Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone is an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and trumpet player who is one of the most versatile and influential composers of all time. His career encompasses an extensive range of composition genres, from absolute concert music to applied music, working as orchestrator, as well as a conductor and composer for theatre, radio and cinema. “Throughout his near 50 year career as a film composer, across the board, his signature ideas have included simple ideas (easy to hum) in complex arrangements, unusual instrumentation, concrete sounds, the use of the human voice as part of the orchestra, long silences, musical gags and single notes sustained for ever.” (Frayling)
Background: Early Life, education, career
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He introduced new timbres and instruments to film scores such as the electric guitar, animal noises, and countless other sound effects. “The theme from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly has had a major impact on westerns. The musical scores for cowboy films of John Wayne and Roy Rogers were very American-ized, that cowboys were true symbols of America — they were rough, rugged, yet ready to help a Samaritan in peril; Morricone’s whips, chains and coyotes helped to give westerns a more realistic feel for the west, that true cowboys were simply not Captain America wearing 10-gallon Stetson hats.” (Furey, …show more content…
But it was their collaborations, and in particular the Dollars trilogy – A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – that established his reputation and allowed him to pursue other projects. Rather than writing music to fit Leone’s footage, Morricone would start composing before filming began, with the director using the music on set to get his characters into the mood of the film. His scores build in three stages, from earthy percussion and humble folkish instruments – such as harmonica, panpipes or the Jew’s harp and whistles of For a Few Dollars More – to rock-influenced electronic guitars to orchestrations, featuring trumpets for the final showdowns, and expansive strings and chorus that perfectly match the epic journeys and widescreen compositions of Leone’s films. Instrumental colour is key. Conveying a distinct sense of character and place, these ramped-up themes deliver us into the world of the Old American West, where Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” – a man so quick on the draw he’ll put his order in with the local coffin maker on his way into town, and add to it, after the shootout, on his way out – loom both heroically and absurdly larger than life. But the reason his tunes have lasted so well, says Morricone, is that the
My analysis begins, as it will end, where most cowboy movies begin and end, with the landscape.Western heroes are essentially synedoches for that landscape, and are identifiable by three primary traits: first, they represent one side of an opposition between the supposed purity of the frontier and the degeneracy of the city, and so are separated even alienated from civilization; second, they insist on conducting themselves according to a personal code, to which they stubbornly cling despite all opposition or hardship to themselves or others; and third, they seek to shape their psyches and even their bodies in imitation of the leanness, sparseness, hardness, infinite calm and merciless majesty of the western landscape in which their narratives unfold.All of these three traits are present in the figures of Rob Roy and William Wallace--especially their insistence on conducting themselves according to a purely personal definition of honor--which would seem to suggest that the films built around them and their exploits could be read as transplanted westerns.However, the transplantation is the problem for, while the protagonists of these films want to be figures from a classic western, the landscape with which they are surrounded is so demonstrably not western that it forces their narratives into shapes which in fact resist and finally contradict key heroic tropes of the classic western.
The film soundtrack was an important element in creating the juxtaposed world that Taymor desired. Taymor selected Elliot Goldenfall, a veteran composer for the stage and screen whom she had known for twenty years, to head the scoring. Their long association served them well in this endeavor - the final film score was both stunning and effective in combining ancient and modern musical elements. Goldenfall manipulated four main musical styles to score the film (symphonic, jazz, hard rock, and aria), and each style represented particular emotions.
In this film, John Williams revived the technique of using leitmotif –a recurring musical theme or melody associated with a particular person, place, object, or idea that is “characterized by a single harmonic or rhythmic trait” (Brown 15). In films, leitmotifs are melodies or musical phrases inserted into a specific character’s music background specified. It was originally developed by Richard Wagner and commonly used in his¬¬ operas during the Golden Age. These are used by film music composers
The film is beautifully shot in black and white, using Ford’s trademark of great depth of field that visually displays the stunning geography, combined with chiaroscuro lighting by cinematographer Joseph MacDonald and edited by Dorothy Spencer. The film has a wonderful film noir quality, moody, and dramatic night shots. By dawn, the camera captures the magnificent desert landscape that seems tailored made for Ford’s romantic action western film. Enhanced by the musical direction by Alfred Newman and music score by Cyril Mockridge and (uncredited) David Buttolph blends well into each scene.
Music is reliant on expression through the medium of sound. Dance revolves around expression through movement. The ballet Rodeo, choreographed by Agnes de Mille and composed by Aaron Copland in 1942, combines these two channels to emphasize this ballet as an American genre about cowboys and cowgirls in the west. At the insistence of de Mille, characterization and emotion portrayal in both the choreography and the music was necessary (Pollack 369). Before Copland began composing Rodeo, de Mille outlined the dance for Copland in detail. She let him know how many measures she wanted for specific dance scenes and gave him descriptions of the music she wanted for a specific scenes and characters (Pollack 367). She also provided Copland with some cowboy folk tunes that he could incorporate into his compositions (Pollack 367). Seemingly, Copland was providing most of the collaboration for this ballet de Mille had envisioned. The inspiration for most of the music came from the dance movements and the story of the ballet. This is unlike Copland’s later compositi...
From the concrete structure of the Baroque period to the free-form structure of the Modern period each composer brings forth a new understanding and value to their time period. Within these pieces that they creatively compose it brings new light and displays the culture of the time period. The composers each have story to tell and has each creatively constructed their own works within the diameters of their era.
He is a very happy man that has a true love for music. He has left us music to some of our all time favorite movies, and has inspired us to continue on making great film music. I chose to write about John Williams because the Star Wars sequel is one of my most favored sequels; and it is mainly because of it’s music. I have learned most about his achievements, and what movies that I did not know he had produced music for. John Williams is a very happy person, he is also very wise. But, he does like to keep to himself, whereas he is more of an introvert person. Also, most of the music he writes is inspired by classical music from the 1940s. For example, the Star Wars theme song, is almost identical to the 1942 theme song of the movie King’s Row. People have also compared some music of other movies such as: Superman, Home Alone, and Jaw’s to some classics. I have been deeply impressed by this composer, and I plan to listen to any music that he will come out with again; and if not I will enjoy the musical legacy that he has left behind in his
Now in time there are many great composer that have outlived their dying age by making an impact and leaving a permanent seal on this planet with the great symphonies they have composed, which in turn has inspired many composers throughout the preceding centuries.
Kaplan, Jon. "Dumped!: Famous and Not-So-Famous Rejected Film Music." Film Score Monthly 8.9 (2003): 24-31. IIMP. Web. 6 Dec. 2010.
In 1983, a record company recommended Hisaishi to Hayao Miyazaki as a possible candidate to create the Image Album for Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, which, at the time, was being made into a movie. (Team Ghiblink, Nausicaa.net) Hisaishi’s soundtrack for Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was a balance between electronic and classical music, a blending of new compositions along with covers of Handel and Brahms's music. (Dasnoy & Tsong, 2013) Miyazaki, inevitably, was highly impressed with Hisaishi’s Image Album and frequently listened to it during the production of the film. The soundtrack for the film was slated to be composed by its producer, Isao Takahata. However, after Miyazaki’s strong recommendation f...
The development of the Western genre originally had its beginnings in biographies of frontiersmen and novels written about the western frontier in the late 1800’s based on myth and Manifest Destiny. When the film industry decided to turn its lenses onto the cowboy in 1903 with The Great Train Robbery there was a plethora of literature on the subject both in non-fiction and fiction. The Western also found roots in the ‘Wild West’ stage productions and rodeos of the time. Within the early areas of American literature and stage productions the legend and fear of the west being a savage untamed wilderness was set in the minds of the American people. The productions and rodeos added action and frivolity to the Western film genre.
After listening to all four movements of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, I have suddenly been awakened to the tremendous influence that the Classical Form of music has had on modern day works, especially in the area of the film industry which it is used to create drama, tension, and joy. History owes a debt of gratitude to composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, who build upon the legacy of pioneers such as Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to create his own unique blend of symphonic compositions which will be revered throughout generations because of their continued appeal to the
Being the son of a professional violinist enabled Vivaldi to meet and learn from outstanding musicians and composers. As a result, alo...
The second period of time for music is the Renaissance period. During this time frame music was reborn and it went through a lot of changes and the way music was written and understood. In this period of time, the composers were expe...
There are thousands of movie composers in the music industry, a few who triumph and whose work is well known to almost half of the world. One example of that can be the famous Maestro John Williams. John Williams is the musician for Jaws, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, E.T and lots more. But there is a piece which everyone recognizes, and that is the theme from the movie Jaws. Imagine Jaws without the music. People would not feel scared; they would laugh at the plastic shark. And that is why music is one of the most important elements in cinema. John Williams in a late interview said this: “The music is part of a whole, which if I try as a composer to take that part of the whole, like in a concerto. I would not succeed, because the attention would go only for the music and not for the picture” (John Williams Interview). In Jaws, the music blends with the picture and acting; there are no imbalances. The picture and the music need to be in perfect harmony. Therefore, in Jaws, every time the daring melody comes out; the audience knows something bad is going to happen, and the music may anticipate a particular situation, but without the music overpowering the actors and sound effects.