribin
for four pianos.
I used the incipit of...
The beginning of the melody,
I took it as a cue
for arranging the whole song.
That arrangement was a complete invention.
I remember he once said,
"There is only one arrangement
of a song: the one I created."
But he would explain to you why,
and 99 times out of 100, he convinced you.
One in 100, he didn't.
Zambrini wrote the song
In Ginocchio da Te.
He did the first arrangement of my music.
We went into the recording studio,
Ennio gets on the podium
and starts conducting.
And we listen to it.
I could see the lyricist and producer,
Migliacci, from the recording studio,
turning his nose up at it.
It was very sweet.
"It's not good, it needs some rhythm."
"There must be a part with momentum."
"So, now what do we do?
We have to redo it."
He did not bat an eyelid.
He went home, and he wrote again.
The next Friday...
he was already a bit on edge.
He asked me to sing live.
So I start.
And Migliacci on the other side...
He wasn't happy.
"Ennio, this is not good either.
It's still too soft."
I told him,
"Ennio, you need to redo it."
"But this is a melodic song!"
We said,
"This way, it's impossible to dance to."
"I won't do it again. Get someone else."
And they said, "You have to."
"Make it desperate,
put some rage in it..."
So he calls everybody again.
A group of 40, 50...
backup singers, eight of them,
guitarists, keyboardists,
pianists, harpsichordists
and also trombones, horns.
He goes home, mad as hell.
He starts writing again.
- The next day...
- He shows up.
"It's the last time, I won't try it again.
"This is the rubbish you like."
He throws it on the table.
"Take this pile of crap."
He gets on the podium and starts.
I remember it very well.
The piano.
Migliacci was like...
"Ennio, this is amazing."
"No, it's awful. I don't like it."
But it was great.
Then he added all the responses.
I'll come back
To you on my knees
And of course, they made the film,
and Ennio did the soundtrack.
You could tell
that I was a peculiar arranger.
A bit more difficult.
I noticed he was at RCA less and less.
Luciano Salce knew me,
and he asked me to compose the score
for Il Federale.
It was the first time
my name would appear on a film.
It was a debut, so to speak.
Gunfight at Red Sands,
and Bullets Don't Argue
are Ennio Morricone's first two westerns,
both from 1963.
Initially, he uses pseudonyms.
Nobody knows that Ennio Morricone
is working on these westerns.
Dan Savio was a friend of my wife,
so I used her name.
He doesn't want to reveal
to Petrassi and his colleagues,
that he is doing westerns.
I remember I made up the horses riding,
with the guitars.
Sergio Leone called me
because he heard the music
of these two westerns.
He came to my house.
He asked me to do his film.
However, I...
I knew that face.
I said, "Are you the Leone who
went to school at the Carissimi?"
"Yes, that's me."
"I'm Ennio Morricone."
They were schoolmates.
There's a beautiful photo,
with all the schoolchildren
in their smocks,
and you can recognise
Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone.
Two former schoolmates
who meet again to work.
And they become inseparable.
On the same afternoon,
he took me to see a Japanese film.
He explained to me that A Fistful of
Dollars had something in common with it.
Years earlier, Ennio had written
an arrangement for a western record
for an American singer.
I said, "Let me hear something of yours,"
and he had a record,
with a baritone voice.
A very original arrangement
for a western song.
I said, "Why don't you find me
the backing track?"
I took the whole arrangement,
as I wrote it.
He invented a new melody.
Done with a whistle.
Ennio calls me and says,
"Give me a little whistle,
I need to do something".
Afterwards, I said to him,
"Not quite a little whistle!"
That's how A Fistful of Dollars began.
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
It was a real turning point.
It was the music
of an out-of-the-ordinary composer.
An unprecedented tone.
We'd never heard anything like it.
An electric guitar, the lashes of a whip.
The piffero.
The anvil, the whistle.
- The bell.
- He set out a new language.
It was a culture shock, for those times.
When Sergio took me
to the editing room to watch it,
for the duel between Volonte and Eastwood
he used the Deguello.
The trumpet piece
from the movie Rio Bravo.
It fit perfectly.
Leone said to me,
"We'll keep this."
I said,
"Sorry, Sergio, I can't accept that,
"you want to use an existing piece
in the main scene,
"and I just do the background music."
And I said, "I quit."
Sergio gave up the Deguello.
But he said, "Please give me an imitation.
It fit so well."
I thought of a song,
one that I had written
years earlier for a TV show.
Sung by one of the great Peter Sisters,
a contralto with a deep,
extraordinary voice.
I said, "I'm going to show Sergio."
Obviously, I instructed
Michele Lacerenza, the trumpeter,
to do those flutters on the trumpet.
Like in the Deguello.
For best music score:
Ennio Morricone, A Fistful of Dollars.
Morricone, a few words.
A few words with Morricone.
- You didn't expect this award.
- No.
- Is this your first award?
- Yes.
Do you often work
on background music for film?
He looked very young to me.
He had this round face and these glasses,
like one of the Peanuts,
like Charlie Brown,
or a grown-up Linus.
Ennio was present
in a lot of Italian films,
and I used to have a lot of fun
listening and imagining
how he had worked with the director.
FISTS IN THE POCKEI took big risks
with first-time directors.
I tried to make different music.
Ennio is reserved, a believer.
I was impressed by how he became
very involved in an anti-religious film.
I wrote a lullaby, sung by a female voice,
immersed in dissonant sounds
of a metallic, vibrating surface.
I'm happy I did those kinds of films.
They weren't as commercial as the others.
Some time later, Sergio Leone and I went
to see A Fistful of Dollars again,.
and we admitted to each other
that we didn't like it.
I never loved the music of this film.
I always encouraged Sergio,
in later films, to forget it.
But he insisted,
"Give me some trumpet, do the whistle."
FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
There was friendship between them,
there was complicity,
but also a lot of discussions.
Also, let's say, violent ones.
Cut it.
In the scene
where Sergio wanted the trumpet,
I had the idea to quote the opening of
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
The music of his westerns,
which he considers basic,
had a structure,
a wisdom, a deliberate architecture,
which was impressive.
Sergio Leone,
with For a Few Dollars More,
began to understand
the importance of the soundtrack
by Ennio Morricone in his films.
And he realised that Morricone
was beginning to have an audience.
After a long time, I met Petrassi,
and he told me that he liked my music
for the cinema very much.
He mentioned a film that I didn't
expect, For a Few Dollars More,
and I was shocked because I thought
I had written better music than that.
And he said, "However,
I know that you will make up for it.
"I know that you will make up for it."
I don't think Petrassi appreciated
this work he did.
Same as I didn't appreciate it very much.
We really were, in a way...
archaic.
What do you think about the collaboration
between composer and director
in film music?
I would define it totally anti-artistic.
Composers who came out
of Petrassi's school...
never had a good opinion of my profession:
my work with the cinema.
And this sort of isolated me.
He once phoned me, when he was young,
and it was very moving.
He said I was a purist
while he was a traitor.
He was divided, also because
the environment forced him to be.
Who are you?
Are you this or are you that?
Ennio had a kind of inferiority complex.
For having given up the
purity of the composer,
the vision of Petrassi.
But Petrassi betrayed that idea too,
more than once.
Petrassi also did soundtracks.
However, while Petrassi never thought
that film music was real music,
Ennio thought it was.
Petrassi couldn't understand
what was special about Ennio.
His ability to identify
with a situation, a scene.
Petrassi probably couldn't do that,
just like I couldn't.
And I think that even Petrassi was not
entirely free from an inferiority complex.
I also did The Bible
directed by a certain director
called, I think, Huston.
He put a lot of effort
into writing that music.
But Huston didn't accept it,
because, according to him,
it was too difficult.
So I think it's the end
of my work with the cinema.
It almost seemed like fate,
and an unjust fate.
I was called by Dino De Laurentiis...
to replace my teacher, Petrassi.
The musical production
was a co-production between
RCA and Dino De Laurentiis.
And Dino said to me,
"Do a piece on the Creation.
"We'll give it to Huston, if he likes it,
you'll do the whole film."
I simulated the light,
a trickle of water,
which then widened and swelled,
and then it burst with the fire.
Then the animals, the birds...
All this dynamism. Then it started again.
Maria went to a synagogue
and took some ancient Hebrew texts
which Ennio set to music.
Huston came several times.
De Laurentiis came several times.
They all seemed very happy.
I got the job.
At that point, De Laurentiis said to me,
"What do we care about RCA?
"Just do the film with me."
And I said, "I have an exclusive with RCA,
"I can't do this rudeness to them."
I went to RCA and talked to the president.
I said, "This is a great opportunity
for me, unique, rare.
"Let me do The Bible".
"No, you can't do it.
You have a contract with us."
And I didn't do it. Of course, I didn't.
Despite everything,
Petrassi's point is clear.
He states that writing for the cinema,
for commercial music,
is, for an academic musician,
like prostitution.
So he is morally condemned.
Guilty.
Guilty.
At first, I felt guilty,
but I slowly redeemed this feeling.
So much so that by writing,
I wanted my revenge.
I wanted to conquer...
this...
guilt.
Gillo Pontecorvo wanted to meet me.
I didn't expect
such an important director.
I was intimidated because
he was different from the others.
He was a big guy.
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
And I wrote this piece...
It was one of my variations
on Frescobaldi's theme.
There were three notes:
A, B flat and B natural.
And then the contrary motion:
F sharp, F natural, E.
It's about what I had learned.
I am made up of everything that music was,
the music I studied.
A little to your left.
Pasolini already had a list of records
that I had to put in the film.
He said to Ennio, "So, maestro,
"I would like this Bach part here."
I said, "Excuse me,
but I'm a composer who writes music,
"I don't take other people's music
and put it in a movie.
"This is not possible, I have to refuse."
And he said,
"In that case, do what you want."
I wrote that rhyme,
between serious and funny.
It said "Music by Ennio Morricone"
and I sang...
sang, kind of-- a laugh.
Until that moment,
Pasolini only used Bach's music.
Then, he switched to Morricone.
The music in Sergio Leone's first films,
felt below what I could do
because I was a slave to Sergio's vices,
then I came up with the theme
which was the coyote's howl.
And I went...
It's dramatic but fun,
and he liked it very much.
THE GOOD
THE UGLY
THE BAD
Let's focus on Ennio Morricone.
Ennio, do you realise
that your story is unique
in the history of Italian music?
You created two best sellers in two years,
two records with movie soundtracks
that were two incredible, tremendous hits.
I was lucky.
I don't think so. You are good.
I went to spy,
I bribed the projectionist,
I went to the copyist
and tried to look at his score.
Following his work, I know he's
an artist who never sought fame.
This is Maestro Morricone.
You may not recognize his face,
but you know his name.
Morricone specialized
in music for western movies.
Obviously, every western
from that period came to me,
and I had to work on them,
because that was my destiny at the time.
A funny story about Ennio:
you make a movie, you show it to him.
The first time he watches the movie,
he falls asleep.
He falls asleep
like the gunslingers in the western,
who seemed asleep,
but then they shot you first.
He had watched it anyway,
he already knew,
what he said was already
right on the mark.
The Great Silence by Sergio Corbucci
was set all on snow...
All on snow.
Horses galloped without making any noise.
The leading character was mute.
Corbucci said to me,
"This is the best music
you've created for me."
I said, "Thanks Sergio,
it's because you can hear it."
In the movies,
mixing sound without a balance,
can damage the movie and the music,
which is an abstract element added
to the film and it's not necessary.
But when we want to hear it,
we need to let it be free.
There was a period when
I tried to reduce the notes
in order to communicate something
the audience could remember.
I had one of my first ideas
while I was paying the gas bill.
It was the song Se Telefonando
that Mina asked me for.
And there I tried out
the three notes for the first time.
They were three and in 4/4 time.
The stress never falls on the same note.
It was a very important discovery
for tonal music,
because it also became catchier.
See, it's another note.
The three notes...
It's always there,
but it's different for each measure.
He could repeat the same thing
without making it stale.
I never abandoned
the experience with fewer notes
because I always
liked to have a little fun.
Ennio was at the piano and told me,
"Now I'll play you two themes
that cross each other."
I often write two themes
without realizing it,
one theme into the other
to make them more agile.
And he played me two themes
that cross each other.
I am not ashamed to say
that I didn't like that theme.
I told the director,
Peppino Patroni Griffi,
"I would discard this.
Be patient and listen to me."
And he told me I was mad.
Love Circle,
I find brilliant.
Because it's minimalist,
what's trending now in music.
Peppino was right,
because I can't judge my own themes.
That's why, from that moment on,
I made my wife listen
to all the themes I wrote.
If she liked them,
I played them for the director.
Directors only heard
the pieces that my wife liked.
I remember that Ennio was never alone.
Maria was always with Ennio.
This woman who was a mother,
a wife, and a partner,
but who watched over his talent
in a wonderful way.
Because it's a sacrifice.
For love, she was his first applause.
She, not knowing about music,
could give me an honest opinion,
so that's what I've been doing for years.
She created a defensive perimeter
so that Ennio Morricone's
genius could be free.
I always wondered how Ennio could be,
both a movie musician,
and an experimental musician.
When I write for movies, I am a composer.
When I write for myself,
I am someone else,
so I become a very diverse
and opposite composer,
that it feels like I have a double face.
Suoni per Dino,
written by Ennio Morricone for
Dino Asciolla and tape recorder,
musically expresses what the author thinks
about the disturbing issues
that trouble today's society.
They interviewed him: "How can
a composer of spaghetti western music
"have this experimental nature?"
He never gave up experimental music,
he even tried to use it in movies.
When Elio Petri met me
for the first time he told me,
"I only worked once with a composer,
"so bear in mind that this is the first
and last movie that we'll make together."
I created very difficult music,
but the main character was a painter
who was existentially confused
and it felt right to call
the Nuova Consonanza Improvisation Group,
in which I played,
and use my previous composition
for 11 violins,
to which I added
percussion and a female voice.
We improvised in front of the movie,
in sync with the mad painter's dreams,
so paints were spilling, boards fell over,
and the music somehow replaced the noises.
The movie and the music
were critically acclaimed,
but the movie flopped.
I felt responsible for this failure.
During a concert in Florence,
a stage-hand got on stage,
took a ladder and started shaking it.
The old wood made a sound...
After ten minutes, that man
got off and left, the concert was over.
I told that to Sergio...
and Sergio understood.
The first 20 minutes of
Once Upon a Time in the West,
are concrete music.
It was the result of what happened
with the ladder in Florence.
Somehow, the noises were music.
That character plays the harmonica
more than he speaks,
so it is a voice.
Entrusting so much of that character to
Ennio meant putting yourself in his hands,
and it's no coincidence that my father
never worked with another musician.
It's an extremely seductive music.
It seduces you, envelops you,
gets stuck in your head.
They gave me the music
and I just read and performed.
I didn't practice it first.
I heard that it was a beautiful melody.
Music that we've kept
listening to all our lives.
It became part of the fabric
of our daily lives.
The voices, the sounds, the noises,
the tone, the mood,
the short phrases.
Ennio uses them for what they are.
Notes are like construction materials
for a building.
The bricks are the same in all buildings,
but the buildings are not the same.
Those were the bricks
he used to build his cathedrals.
I didn't want to be categorized as someone
who only composes music for westerns.
Lattuada encouraged me
to write symphonic music.
They're all violins played divisi,
then all the strings,
but especially the violins.
And I tried for truly symphonic music.
Actually, my most difficult piece
is a different one.
The score for The Sicilian Clan
took a great effort.
Good evening Mr Malanese,
I hope you're not too surprised
to see me.
I told to you to come when you wanted.
There's the first exposition
of the main theme...
And then I added
as a second counterpoint Bach's name.
B is for B flat, A is for A,
C is for C, and His B natural.
Which is Bach.
He created a counterpoint
that managed to combine
each part with its own voice,
the drums, the double bass,
and air the instruments that come in.
That's Bach's name, I changed the order.
And behind...
The funny thing is,
on the theme that supported Bach's name,
there is a Sicilian theme.
At first listen, it seems like a piece...
but no, it hides
an immense amount of knowledge.
All the composers
were fascinated by this B A C H,
but that doesn't matter.
Notes are no longer important.
What's important is
what a composer makes out of them.
The names, the names!
I had already edited the music for
I Cannibali by Liliana Cavani.
In the same building
Gillo was editing Queimada,
and from afar he heard
a choir of that music.
When Liliana Cavani was not there
he went to the editing room,
and took her tape with that piece,
put it over his beach scene
and it fit perfectly.
That music in my movie felt
like a secular hymn to freedom.
We got in a fight.
He wanted me to take that piece away from
Liliana Cavani and use it in Queimada.
Exhausted, Gillo told me,
"Fine, then write me something similar."
I noticed, when I watched
Pontecorvo's movie,
that the theme was from I Cannibali.
It was clear they were similar!
They were different, but similar.
I was in the crossfire.
I remember a time when he said to me,
"Do you want to improvise 'Abolisson'?"
Just like that, with no notice,
as I was about to go on stage.
Of course!
The human voice is very magical,
because it comes out of our body,
without needing an instrument.
By the end of the '60s,
Ennio Morricone was a guarantee
for producers and directors.
In 1969 alone, 21 movies
with his music were released.
Ennio's huge success made people envious.
They weren't only envious,
but they copied him too.
Then envy turned into slander.
"You made 18 movies in one year,
how's that possible?
"You didn't do all of them, right?"
He sat like this.
He was so fast at writing music that
it seemed like he was writing a letter.
He had a clarity of ideas
when he imagined music.
He was clear, simple.
How many film scores did you compose?
I don't... I never counted.
I was sure Elio Petri and I
wouldn't work together again,
but then he called me
for all of his next movies.
For Investigation of a Citizen
Above Suspicion I wrote a little arpeggio.
During the mixing, Elio called me
and showed me the first part.
And I said, "Elio, what the hell is this?"
He had changed the music.
He had used the music I had composed
years before for a horrible movie.
Elio said to me, "It's great.
"Look, Bolkan is about to be killed,
"look how well the choir works."
Ruggero Mastroianni, the editor,
was there on my left.
He said, "Ennio,
don't you see that's extraordinary?"
And I replied, "How can you
like this music for this scene?
"It doesn't fit with it."
I slowly gave up.
I told him, "Do as you like."
The lights went on,
and Elio said something
that still moves me when I think of it.
"You created the best music
I could ever imagine.
"You should slap me in the face."
A brilliant idea that weaves together
everything that Ennio had done until then
and that launches him towards his future
is Investigation of a Citizen.
I was traumatized by Investigation.
It made me realize that it was possible
to create very different music
from what even Morricone did until then.
I remember the music
more than the movie.
In fact, the music carries the movie.
He invented a musical format
which is film music.
He may be the inventor of film music.
How will you kill me this time?
I will cut your throat.
Kubrick liked that music
and called me for A Clockwork Orange.
He liked that music so much that
he wanted me to do an imitation of it.
We agreed, but Kubrick called Leone.
Sergio told him that I couldn't do it
because I was working.
My composer Ennio Morricone
is working on my new movie called,
A Fistful of Dynamite.
But it wasn't true.
I was mixing A Fistful of Dynamite.
The music was done.
So Kubrick gave up on me
without even calling.
It's my only regret
about a movie that I didn't work on.
One, two, one, two, three, four.
I dreamed about being
in a Morricone theme. Wonderful. Wow.
But instead, there were
four people in the recording studio.
So he passed one scene and said...
He gave instructions and then recorded...
Ennio developed multiple scores,
and tried them out
in a certain type of thriller movie.
He looked at me, a little bit angry,
and asked, "What are those?"
I told him, "They are records.
In case we need inspiration."
"Throw them away."
Please, open up!
I experimented
with a writing style I'd never tried.
He wrote music in scores, in strips.
Musicians in the studio
improvised on Ennio's outline,
he was playing the trumpet.
Based on what was happening on-screen,
he pointed to the number of the strip
to be played by a specific musician.
So I have him start,
then I have her start,
and everyone needs
to have their instrument ready
to start at any time,
because it's not written.
So when a director would say,
"That's good",
I couldn't do it the same way again.
This allowed me to do
the unexpected in movies.
After the third movie,
Salvatore, Dario's father,
said to me, "What are you doing?
It's all the same music."
He said, "You made the same music
for three movies."
It wasn't true.
Ennio defended himself saying,
"I don't make the same music."
But it seemed the same.
Because dissonant music
destabilises the senses.
But I applied this idea to other movies,
and got to the 23rd multiple score.
Maybe at a certain point
he overdid it a little.
He start receiving his first rejections
or warnings, because they told him,
"Ennio, if you keep writing like this,
you won't have a job anymore."
Obviously I changed my writing style.
Morricone was already a myth.
Joan Baez was one of the greatest symbols
of American youth.
Ennio speaks English, sort of,
and Baez speaks Italian, sort of,
but music is a universal language.
She sang on a temporary piano and drums,
so I put the orchestra over her voice.
And she told me,
"Nobody, not knowing me directly,
"could have written to this exact point
of my best vocal range."
She said it's a miracle.
That song soon became a hit,
and we kept asking ourselves,
"Why? How was this possible?"
The fact that my melodies were successful
doesn't mean that I was wrong
to be against the traditional melody.
I think that we are
out of melodic combinations.
Supposedly, Ennio Morricone
doesn't love melody.
He said so.
But he is a musician
with a very strong melodic vein,
that comes out,
the more he tries to suppress it.
Melody? Someone who is so good
at creating it, can't despise it.
He's lying.
But maybe,
it's in what we could playfully call,
composer schizophrenia,
that belies that totally different spark.
One of his rules,
is strictness applied to creation,
and the fact that he
plays chess proves it.
I mean, he lives in a mathematical,
geometrical world.
It's an almost transcendental,
spiritual approach.
His pieces with the greatest impact,
play on an exhausting tension,
whose resolution is
almost ecstatic for the viewer.
I myself,
had to give up on listening analytically
and just let go.
His music makes each of us feel
like it was secretly written for us.
Why do people remember Morricone's music?
Because when you listen to it
you can't forget it.
My head is full of music,
something I will have to write,
then I get an interesting, important idea.
So I often seem reserved,
like someone who doesn't like to talk.
He's an extremely timid person,
with a profound determination.
So, speaking to him about music is
to speak with the abyss inside him.
He believes in his music,
that it's never a servant to the image.
In fact, Ennio says,
"I am like a chameleon,
"I change color depending
on the director I work with,
"but I am always myself."
I think that he always tried to understand
the director he was with
and then work on their soul.
In this respect,
Ennio was a good psychologist,
because to be able to deal
with personalities which were so complex,
and sometimes so troubled,
you have to be a very good psychologist.
With Pasolini
and the other directors he worked with,
he always found a way to express himself.
He is truly a dictionary.
If ten good composers
work with the same director,
and write for the same movie,
they will all write very different music.
This dramatic reasoning explains
how difficult it is to write movie scores.
Because if there are that many solutions,
the hardest part of a composer's job is:
What is the right music,
which one fits the best?
This is the composer's agony.
For Allonsanfan, we said,
"Ennio, in the end there's a dance.
"We need music for shooting that."
He did the accompaniment for us.
And we liked it very much.
So we thought that accompaniment
was the music of the dance.
And they shot the movie
with that rhythm.
When we edit a movie,
we can't proceed without music.
So we put together the most varied music,
the most diverse musicians.
Then Ennio came to see the editing and
said, "That's good, but why am I here?"
And he left.
To imitate the others music.
I didn't like not being able to think
by myself. I never liked it.
We ran down the stairs.
"No, you have to do it."
"I'm not doing it."
Eventually I accepted,
but I'll create the music by myself.
When we were in the recording studio
for the final dance,
Ennio said, "I prepared a melody for you."
"No! We don't want a melody.
We like it like this, Ennio."
"Just listen."
We jumped on him
because it was even better.
The director oversees everything:
screenplay, set designs, costumes,
acting, lights, framing.
But not the music.
He sat at the piano
and did the melody with his voice...
I have a bad voice,
it's definitely not good.
He played some music for me on the piano,
but I didn't understand a thing.
The film director couldn't know
the orchestration I'm going to do.
I didn't dare doubt
what Morricone improvised at the piano,
I knew that that sound
would become strings, winds.
A director can't understand
the final result from a description.
You cannot describe music,
it needs to be listened to.
Some movies inspired me straight away,
to write a certain music,
of a certain type.
During the first screening of 1900,
a rough cut,
Ennio started
writing the theme immediately.
It was dark,
I happened to have a piece of paper,
and I started writing notes.
I wrote that.
It seemed like he created,
with music, a parallel movie.
Ennio moves inside the music.
There's nothing he cannot give you.
If, while he's recording, you say to him,
"Why don't you make this
into a piece that resembles Verdi?"
His talent instanty gushes out.
He can instantly create a song like Verdi
and you wonder what opera it's from.
But it's not an opera.
It's Ennio.
1900 received heavy criticism
and someone faulted the music too.
Zurlini called me and said,
"I will write an article in your defense."
It was really nice of him.
The Tartars are the dreams
of youth that are lost.
At a certain point Zurlini wanted to hear
the themes so I played with the piano...
And he went, "That's enough, it's good."
It's incredible,
not knowing how the theme developed,
not even the orchestration,
he knew nothing.
But when a director trusts you,
he trusts you.
Farewell, Drogo.
I invented the piece
with the five war trumpets
that suggested that an army was coming...
but didn't.
The last time that I played the trumpet,
was when Gillo Pontecorvo
got married at the Campidoglio.
He asked me if I could
play the wedding march.
I took the trumpet, even though I hadn't
practised in a long time, and played...
On the trumpet.
He was very happy.
Terrence Malick was
an important director for me.
I went to watch the movie,
and when I got back to Italy
I wrote 18 ideas.
When we analyzed the movie,
he had me create a piece
that was really important to me.
It was a kind of symphony of fire.
I never had an epistolary relationship
like the one I had with him.
A movie musician has
to be able to do anything,
from symphonies to popular songs.
Listen, honey,
all you had to do, did you do it?
Sergio Leone produced my first movies.
During the production of
Un Sacco Bello, Leone told him,
"You should do something like Titina,
"but sweeter, more like Chaplin."
Morricone said, "Listen, it's better
if you just give me the screenplay.
"I'll read it and get a sense of it."
Maestro, what do you
want me to do for you?
And he answered, "Love, love, love."
We went back two days later.
Morricone played five or six notes.
Leone said to Morricone,
"See? I gave you a good tip."
"But that's Titina,
what does Titina have to do with this?"
"No, but it's around there."
I remember when Morricone came
and Leone said,
"I want that pan flute
all over the movie."
Morricone replied,
"We will use it where it's right, Sergio.
"You can't put the pan flute
on everything."
"But the pan flute is--"
"Let me take care of putting
the pan flute to good use."
Ennio and Sergio were partners in life.
Sergio went to him, to tell him
about the movies he wanted to write.
The collaboration with Sergio began
when he described the movie to me.
He described it to me in great detail,
even explaining the framing.
I think that my father
depended on Ennio's music,
and wanted his movies to depend on music.
The music in my father's movies
was much more than a soundtrack.
It essentially was the
dialogue of the movie.
Often Sergio made me
start writing some musical themes
before he started filming.
I remember Ennio playing the music from
Once Upon a Time in America
many years before the movie was made.
During those years,
Sergio had many doubts,
and sometimes he asked,
"Let me hear the other theme."
It was a theme made
of silences and pauses...
things that I love.
It is a theme that I wrote, in America,
for the movie Endless Love by Zeffirelli.
For a certain scene, he told me,
"Here, there is a song written
by another composer."
So I refused to make that movie,
because it had a song by someone else,
and I'm not okay with that.
Dad often asked Ennio to bring him
even the discarded themes.
The unused ones.
I made him listen to Zeffirelli's theme
which became Deborah's theme.
He loved it.
And I must say, I still like it too.
Without that music...
I couldn't imagine it any other way.
If had to see the movie
without hearing that music...
Leone wanted Ennio's music
to echo during the filming.
And that even the speakers
would spread Ennio's music.
The actors shot their scenes
with the background music.
On set there was Morricone's music.
It was crazy.
Camera.
Ready, mark, 144, 18 take one.
Action.
Listening to the music on shoots
affected everybody.
It affected the actors, the crew.
You feel like you've already,
I wouldn't say
watched the movie, but felt it.
Great actors such as De Niro,
who are very attentive to live recording,
when acting in a scene
with the background music,
said, "Keep the music, it helps me."
In the field of high-brow music,
Ennio Morricone was a familiar name, but
it didn't arouse any particular interest.
But that was my world.
The great academic musicians
of the previous generation,
have struggled to recognize
Ennio Morricone's talent.
In this sense, the definitive revelation
was Once Upon a Time in America.
This music cannot be written
by someone who isn't deeply a musician.
Here, his music fascinated me
on a higher level.
It's a music that doesn't
pass over things superficially,
it gets inside, creates them.
And when I realised that,
then I understood Morricone too.
Not before.
Boris Porena wrote to Ennio
a letter of apology.
But it wasn't an apology to Morricone.
It was an apology to a historical period
to himself, to...
for not being able to grasp it,
for being so blind, so deaf
in the face of the power of ideology.
He belonged to another world.
Essentially, he had snubbed him.
And it took some time
before many of them...
would bow... to his genius.
When I read this letter to Ennio,
he stood up...
and he cried. Liberated, in a way.
I remember when I came out
of the movie, I said, "Damn...
"There is something here...
"that goes beyond what we
normally think of as music for movies."
I was grieving over the massacre
of the Indians and the Jesuits.
But the movie was so beautiful,
without music.
I could only ruin it.
"You don't need music for this movie."
"No, impossible!"
The Mission comes
at a particular time in Ennio's life
in which he decided to leave film music.
And this movie comes along by surprise
during his existential decision.
"This is Ennio."
"I thought...
"I have a little idea."
It was very strange,
my behavior in writing The Mission.
I almost didn't control it.
I wrote this music
without controlling myself.
For a piece of absolute music,
Ennio could even write for a year.
And a score like The Mission,
two months.
Here, this is another example
of Ennio's secret rooms.
I mean, you're seeing
something pretty phenomenal.
I first wrote the oboe theme.
But since the movie takes place in 1750,
I was also influenced
by the ornamentations of the time.
The double mordent, the double gruppetto,
the acciaccatura, the appoggiatura.
All these elements
that enriched the melody.
Mordent...
Acciaccatura..
The mordents.
And it seemed right
to give the film a motet.
Following the rules
of the Second Vatican Council.
And then...
the ethnic theme of the Indians,
a primitive music.
So within the motet,
I wrote another theme,
a rhythmic one.
The amazing thing is that the oboe theme
was combined with the motet.
The theme of the motet
was combined with the ethnic part.
The ethnic part
could be combined with the oboe theme.
So all three themes
could be combined together.
All of this happened unintentionally.
Almost as if there was something...
that suggested it to me,
the music... its logic.
Herbie Hancock.
Good jazz musician, good composer,
good pianist. I don't dispute that.
But the main character played existing
pieces, so the music was half repertoire,
and should not have been
in the original music category.
In fact, when the Oscar was announced,
the audience protested.
I left quickly.
He was the best.
Everybody knew he was the best.
However, he didn't get
the recognitions he deserved.
Because ultimately,
they didn't understand him.
You switch between movie music
and chamber music compositions.
I've been increasing this activity
for a while now.
I'd given it up for the movies
but now I'm doing it again.
Also because I don't want to die
only working for the cinema.
For years up to now, he also worked
as a composer of cultured music.
With compositions of great value,
of a high artistic and aesthetic level.
Petrassi was in the front row
at one of Ennio's concerts,
and seeing Ennio
so respectful of his master,
it was clear that he'd
never really cut the umbilical cord.
When producer Franco Cristaldi called him,
to offer him Cinema Paradiso,
Ennio at first said no.
Franco called me back shortly after.
He said, "Read the script...
and then you'll tell me."
The house phone rang.
"I am Ennio Morricone, can we meet?"
Please.
I went there, very excited.
He asked me if I wanted
Sicilian music, folk music.
I didn't think about anything like that.
Then he looked at me...
and he said, "I'll do the movie."
It was Cinema Paradiso,
and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it.
It was a life lesson.
Because Ennio treated me as an equal,
and I was just a newcomer,
while he'd already done
350 of his 500 films.
And the more he sought
to get away from the cinema...
the more the cinema pursued him.
For the Untouchables,
I wrote all the themes in New York
and De Palma was always enthusiastic.
The last day when we had to say goodbye,
he surprises me and says,
"I need a triumphal piece for the police."
I say, "Alright, I'll write it in Rome
and then I'll send it to you."
I sent him nine demos,
with a letter where I said,
"Please don't choose number six,
"because it's really the one
I like the least."
Which did he choose? Number six.
Ennio's greatness stems from, not only
the music he writes for a certain scene,
but also his approach to the scene.
When he represents violence,
he doesn't match the image.
He's totally detached.
His ability lies
in showing you another point of view.
With the scene at the station,
I decided to put in a waltz.
This waltz with the carillon,
gave me the chance...
to slightly change
the very tense development of the scene.
De Palma did not agree.
But, as many directors do, he accepted it.
A few months later I got
a statement he made in a newspaper.
Saying that my choice was right,
and he had...
criticised it.
Giving me great satisfaction
and great professional honesty.
Ennio Morricone got the nomination, for
the third time, for this film by De Palma.
- Are you excited, Maestro.
- I don't get so excited about it anymore.
By the third time, I'm used to it.
In fact, I'm sure I won't get it.
Why do I like chess?
Because it teaches you
the struggle of life.
The sense of resistance.
The desire to improve.
Resistance to contrary things,
like what comes from the opponent,
who tries to win and I try to win,
in a non-bloody way.
He wanted me to do the same thing again.
The problem is that Ennio,
compared to us directors and editors,
has a more interesting capacity
for interpreting cinema than we do.
To find an idea right away...
means that is it attached to the movie.
With the images, there's a real marriage,
like love at first sight.
Sometimes this didn't happen.
And it was very hard for me.
During Sostiene Pereira,
he was pretty upset about this movie.
Ennio says, "I didn't know
where to turn to find an idea."
One day, right below Ennio's house,
there was a demonstration
with people banging on drums.
There was a strike
and I heard the famous percussion...
I took this beat
and I used it for the whole movie.
Listen, boy, sit down.
The Ten Commandments don't say it,
but I say it.
The reasons of the heart...
are the most important.
He takes up the rhythmic formula of '68.
Ce n'est qu'un
Debut Continuons le Combat,
He transforms it into the framework
of the musical part.
And it becomes Pereira's Determination.
Those rhythms
gave him the input to make music
which contained something...
revolutionary.
I said, "I'd like a song from that era",
one I had found. That's when we argued.
But he was right.
He had created a wonderful song.
In my opinion,
a score must be meaningful by itself
in order to provide a good service
to the film to which it is applied.
His music is very spiritual.
He can awaken in your soul,
energies you didn't know you had,
and that were asleep.
During the sessions with the orchestra,
he came into the control room
and threw himself on the couch.
And he could sleep for 20 seconds,
like Napoleon.
"Do not disturb the Maestro,
he's sleeping".
In 20 seconds, he was ready,
and he was back in there,
conducting like a lion.
For The Legend of 900,
he began to compose the themes
while I wrote the script.
We went hand in hand,
constantly consulting each other.
Even during the shooting.
It was like, for some mysterious reason,
Ennio identified
with the character of the young pianist,
who would have never abandoned
the ship of his music.
On the wave of grief in New York,
Ennio Morricone composed...
The symphony that Ennio Morricone has
dedicated to the tragedy of Sept 11, 2001.
It was a composition
born under the tragic impact
of the attack on the Twin Towers.
In memory of all the massacres
in human history.
A big orchestra,
a choir, someone who says a few words,
and these tapes of ethnic music.
Look how many disciplines are together.
Listening to that music,
I felt everything we saw in our homes,
during what was happening in New York.
He knows how to express
the feelings he feels inside,
through the music staff, like nobody else.
I don't regret writing music for cinema.
If anything, I came gradually...
to find convergences
between absolute music and film music.
One rubbed off on the other.
These convergences, even in concept,
are fundamental and important in my life.
At a certain point...
the two souls... met.
I want to thank the Academy...
for this honor you've given me,
giving me this coveted award.
I dedicate this Oscar
to my wife Maria who loves me very much.
She's been there for me all these years,
and I love her the same way.
This award is for her, too.
At the Royal Albert Hall in London,
as soon as he came on stage,
the whole audience stood up,
and gave him a really long applause.
It gives you goosebumps.
It's an honour for Italy in the world.
Truly a giant, an extraordinary artist,
The Maestro,
Ennio Morricone.
There really isn't any place in the world,
from South America to Asia,
not to mention Europe,
where he is not welcomed...
in a huge way, like a pop star.
On the occasion of his 40-year career,
Morricone will conduct the...
I remember one of his film music concerts,
in Paris, with the audience going wild.
When I went to his dressing room,
I decided to say,
"Ennio, are you convinced that this is
the great music of the 20th century,
"tout court?"
And he said, "I'm thinking about it".
At first I thought that music
applied to cinema was humiliating.
Then little by little, no.
In fact, today I think that film music
is full-fledged contemporary music.
It was a turning point in maturity.
He found an impressive artistic youth.
And he convinced me.
He brings his musical loves with him.
The beginning of the fugue
of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms.
Tarantino was obviously
crazy about Leone's movies,
so he probably expected
a different kind of music.
What could I have written
so as not to travel the same road?
I wrote a symphony, a true symphony.
Morricone was a good chess player,
and brought Tarantino to his own turf.
I felt like I was avenging myself
on the Western movie
to cut it short with the past.
Tarantino... is hyperbolic.
Ennio gave him the answer,
"To determine if one is Mozart
or Beethoven, 200 years must pass."
When you open a page by Beethoven,
maybe you can't play it.
But the writing is clear.
With Ennio, everything is clear.
Chopin, Tchaikovsky,
they've endured for so long.
Why not Ennio Morricone's music scores?
I agree with Tarantino.
I think he achieved
an extraordinary position.
For his ability to look back,
and his ability to look forward.
To music as it was,
and to music as it will be.
Ennio taught us how to behave
with one's own legend.
Something extraordinary happened to him.
To be recognized as a world Maestro,
at the height of his creativity,
and that made him a happy composer.
He deserves that and more,
because he's hard-working,
he's a great musician,
without acting like an artist.
We went to do some concerts.
He was shocked that, in Israel,
the passport man knew who he was.
He's not someone with big head,
but by now he's like some kind of icon.
It is so evident to the people.
To the people of the world.
Pop groups and other musicians...
they also use little themes of mine
within their creations.
I believe that he has always been ahead
with language.
In fact, he dictated the language.
And so,
he can only be seen as a precursor.
He is the precursor of cross-disciplines.
Ennio's music also grabs the kids.
He is honest.
To recreate the color he wanted,
certain sounds were...
reproduced, sampled,
used in various albums
of pop rock artists.
They don't deny their personality,
in this mysterious liking
that they have for my work.
Without Ennio Morricone...
most of us wouldn't be here.
Linguistically,
we would be different, poorer.
His lesson is speechless, because
no one ever went to a class by Ennio.
If you listen to a lot of music,
you always find something Ennio-like.
Someone who used strings the way he does,
piano the way he does.
But it's not him.
He is the music.
The music that comes out no matter what,
whatever he writes.
Maybe even independently
of his consciousness.
When I did the first film, it was 1961.
I said to my wife,
"In 1970 I will quit cinema."
Then in 1970 I said,
"I'll quit in 1980."
In 1980 I said, "I'll quit in 1990."
In 1990 I said, "I'll quit in 2000."
Now, I don't say anything.
Ennio managed to merge prose and poetry.
It completely broke the mould.
The normality that becomes exceptional.
Ennio almost always has an elevation.
Something that makes you think...
that makes you float.
Ennio's music transcends,
and so it travels to other galaxies.
The god of music speaks
through him as if he were possessed.
His music is... eternal.
When you start to describe him,
you realize that...
a lifetime would not be enough.
He will go down in history,
and there will always be Ennio's music.
He's part of our family.
He's like a relative.
Music should be thought
before it is written.
It's a problem.
It's a problem that is always there
when you begin a composition.
And in front of the composer
sits a blank page.
What do we put down...
on that page?
What do we put on that page?
There's a thought there
that must be developed,
and it has to go forward.
In search... of what?
We don't know.