“Ennio” “Movie history” drawn through the life of the great maestro

Morricone's struggles as a musician

The title of this film is "Ennio." It is not "a musician in love with the movies." It is "a musician in love with the movies." Here, we can see half of the life of Ennio Morricone. He did not become a composer by his own will. He was led by fate to follow the path of music... and moreover, the path of the somewhat unconventional genre of music: film music.

As a boy, Morricone dreamed of becoming a doctor. However, his father, a trumpet player, wanted him to enter a music school, where he practiced the trumpet day after day. When his father fell ill, he began playing the trumpet at nightclubs to earn money to support his family. For him, who was still in his teens, these days were nothing but humiliation.

He then studied under Goffredo Petrassi, one of the three great masters of Italian music, and The Graduate from the composition department of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory. However, he could not continue on the path of contemporary music, and since he had just gotten married, he signed a contract with RCA Records to make a living. He began working energetically as a pop arranger.

"Ennio" ©2021 Piano b productions, gaga, potemkino, terras

Even after he started working on film music in earnest with Fascist (1961) and attracted attention with his first collaboration with his friend Sergio Leone, A Fistful of Dollars , Morricone continued to feel that "this is not where I really belong." Was it okay for him to continue making commercial music, despite having studied academic music? Was he a traitor? He was constantly troubled.

Giuseppe Tornatore believes that this anguish is what made Morricone who he was. He believes that it was his sense of discomfort that enabled him to bring flexible thinking and sensibility to incorporate new movements into his film music.

"This is one of the elements that explains why Sergio Leone's music is so rich. He never had a moment of peace. There was a constant struggle between creating music and having people understand it. At the end of all that, he finally understood that film music is modern." (*3)

The musician who fell in love with movies only became a musician who fell in love with movies towards the end of his career.

Families who were not invited as interviewees