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Ennio Morricone single-handedly "invented" the typical style of Italo Western film music. US-American Western film music used to be lush orchestral scores, inst
by spacechild1 6y ago
Ennio Morricone single-handedly "invented" the typical style of Italo Western film music. US-American Western film music used to be lush orchestral scores, instead Morricone used electric guitars, whistling, screaming, Mariachi trumpet playing, various percussion instruments, etc. The music for "A Fistful of Dollars" was something people have never heard before.
However, I can see a similar approach in Masaru Satō's music for Kurosawa's Samurai movies with its sparse instrumentation and inclusion of jazz elements. The whole score is in stark contrast to the music of earlier Jidai-geki movies, which also favoured large sweeping orchestral music.
Given the fact that "A Fistful of Dollars" was basically a remake of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", I have been wondering if Morricone had been influenced by Satō in any way.
- toyg 6y agoMorricone and Leone were classmates, so it’s not impossible to think they might have watched Kurosawa’s work together. However, it’s more likely that Morricone’s influences were coming from a ‘60s Italy that was in a continuous state of near-revolt, where folk music was explicitly being rediscovered in opposition to the establishment (which, in Italian musical terms, meant opera and prewar songs). Using “the people’s” instruments was a statement as much as a stylistic choice.
- spacechild1 6y ago> Using “the people’s” instruments was a statement as much as a stylistic choice. That makes sense. Another thing I noticed is that the harmonic and melodic language Morricone's early Italo Western music has striking similarities to instrumental guitar tunes of the 60s by artists like The Shadows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgbcyfJgfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgbcyfJgfQ) or Neil LeVang (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir7fjfqzcOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir7fjfqzcOM). Anyway, like most great artists, Morricone borrowed from various sources to create his own unique style. Even Mozart, whose style many people would nowadays describe as very "pure", was accused by contemporary critics of being too eclectic.
- rbrtdrmpc- 6y agodon't remember exactly if it was a bio, and interview or something else, no ok wait now i remember, it was from the book "Superonda Storia segreta della musica italiana" by Valerio Mattioli (a recent book about the sperimental/pop music scene in Italy, tightly connected with the Darmstadt School and John Cage for the later, influecend by for the second), though in the book it is clear that Morricone and Leone never shared much during their childhood (they saw each other again after 25 years from those school days), and actually they came back together almost by chance also because Leone had different ideas about the music that Morricone provided for another movie, Gunfight at Red Sands/Gringo (Duello del Texas), music he utterly disliked, but probably neither Morricone cared much since he used a moniker.
- spacechild1 6y agoActually, in the 1960s Morricone joined the experimental improvisation ensemble "Nuova Consonanza" where he played trumpet and flute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruppo_di_Improvvisazione_Nuova_Consonanza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruppo_di_Improvvisazione_Nuov... He was very well aware of the contemporary classical/experimental music scene and you can hear the influence in his scores.
- vanderZwan 6y ago> US-American Western film music used to be lush orchestral scores Guess that makes "Once Upon A Time In The West" the one where he fused the US-American style with his own [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcg-iCBivbw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcg-iCBivbw
- ekianjo 6y agoYeah, one of the most beautiful movie soundtracks ever. Sad to say there's nowhere as good composers in modern Hollywood.
- charlysl 6y agoMorricone himself addresses this in an old interview (https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2016/12/11/morricone-interview-cinema-papers/ https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2016/12/11/morricone-interview...) Your first big film success was A Fist Full of Dollars, whose score is very different from that of the Hollywood Westerns. Your cultural perspective is obviously different. What were the stimuli? The stimulus was the film itself. Leone had made an ironic and, in a certain sense, a grotesque film in that it was funny, a caricature. It was necessary to respect the clarity that Leone wanted for his characters. Besides, I was not, and am not, a specialist in American folk music, so what sense was there in my treating the characters like Americans? If that is required, use an American composer. So, I treated Leone’s characters by attempting to re-invent, in my way, American folk, bearing in mind certain musical and technical data. And then the caricatured treatment of the characters encouraged me to introduce strange sounds into the score so that the character would have the charisma Leone wanted. Not that I know much about it, but I find music in some old japanese movies very interesting, like Woman In The Dunes (https://youtu.be/UFbJ9iDeZgg https://youtu.be/UFbJ9iDeZgg) or Kwaidan (https://youtu.be/v_OFoOwzPZY https://youtu.be/v_OFoOwzPZY)
- spacechild1 6y agoThanks for that interview link! BTW, the film music for both movies you've linked has been written by Tōru Takemitsu, one of the most important contemporary classical composers of Japan in the 20th century. He is also quite well known outside of Japan (at least in New Music circles).
- charlysl 6y agoThanks, I didn't connect the dots.
- FeloniousHam 6y agoThe Soundtrack Show podcast had an interesting three episode series on Morricone and the making of the Leone movies themselves: https://pca.st/episode/21779b37-f458-496a-a3c8-3828e1dec912 https://pca.st/episode/21779b37-f458-496a-a3c8-3828e1dec912