Ennio Morricone

Master composer Ennio Morricone's scores go hand-in-hand with the idea of the Western film. Often considered the world's greatest living film composer, and most widely known for his innovative scores to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the other Sergio Leone's movies, The Mission, Cinema Paradiso and more recently, The Hateful Eight, Morricone has spent the past 60 years reinventing the sound of cinema. In Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words, composers Ennio Morricone and Alessandro De Rosa present a years-long discussion of life, music, and the marvelous and unpredictable ways that the two come into contact with and influence each other. The result is what Morricone himself defines: "beyond a shadow of a doubt the best book ever written about me, the most authentic, the most detailed and well curated. The truest."

Opening for the first time the door of his creative laboratory, Morricone offers an exhaustive and rich account of his life, from his early years of study to genre-defining collaborations with the most important Italian and international directors, including Leone, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Argento, Tornatore, Malick, Carpenter, Stone, Nichols, De Palma, Beatty, Levinson, Almod?var, Polanski, and Tarantino. In the process, Morricone unveils the curious relationship that links music and images in cinema, as well as the creative urgency at the foundation of his experimentations with "absolute music". Throughout these conversations with De Rosa, Morricone dispenses invaluable insights not only on composing but also on the broader process of adaptation and what it means to be human. As he reminds us, "Coming into contact with memories doesn't only entail the melancholy of something that slips away with time, but also looking forward, understanding who I am now. And who knows what else may still happen."

Ennio Morricone graduated in trumpet and composition from the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Throughout his career, he mastered a wide range of musical expressions, first as an orchestrator and conductor in the recording industry, then as a composer for theater, radio, television, and cinema. He has composed over four hundred and fifty film scores and over a hundred absolute music works. He received an Academy Honorary Award in 2007 and won an Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2016, for The Hateful Eight by Quentin Tarantino.

Alessandro De Rosa undertook his study of music composition following Ennio Morricone's advice. He studied with Boris Porena in Rome and then graduated from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Netherlands. As a composer and arranger, he collaborated with Jon Anderson of the band Yes. He currently works as a freelance musician and collaborates with the RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) and the RSI (Radiotelevisione Svizzera di lingua italiana).

Translator's Note
Preface

Introduction Where These Conversations Come From
Chapter One Playing (Chess) with Mephisto
Chapter Two A Composer Lent to Cinema
Chapter Three Music and Images
Chapter Four Mystery and Mastery
Chapter Five An Absolute Music?
Chapter Six Looking Ahead: A Silent Nod towards the Future

Chronological List of the Absolute Music
Chronological List of the Applied Music
Acknowledgments
Index