Ennio Morricone dies aged 91.

Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer whose haunting scores to spaghetti westerns like A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly helped define a cinematic era, has died aged 91.

Morricone had broken his femur some days ago and died during the night in a clinic in Rome. His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Giorgio Assumma.

Born in Rome in 1928, Morricone wrote scores for more than 400 films, but his name was most closely linked with the director Sergio Leone, with whom he worked on the now classic spaghetti westerns as well as Once Upon a Time in America.

Morricone worked in almost all film genres – from horror to comedy – and some of his melodies are perhaps more famous than the films he wrote them for. Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1971 film Maddalena is little remembered today, but Morricone’s two pieces for the film, Come Maddalena and Chi Mai, are among his most beloved, the latter reaching No 2 in the UK Top 40 following its reuse in the BBC drama series, The Life and Times of David Lloyd George.

Morricone sold more than 70m albums worldwide. Despite Academy Award nominations for his work on films by Terrence Malick and Brian De Palma, Morricone did not win his first Oscar until 2007, when he was given an Honorary Academy Award. He won again in 2016, for his score for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. He held four Grammy awards and six Baftas.

The British film director Edgar Wright paid tribute on Twitter. “Where to even begin with iconic composer Ennio Morricone? He could make an average movie into a must see, a good movie into art, and a great movie into legend. He hasn’t been off my stereo my entire life. What a legacy of work he leaves behind. RIP.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/06/ennio-morricone-dies-aged-91-film-composer-good-bad-ugly