Ennio Morricone, the Italian film composer whose career spanned 50 years, died Monday at the age of 91. And if you’ve ever pretended to shoot someone with your finger, there’s a good chance you’ve whistled his most famous tune.
Morricone—who died after being admitted to the hospital last week following a fall, his lawyer told the New York Times—had a prolific career included countless film scores, pop tunes, sold-out concert tours, best-selling tribute albums, and just about every award imaginable. (His ever-elusive Oscar only came recently, though, for The Hateful Eight.) Few modern, classical composers, working in film or otherwise, enjoyed the sort of popularity he did. A Morricone score is shorthand for a full orchestra and a rich, sweeping sound, often incorporating unexpected instrumentation. None have ever come close to matching him.
Born in Rome in 1928, Morricone began his career as a trumpeter, arranger, and composer working for radio programs in the 1950s. His eclecticism showed itself early, working in pop, jazz, classical, and avant-garde forms. No surprise for the man who could write the gorgeous odes to Divinity heard in The Mission as well as the lush, feathery romps from La Cage Aux Folles.
The key year for Morricone was 1964. That was when he became a core member of a composer’s collective known as Il Gruppo (full name: Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza), whose jazz/funk/musiqe concrete experiments eventually led to recording The Feed-Back, a Rosetta Stone of odd beats and sound effects regularly sampled by hip-hop DJs. More importantly for Morricone’s fortunes, however, was his first collaboration with director Sergio Leone, on A Fistful of Dollars.
While not the first of the so-called Spaghetti Westerns, this low-budget masterpiece, shot in Spain to mimic the American desert, remains one of the great lighting-in-a-bottle moments of 20th century cinema. Leone ripped off Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and set it in a nastier, more violent copy of Hollywood’s Wild West. After better-known actors turned down the main role, he gave a TV star, Clint Eastwood, his first leading part. Unable to finance a full orchestral score, Morricone used guitar, minimalist piano, whistles, whip-cracks, and gibberish chants. It was completely unpredictable (and even anachronistic), but it just sounded right.
The Leone-Morricone-Eastwood Man with No Name collaboration continued with For a Few Dollars More, and concluded with one of the greatest tough-guy epics ever made: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
“Ahh-aaa-ahhh-aaa-ahhh/Waaah-waaa-waaaaah,” can, perhaps, be scientifically proven to be the coolest melodic line ever recorded, especially when coupled with echoey electric guitar, gunshots, whistles, and owl sounds—and particularly when set against Leone’s enormous close-ups of unshaven outlaws, juxtaposed with gorgeous natural vistas.
As the Spaghetti Westerns grew more popular, Morricone had a hit in Europe writing “Se Telefonado” for the Italian singer Mina. He would continue to work with pop acts throughout his life, including Francoise Hardy, Joan Baez, the Pet Shop Boys, Zucchero, Paul Anka, Sting, k.d. lang, and Morrissey. But film music is where he made his most lasting impact.