Ennio Morricone dies

[drednm]

Legendary composer

https://variety.com/2020/film/global/en ... 234698707/

[s.w.a.c.]

Sad news to wake up to this morning. I've got copies of the films that are his "greatest hits" (the Leones, the Argentos, The Mission, The Untouchables and so on) and many more I'd never heard of purely because he scored them. People called him The Maestro with good reason, his music could elevate high art and enliven pure junk, and no one could touch him.

[drednm]

Sad news to wake up to this morning. I've got copies of the films that are his "greatest hits" (the Leones, the Argentos, The Mission, The Untouchables and so on) and many more I'd never heard of purely because he scored them. People called him The Maestro with good reason, his music could elevate high art and enliven pure junk, and no one could touch him.

He finally won an Oscar a few years ago. One of the greats.

[boblipton]

His New York Times obituary:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/movi ... Obituaries

Bob

[drednm]

Call me overly sensitive, but the online version of the Portland Press-Herald this morning ran an article with the headline "Spaghetti Western Composer Dies." I quickly shot off a note to the editor and got it changed to "Oscar-winning Composer Dies," which I thought was much more deserved and dignified.

[boblipton]

I agree, sort of. It's his themes from 'The Man With No Name' movies that stick.

Bob

[Keatonesque]

I agree, sort of. It's his themes from 'The Man With No Name' movies that stick.

Bob

I couldn't disagree more. To even attempt to describe all the scores he contributed that leave as much a lasting impression would take days –– his versatility was without equal, and in every possible genre, and many of those scores stick their landing as much as the Spaghetti Westerns. They call him one of the "holy trinity" of film composers, but to my ears, he was the finest because of his range and the quality of his work in literally every genre there was. Difficult to argue against him having been the greatest living composer, and my only regret is having never had a chance to see him conduct live, which he was scheduled to do at a premiere concert in LA some years back but was forced to cancel due to health complications. As talented as Hans Zimmer is (among others), no one comes close to him or John Williams among us today, and whether that's indicative of how rare genius of such magnitude is or how much of it has to do with the quality of scripts and films themselves to benefit the superior score, I cannot say. But his incomparable kind was the rarest of all in artistry that attains global recognition and universal acclaim. At least he got to live a full life and was able to contribute a body of work over the course of a lifetime.

[Jim Roots]

I absolutely love the fact that he had arranged for a friend to emerge from his deathbed to read an announcement that opened: "I am Ennio Morricone and I am dead!"

Jim