So the other day I was talking about my last Leone film, and I got caught up in the film’s score, which was written by my favorite movie scorer, Ennio Morricone.
He, of course, scored my favorite Western of all time, Once Upon a Time in the West. I could listen to the lilting theme all day (and I occasionally have).
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s0-wbXC3pQ
His fisrt big break in movie scoring came from his pairing with Sergio Leone in his whistling theme for A Fistful of Dollars:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpZjvbSC9_M
Being filmed on such a low budget, Morricone utilized all sorts of special effects in his soundtracks, giving them the unique feel of having sprung from the landscape, as opposed to the more traditional scoring of a John Ford Western.
This effect is used in ‘The March of the Beggars’ from Duck, You Sucker, where he uses a belch to to sound like a frog. At least, that’s what I interpret the sound as; I interpret the scene as being based on the descent into Hades in Aristophanes’ The Frogs; the sound is reminiscent of the Brekekekéx-koáx-koáx of frogs at the gates of Hades. In Duck, You Sucker, Juan leads the march of the beggars through the underground caverns of the bank in search of money. Instead, they find political prisoners locked inside the vaults. They are set free, of course. In any case, here is Morricone’s soundtrack for the piece:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSsTwB-tgvk
Morricone went on to write the music to over 500 films. What I like about his music is its playfulness with traditional themes, as here in his Dies Irae Psichedelico. The Dies Irae is a traditional hymn written in the 13th century. It begins with the lines
Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophets’ warning,
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!
It is joined in Morricone’s vision with the thoroughly modern religious experience of psychedelia. What more could you ask for?
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYN5fB_k-uw
Other bits of his work are more sedate. His Chi Mai was used in several films, including 1981’s The Professional. The soundtrack sold over 3 million copies and Chi Mai became a smash hit:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-gUOqc2UuA
There are hundreds of great songs from the catalog of Ennio Morricone, but I would be remiss if I didn’t include his most memorable piece of work for me, the kid who grew up whistling the ‘Theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly‘:
