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.”