Ennio Morricone: Reflections

I bought Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to When Man is the Preyabout a week ago at the local record store. I was really excited to find it because I’m one of those people who disguises their music hoarding as a “collector’s hobby” and, as a bonus, film soundtracks are a particular interest of mine. Like many, my first brush with Ennio Morricone was in his music in The Good, Bad and the Ugly. I was pretty young at the time, but that was the first time I watched a film and consciously thought about how important the score was. I’m not trying to take anything away from Sergio Leone or the actors, but it was Morricone’s music that really drove the emotions in me through the film. It made me sit and think about how many of the cartoons, video games and films I’ve experienced had these musical elements. Elements that were so incredibly important that I see them as equal to the visual elements of a film.

That experience opened up a whole new life for me. In college, when I was studying audio, I created a series of soundscapes that I listen to today and chuckle. You could see so much of the Morricone experimental influence. I threw nails in a mason jar and cranked up the reverb. I recorded my dog as he ran around, and tried to mix it with the acoustic guitar strum to get that “horse galloping” sound to the music. I just loved the idea of taking traditional musical elements and mixing them with audio elements we wouldn’t normally think of as “instruments” or something that could create music.

Today, you can find me debating with my friends if Jerry Goldsmith’s best score is from Alien or Gremlins, talking about the influence Erich Wolfgang Korngold had on John Williams or maybe just reliving my younger James Bond obsession with the music of John Barry. A lot of that passion is thanks to a single film score and event that made 9 year-old me stop and think.

When I woke up today, I checked my phone and immediately saw that we lost Ennio Morricone. He left so much wonderful music for us to celebrate him by; I just wanted to write this to say thank you for all of the wonderful music and emotion over the years.