One of the best film composers of all time. His soaring, rising orchestration and the utterly operatic passion sweeping through all his work will live forever. Corri, uomo corri https://twitter.com/corriere/status/1280028898231803907

Listening to some of my favorites of his in his memory tonight.

Everyone knows him for his iconic scores for Leone’s Man with No Name films, specifically The Ecstacy of Gold from The Good The Bad & The Ugly, but my personal fave is the theme from the middle film, For A Few Dollars More:

I’ve wept more than once during this climactic scene from Once Upon A Time In The West which is just pure cinematic bliss; a 9 minute wordless odyssey of loss, grief, justice and revenge told only through image and music.

Morricone also had a playful and exquisite understanding of contemporary 60s Italian pop music aesthetics as seen in this amazing track from the giallo film “Come Play With Me” complete with his trademark whipcrack syncopation and a chorus of children.

No composer is more famous for incorporating whistling into his scores than Morricone and even among so many memorable ones in his other western scores, the one in Il Mercenario stands out for its haunting beauty and intricacy.

There is no more relevant and beautiful theme for the moment we’re in than Morricone’s building, plaintive organ and voice theme for Queimada, a fierce brilliant film about a slave revolt on a Portugese plantation. ‘Abolisson, abolisson”, now and forever.

His score from Sacco & Vanzetti, composed in tandem with folk singer Joan Baez written to accompany one of the most powerful films ever made about police corruption and abuse and coercion, is powerful political art

This particular song became known to a lot more people because of Hideo Kojima’s very prominent use of it in The Phantom Pain, but it’s worth watching the original film it is from, “the agony is your triumph” breaks my heart.

This scene from The Mission, again scored only by Morricone’s delicate floating melody, is wonderfully wordless storytelling. Directors knew when you had Morricone, you needed few words at all.

The entirety of his score for DePalma’s The Untouchables is just pure distilled prohibition era gangster swagger. Just one great memorable theme after another punctuating the film’s best most iconic moments.

His most recent prominent film was his work on Tarantino’s Hateful Eight, but looking back at his filmography I realize how many amazing and diverse films he scored that I’ve seen that I didn’t even know he worked on.

He scored multiple Dario Argento giallo films in his prime as well as his crazy modern day Phantom of the Opera. He scored the original Cage Aux Folles, the film Robin Williams’ The Birdcage is based on, Almodovar’s sex farce Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! among so many others.

Morricone apparently did the score for Bulworth, and if that’s not having The Range I don’t know what is lmao

Somehow I left out his iconic score for one of my favorite 60s crime films, the stylish and sexy and completely campy/cool Danger: Diabolik