In a terrific performance for the new lighting of the central streets of the city of Vicenza, and the Palladian Basilica too, Maestro Ennio Morricone has fascinated the public in his amazing show at the Vicenza City Theatre, last Sunday, offering with his over 150 elements orchestra (Roma Sinfonietta, , Nuovo coro Lirico Sinfonico Romano, Coro Claudio Casini dell’Università tor Vergata di Roma) the main themes of his career from “The Untouchables” to “Once Upon a Time in America” and “Once Upon a Time in the West”, “La Leggenda del pianist sull’Oceano”, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, “Quemada” and “Mission”, “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso” and “Malena”.
I met the Maestro before the show, chatting with him about cinema and art.

– Maestro Morricone, when you’ve started approaching with music for movies? And what are the main differences in composing pure music and film’s one?
I was studying trumpet at the Conservatory in Rome and attending composing lessons too, and in the early ‘50s I arrived at RAI where I worked for music arrangements also for cinema. But as you know my real starting point was with Sergio Leone for his western movies: from that point I’ve been more involved in cinema than I’ve ever been able to think.
I think that composing for cinema is the more difficult work: you have to consider the Directors’ ideas and o respect them, and you have to create a specific image through music.

– Director Pierpaolo Pasolini once said that music has to be created firstly, and then cinema has to follow its inspiration…
I totally agree with this. It’s better to write music before so Directors may be inspirited by music to set their own images and shots: music is the way by which we can imagine best, and in my experiences the best movies are the ones inspired by composers choices.

– And you’ve collaborated with lots of directors and cinema-genres from Sergio Leone’s western to Carpenter’s horror, for example…
Of course. In my life I’ve always created something I’ve been inspired from Sergio to Dario Argento, Bertolucci, Tognazzi and De Palma: if a Director offered me the idea of a script I read it, concentrating on the story, and being inspired by this to create. Cinema is the starting point and the aim of that kind of part of my work.

– Is there someone from today cinema-composers you can consider your heir?
There are lots of amazing composers all over the World: from the cinema industry to the music itself too.
I might tell you thousand of names of talents, from Hans Zimmer to Alexandre Desplat or to lots of my old students in my composing classes. I think that music feels ok today, instead of the common idea of it decaying year by year.


– And what about the Academy Award you received in 2007?
I have to say that it’s not the most important prize I’ve been awarded in all my career,, but of course it’s the best known. It’s been a privilege I wasn’t waiting in 2007: I’ve always thought that the Academy might have awarded more the movie “Mission”, for the soundtrack too, but being awarded for the career is something that considers all of your work, not only the one you’ve made for a specific film in an year. Here where’s the privilege in that Award.
I’ve put the Oscar in my studio, can’t remember exactly where it is. I don’t spend my days staring at the statuette, it’s the idea of the Award that’s important.


– What do you think about the tribute album you’ve been dedicated from musicians, from Metallica to Springsteen and Celine Dion?
Another privilege for me, of course, but I think it’s been a music-project with great artists but no consistency: put Metallica with Celine Dion and you can easily understand that they have not a thing in common…

– What about Music education and Cultural funds in Italy, today?
Good question. Italy is at its lowest time, I think, but on the other side we have lots of talents in cinema, music and art too. The problem is that politicians always cut money on culture instead on their own monthly PAGHE, and then to SANITA’ and schools.
A country without culture can’t survive.
So it is a huge problem.
Concerning the music-education I have to confess that in my opinion it should be taught at schools, in order to prepare students to culture: music is like the other arts, and must be at the top.

– Yes. Music, the untouchable art…
Untouchable but maybe the more challenging: in music you need more elements to listen at it, from composers to arrangers and musicians-singers, and it’s not an immediate art. You need time to hear, listen, understand, study, and to be flown by it.
It’s something sacred, you know…

by Ilaria Rebecchi

Related Images: