Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone came to the cinema out of a strict training in counterpoint at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, where he studied trumpet and then composition with Goffredo Petrassi, and he never afterwards worked in one direction only — arrangements for radio, singers and the record industry, membership of Rome's experimental collective Nuova Consonanza, and more than four hundred film scores. His collaboration with Sergio Leone, from A Fistful of Dollars onward, used unconventional sounds alongside orchestral instruments; it continued with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West. His film scores include The Battle of Algiers, Days of Heaven, The Mission, Cinema Paradiso, The Untouchables and The Hateful Eight. He received an honorary Academy Award in 2007 and a competitive one in 2016. Born in Rome in 1928, he died there in 2020. His first credited film score was Il Federale in 1961, and 1964 brought both the partnership with Sergio Leone and his work with Bernardo Bertolucci; the television series La Piovra is his as well. Silver Ribbons came in 1970 and 1971, the second of them for Sacco e Vanzetti, and Academy nominations in 1979, 1987, 1988, 1992 and 2001. Chile awarded him the Order of Pablo Neruda in 2008, and the New Bulgarian University made him an honorary doctor on 11 December 2013.