91 Facts About Ennio Morricone

1.

Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter, and pianist who wrote music in a wide range of styles.

2.

Ennio Morricone continued to compose music for European productions, such as Marco Polo, La piovra, Nostromo, Fateless, Karol, and En mai, fais ce qu'il te plait.

3.

Ennio Morricone's music has been reused in television series, including The Simpsons and The Sopranos, and in many films, including Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained.

4.

Ennio Morricone scored seven Westerns for Sergio Corbucci, Duccio Tessari's Ringo duology and Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown and Face to Face.

5.

Ennio Morricone worked extensively for other film genres with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Mauro Bolognini, Giuliano Montaldo, Roland Joffe, Roman Polanski, Henri Verneuil, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

6.

Ennio Morricone's acclaimed soundtrack for The Mission, was certified gold in the United States.

7.

The album Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone stayed for 105 weeks on the Billboard Top Classical Albums.

8.

Ennio Morricone was nominated for a further six Oscars, and in 2016, received his only competitive Academy Award for his score to Quentin Tarantino's film The Hateful Eight, at the time becoming the oldest person ever to win a competitive Oscar.

9.

Ennio Morricone influenced many artists from film scoring to other styles and genres, including Hans Zimmer, Danger Mouse, Dire Straits, Muse, Metallica, Fields of the Nephilim, and Radiohead.

10.

Ennio Morricone was born in Rome, the son of Libera Ridolfi and Mario Ennio Morricone, a musician.

11.

Ennio Morricone's father was a professional trumpeter who performed in light-music orchestras while his mother set up a small textile business.

12.

Ennio Morricone entered the Saint Cecilia Conservatory to take trumpet lessons under the guidance of Umberto Semproni.

13.

Ennio Morricone formally entered the conservatory in 1940 at age 12, enrolling in a four-year harmony program that he completed within six months.

14.

Ennio Morricone studied the trumpet, composition, and choral music under the direction of Goffredo Petrassi, to whom Morricone would later dedicate concert pieces.

15.

In 1941 Ennio Morricone was chosen among the students of the Saint Cecilia Conservatory to be a part of the Orchestra of the Opera, directed by Carlo Zecchi on the occasion of a tour of the Veneto region.

16.

Ennio Morricone received his diploma in trumpet in 1946, continuing to work in classical composition and arrangement.

17.

Ennio Morricone wrote his first compositions when he was six years old and he was encouraged to develop his natural talents.

18.

In 1953, Ennio Morricone was asked by Gorni Kramer and Lelio Luttazzi to write an arrangement for some medleys in an American style for a series of evening radio shows.

19.

Ennio Morricone soon gained popularity by writing his first background music for radio dramas and quickly moved into film.

20.

In 1956, Ennio Morricone started to support his family by playing in a jazz band and arranging pop songs for the Italian broadcasting service RAI.

21.

Ennio Morricone was hired by RAI in 1958 but quit his job on his first day at work when he was told that broadcasting of music composed by employees was forbidden by a company rule.

22.

Subsequently, Ennio Morricone became a top studio arranger at RCA Victor, working with Renato Rascel, Rita Pavone, Domenico Modugno, and Mario Lanza.

23.

In 1987, Ennio Morricone co-wrote It Couldn't Happen Here with the Pet Shop Boys.

24.

Ennio Morricone occasionally adopted Anglicized pseudonyms, such as Dan Savio and Leo Nichols.

25.

In 1959, Ennio Morricone was the conductor for Mario Nascimbene's score to Morte di un amico, an Italian drama directed by Franco Rossi.

26.

In 1962, Ennio Morricone composed the jazz-influenced score for Salce's comedy La voglia matta.

27.

That year Ennio Morricone arranged Italian singer Edoardo Vianello's summer hit "Pinne, fucile, e occhiali", a cha-cha song, peppered with added water effects, unusual instrumental sounds and unexpected stops and starts.

28.

Ennio Morricone wrote works for the concert hall in a more avant-garde style.

29.

Ennio Morricone played a key role in The Group and was among the core members in its revolving line-up; in addition to serving as their trumpet player, he directed them on many occasions and they can be heard on a large number of his scores.

30.

The ensemble performed in varying capacities with Ennio Morricone, contributing to some of his 1960s and 1970s Italian soundtracks, including A Quiet Place in the Country and Cold Eyes of Fear.

31.

Ennio Morricone never ceased to arrange and write music for comedies.

32.

In 2007, he composed a lighthearted score for the Italian romantic comedy Tutte le Donne della mia Vita by Simona Izzo, the director who co-wrote the Ennio Morricone-scored religious mini-series Il Papa Buono.

33.

In 1962, Ennio Morricone met American folksinger Peter Tevis, with the two collaborating on a version of Woody Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty.

34.

Ennio Morricone's score became a major success and sold more than three million copies worldwide.

35.

Subsequent to the success of the Dollars trilogy, Ennio Morricone composed the scores for Once Upon a Time in the West and Leone's last credited western film A Fistful of Dynamite, as well as the score for My Name Is Nobody.

36.

Ennio Morricone had convinced Morricone to compose the film score.

37.

The film has yet to go into production and Ennio Morricone was cagey as to details on account of Tornatore's superstitious nature.

38.

Two years after the start of his collaboration with Sergio Leone, Ennio Morricone started to score music for another Spaghetti Western director, Sergio Corbucci.

39.

In 1968, Ennio Morricone reduced his work outside the movie business and wrote scores for 20 films in the same year.

40.

Ennio Morricone's eclecticism found its way to films in the horror genre, such as the giallo thrillers of Dario Argento, from The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Cat o' Nine Tails, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet to The Stendhal Syndrome and The Phantom of the Opera.

41.

In 1977 Ennio Morricone scored John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic and Alberto De Martino's apocalyptic horror film Holocaust 2000, starring Kirk Douglas.

42.

At first Ennio Morricone's teacher Goffredo Petrassi had been engaged to write the score for the great big-budget epic, but Huston preferred another composer.

43.

RCA Records then proposed Ennio Morricone who was under contract with them, but a conflict between the film's producer Dino De Laurentiis and RCA occurred.

44.

Subsequently, Ennio Morricone's work was rejected because he did not get permission from RCA to work for Dino De Laurentiis alone.

45.

Ennio Morricone never left Rome to compose his music and never learned to speak English.

46.

In 1970, Ennio Morricone composed the music for Don Siegel's Two Mules for Sister Sara, an American-Mexican western film starring Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood.

47.

Ennio Morricone finally received a second Oscar nomination for The Mission.

48.

Ennio Morricone hears a melody, and he writes it down.

49.

In 2009, Tarantino originally wanted Ennio Morricone to compose the film score for Inglourious Basterds.

50.

Ennio Morricone was unable to, because the film's sped-up production schedule conflicted with his scoring of Giuseppe Tornatore's Baaria.

51.

In 2012, Ennio Morricone composed the song "Ancora Qui" with lyrics by Italian singer Elisa for Tarantino's Django Unchained, a track that appeared together with three existing music tracks composed by Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack.

52.

On 4 January 2013 Ennio Morricone presented Tarantino with a Life Achievement Award at a special ceremony being cast as a continuation of the International Rome Film Festival.

53.

In 2014, Ennio Morricone was misquoted as claiming that he would "never work" with Tarantino again, and later agreed to write an original film score for Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, which won him an Academy Award in 2016 in the Best Original Score category.

54.

Ennio Morricone's win marked his first competitive Oscar, and at the age of 87, he became the oldest person at the time to win a competitive Oscar.

55.

In 1988, Ennio Morricone started an ongoing and very successful collaboration with Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore.

56.

Ennio Morricone received a BAFTA award with his son Andrea, and a David di Donatello for his score.

57.

Ennio Morricone composed the scores for Baaria, The Best Offer starring Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess and Donald Sutherland and the romantic drama The Correspondence.

58.

Ennio Morricone received a fifth Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for Malena.

59.

Ennio Morricone worked as the conductor of seasons 3 to 5 of the series.

60.

Ennio Morricone worked as the music supervisor for the television project La bibbia.

61.

For Canone inverso based on the music-themed novel of the same name by the Paolo Maurensig, directed by Ricky Tognazzi and starring Hans Matheson, Ennio Morricone won Best Score awards in the David di Donatello Awards and Silver Ribbons.

62.

Ennio Morricone provided the string arrangements on Morrissey's "Dear God Please Help Me" from the album Ringleader of the Tormentors in 2006.

63.

In spring and summer 2010, Ennio Morricone worked with Hayley Westenra for a collaboration on her album Paradiso.

64.

Ennio Morricone composed the music for The Best Offer by Giuseppe Tornatore.

65.

Ennio Morricone wrote the score for Christian Carion's En mai, fais ce qu'il te plait and the most recent movie by Tornatore: The Correspondence, featuring Jeremy Irons and Olga Kurylenko.

66.

In June 2015, Ennio Morricone premiered his Missa Papae Francisci at Rome's Chiesa del Gesu with the Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta and choruses from the Accademia Santa Cecilia and the Rome Opera Theater.

67.

Since 1964, Ennio Morricone was a founding member of the Rome-based avant-garde ensemble Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.

68.

In concert, Ennio Morricone normally had 180 to 200 musicians and vocalists under his baton, performing multiple genre-crossing collections of music.

69.

On 20 September 1984 Ennio Morricone conducted the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire at Cinesymphonie '84 in the French concert hall Salle Pleyel in Paris.

70.

Ennio Morricone performed some of his best-known compositions such as Metti una sera a cena, Novecento and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

71.

On 15 October 1987 Ennio Morricone gave a concert in front of 12,000 people in the Sportpaleis in Antwerp, Belgium, with the Dutch Metropole Orchestra and the Italian operatic soprano Alide Maria Salvetta.

72.

On 9 June 2000 Ennio Morricone went to the Flanders International Film Festival Ghent to conduct his music together with the National Orchestra of Belgium.

73.

Ennio Morricone performed his classic film scores at the Gasteig in Munich in 2004.

74.

Ennio Morricone made his North American concert debut on 3 February 2007 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

75.

The previous evening, Ennio Morricone had already presented at the United Nations a concert comprising some of his film themes, as well as the cantata Voci dal silenzio to welcome the new Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

76.

On 22 December 2012 Ennio Morricone conducted the 85-piece Belgian orchestra "Orkest der Lage Landen" and a 100-piece choir during a two-hour concert in the Sportpaleis in Antwerp.

77.

In November 2013 Ennio Morricone began a world tour to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his film music career and performed in locations such as the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, Santiago, Chile, Berlin, Germany, Budapest, Hungary, and Vienna.

78.

Back in June 2014, Ennio Morricone had to cancel a US tour in New York and Los Angeles due to a back procedure on 20 February.

79.

In November 2014 Ennio Morricone stated that he would resume his European tour starting from February 2015.

80.

Ennio Morricone's works include the Latin texts for The Mission.

81.

Ennio Morricone lived in Italy his entire life and never desired to live in Hollywood.

82.

Ennio Morricone described himself as a Christian leftist, stating that he voted for the Christian Democracy for more than 40 years and then, after its dissolution in 1994, he approached the centre-left coalition.

83.

Ennio Morricone loved chess, having learned the game when he was 11.

84.

Ennio Morricone was even coached by 12-time Italian champion IM Stefano Tatai for a while.

85.

Ennio Morricone once held GM Boris Spassky to a draw in a simultaneous competition with 27 players, where Morricone was the last one standing.

86.

On 6 July 2020, Ennio Morricone died at the Universita Campus Bio-Medico in Rome, aged 91, as a result of injuries sustained to his femur during a fall.

87.

Ennio Morricone influenced many artists from other styles and genres, including Danger Mouse, Dire Straits, Muse, Metallica, Radiohead and Hans Zimmer.

88.

Ennio Morricone received his first Academy Award nomination in 1979 for the score to Days of Heaven.

89.

Ennio Morricone received his second Oscar nomination for The Mission.

90.

Ennio Morricone received Oscar nominations for his scores to The Untouchables, Bugsy, Malena, and The Hateful Eight.

91.

In February 2016, Ennio Morricone won his first competitive Academy Award for his score to The Hateful Eight.