In February 2007, the world-renowned composer was presented with an Honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. Despite 45 years’ service, the Italian octogenarian believes his career is only just beginning.

When Hollywood rose to its feet to honour Ennio Morricone at the 2007 Oscars, it was a poignant moment for the then 78-year old composer. “I was very moved. I had a lump in my throat!” recalls Morricone, who travelled to Los Angeles to accept his Honorary Academy Award, after a career spanning almost five decades and some 500 scores. “I couldn’t speak, I was so overwhelmed.” The acceptance speech – or the translation from Italian to English – fell to Clint Eastwood, a man inextricably linked to Morricone through the ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ that catapulted them both to fame in the 1960s. “He says this Oscar is not a point of arrival,” translated Eastwood, “but a starting point to continue writing with the same passion and dedication he’s had since the beginning.”

Back at home in Rome, Morricone reflects on his career: ”When I first started out, I never thought I would be writing music for films. My goal then, as it is now, was to write for the concert hall.” Morricone studied under the Italian modernist composer, Goffredo Petrassi. “He was a big influence on me,” says Morricone, “but so were many others – Frescobaldi, Monteverdi, Palestrina and all those great madrigal writers, and of course Bach.” 

Starting out on a career in composition with a young family to provide for, Morricone was an arranger for radio and television, as well as writing avant-garde compositions. In 1964, his collaboration with director Sergio Leone began, with A Fistful of Dollars. From this to Once Upon a Time in America, exactly 20 years later, they had one of cinema’s most successful partnerships. Morricone’s unorthodox use of instrumentation – incorporating whistling, electric guitars, harmonicas, and coyote noises – owed little to the rich tradition of film music. “I was never influenced by other film composers,” he says, “I simply developed my own ideas. And I never followed any fashion. I always think that when something is currently very trendy, it’s already old.”

Morricone’s music, nevertheless, has often set trends. From The Mission’s “Gabriel’s Oboe” to the elegiac theme to Cinema Paradiso, his melodies have a life outside the films they come from, and are recorded by artists across all genres. “I don’t really know why but I believe The Mission is my most successful score,” Morricone says. “A big theme tune is the thing that an audience can most easily access. The rest of a score is more to do with creating an atmosphere. It’s received by the brain, while the big tune touches the brain and the heart.”
For Morricone, the challenge is to find a musical language that best serves the film. “Film music is always at the service of another piece of work. It’s complementary, but secondary.” The key to a successful soundtrack, he believes, is to create the illusion that the music comes from the particular period the film is set in, without resorting to pastiche. “I don’t write historical music,” he says emphatically. “You have to keep your own style. It doesn’t mean that you have to completely re-invent music but you need to start from the period you’re living in.”

Morricone also writes music for the concert hall, which, he explains, do not need to serve any other purpose: “The compositions come from within. The composer is free to do whatever he wants, however abstract, to say whatever he wants to say to the audience. It’s very liberating.” One recent composition that has been making quite an impact is Voci dal silenzio, his response to the 9/11 attacks. Its performance at the United Nations headquarters in New York led to Morricone being taken more seriously by critics who dismissed him in the past. “It was especially wonderful to perform at the UN,” he says. “There’s too much violence in the world. Music can make a huge emotional impact and help people understand that.”

Five of Morricone’s scores had previously been nominated for Oscars, but he had always returned home empty-handed, until 2007’s Lifetime Achievement award. To coincide with his Honorary Award, two tribute CDs – The Platinum Collection and We all love Ennio Morricone, featuring artists as diverse as Renée Fleming, Bruce Springsteen and Metallica – were released. 

With the Oscars and a gruelling concert schedule behind him, Morricone is back home in Rome, not putting his feet up, but scoring an epic World War II drama, Leningrad and a prequel to The Untouchables. As the audience at the Oscars heard, at 78 the maestro sees himself far from being at the end of an illustrious career. “I feel like I haven’t started yet,” he laughs, “I still have to begin!”

First published in © Classic FM Magazine. Reproduced by kind permission of the editor.