RIP Ennio Morricone

Sad news from yesterday: the great Italian film composer Ennio Morricone died at age 91. When you come close to be a hundred, this may not be a tragedy, but it is sad all the same for all who appreciate true cinema and a real musician. I cannot remember one of his score I did not like, even in the lesser movies he made. His music was both a character and a setting, which is no mean feast. So to commemorate his death and celebrate his work, I am sharing something from Once Upon a Time in the West which I think has the right pathos for the circumstances. This is as good as anything for a farewell. Grazie mille, maestro.

Ennio Morricone for Easter

It is Easter in less than an hour, and I thought I would give some unusual Easter music, from a little known gem of Biblical movie. I am referring to the score of Moses the Lawgiver, which was composed by Ennio Morricone. The script of the movie/miniseries was written by Anthony Burgess and, since it is the 100th anniversary of Burgess' birth, it is another good reason to share it. The production of Moses was a troubled one and it has its flaws, often due to shoddy cutting (the film has many different versions of different length). But I daresay that it is far superior to any other Moses movie. Great dialogues, provocative deconstruction and rationalization of the Exodus, it is an iconoclastic, skeptical, sometimes blasphemous Biblical story. And there is the music. This piece could be the Israeli anthem.

Honouring Ennio Morricone

A bit of art and leisure news, movie score composer Ennio Morricone received his Walk of Fame star. My brief editorial comment: it was about time. And he's not even retired, as he recently composed the score for The Hateful Eight. I adore his music. And to celebrate this well-deserved accolade from Hollywood, I have decided to upload here the main theme of the movie that started it all, A Fistful of Dollars. It is a sort of song, a minimalist one with only one line of lyrics: "We can fight." Maybe not his most lyrical or his most operatic, but still it takes your mind right in the middle of the action. Grazie maestro.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I don't upload enough music these days. I was looking for something really epic and visceral, and of course I thought immediately of Ennio Morricone. This is the main theme of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Sergio Leone. You cannot get more epic than this.

Ennio Morricone for a Good Friday

I was wondering what music to upload on a Good Friday. Then I thought of my recent post about Ennio Morricone, and it reminded me that he wrote the soundtrack of Moses the Lawgiver. It is a little known movie, that was always shadowed by the far inferior, Hollywoodian Biblical epic The Ten Commandments. I saw Moses first, it was shown around Easter when Jesus of Nazareth (made by the same team) was not aired. The film is flawed, it has a very low budget for a Biblical movie, which sometimes weakens the movie. But it has a very intelligent script, written by, yes, you guessed it, Anthony Burgess. This movie is brilliant as it is a deconstruction of the Exodus myth, as well as an exploration of existentialist themes. And, well, Ennio Morricone wrote the music. And it is a beautiful and haunting music (it's Morricone so it has to be haunting and beautiful).So I uploaded the main theme here.

Man with Harmonica

Twice in a row, in an English blog post, I upload music. Well, sometimes I am in a musical mood. Maybe it is because I have been thinking about Italy recently. It was hot today. I was wearing my summer cold when I went outside for a walk. A black, thin, long summer coat which the pocket broke down stupidly two years ago and which I sewed myself. I don't know why, but it reminded me of the spaghetti westerns I used to watch, especially those of Sergio Leone. Well, actually, they are the only ones I watched back to back, over and over again (which reminds me: I need to watch more of them). And I had in mind the great music of Ennio Morricone. I have been wanting to upload some on this blog for a while. I actually wonder why I didn't, in four years of blogging. So now is as good a time as any. It is beautiful and operatic and it deserves to be listened to. So here is Man with Harmonica from Once Upon a Time in the West. Italians know how to be truly epic, in their movies and in their music.

An Italian commemoration

I blogged about Italy in the past. Today, I have a perfect excuse to blog about it more. I learned from an Italian friend I mentioned before that today is the anniversary of the death of Fabrizio De André. I know close to nothing about the man, even his name I had forgotten until yesterday. Back in my younger years, in 2000, my Italian friend made me listen to De André's take on Georges Brassens's songs. He admired Brassens a lot she told me, so it is enough to like the guy.

I have never been as into Italy as I was into England, but I have some kind of attraction towards it. I love the language quite a lot, the gastronomy, some of their writers. I always regretted I never learned Italian properly. I always wanted to learn a third language. Being bilingual is nothing, inconsequential almost, in our day and age. And I always wanted this third language to be Italian. Strangely enough, I never had much interest about Italian music. I enjoy Ennio Morricone and of course a lot of operas are sung in Italian, but while I always loved the operas in Italian, I have never been a big fan of Italian operas, operas composed by Italians. A bit too sugary for my taste. And of modern Italian music, of course, I know close to zilch. However, I am always willing to learn more. My friend seems to consider Fabrizio De André has high as I consider Leonard Cohen. That is also enough for me to decide to gather more about him and listen to him. I found this song on youtube, which is quite poetic and I love the tune, so I decided to put it here. It will change from the usual stuff I put on this blog and it is a new musical experience to me. I am getting into uncharted territories. Here are the lyrics in their original Italian and translated into English.

Bang Bang, You're Dead

My wife says I am conservative when it comes to music, and it's absolutely true. I don't like much of the modern stuff, music production could have stopped after Pink Floyd and I wouldn't have missed much in my collection. That said, according to my wife I enjoy new songs and groups only when the music they play is old-fashioned. I discovered recently (well, almost two years ago) through the BBC short-lived series Sorted (a shame they axed that one, by the way), the tune Bang Bang, You're Dead, by Dirty Pretty Things. Love it to bits. I don't know exactly what I love so much about it: it's sort of good old rock beat, it has a bit of a Ennio Morricone feel, juuuuuust enough to be perceived, there is the British accent, and it all mixes so well.

So here you are, here's the official clip from youtube, so you can judge for yourself: