On a rainy Monday morning in London, July 6, 2020.
When I heard on the radio about the death of the Italian film music composer #埃尼奥, Ennio Morricone, I suddenly saw the hot, exciting, chaotic and physically exhausted summer of more than 20 years ago in the Tuscan mountain town of Siena.
Chigiaana Conservatory Summer Camp, ©LA NAZIONE
At that time, I was an aspiring music student, taking advantage of the summer vacation to Siena to participate in a summer camp at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana. Morricone was one of the summer camp professors.
Summer camps are expensive. Fortunately, I was not a girl who needed to buy a bag, so I took out my savings and signed myself up.
Lu Yao, author of "Ordinary World", said that everyone has a period of awakening, but the awakening determines the fate of the individual sooner or later, and music and art are important ways for people to lead to awakening.
Reminiscences like water years, ©inpsicologia
Before the age of 30, we are instinctively curious about the world we are exploring, and this motivation to turn the unknown into the known is likely to change your destiny.
It was because I fell in love with the traditional Irish ballad "She Moved Through the Fair" that I ran from Kaohsiung to London (London?!). Explore the music. Although this choice is a bit crazy, it also changes the direction of life and the attitude towards life. Since then, I have been desperately trying to absorb the nourishment of music and art, and go around the world to increase my knowledge.
I am also very fortunate to have the opportunity to share the experience of listening to the lectures of Master Morricone.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Farewell, Morricone</h1>
Morricone is one of the world's greatest musicians. After his death, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte tweeted in mourning, "We will always remember with supreme gratitude the artistic spirit of Master Enio Morricone." This spirit makes us dream and feel excited. These memorable notes will be immortalized in the history of music and cinema. ”
Piano Pianist of the Sea by Morricone
I know that, among Chinese audiences, his name is completely obscured by the names of the thunderous films he was involved in creating.
It wasn't until his death that people remembered through social media that he was such a prolific master. He has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score five times for his films Heaven's Day, The Church, The Iron Mask, The UnselfishNess of the Iron Mask, Pride and The Beautiful Legend of Sicily, and has also won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1995 and the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Academy Award in 2007.
Morricone soundtrack "The Beautiful Legend of Sicily"
Morricone's scoring style is not as loud as that of Hans Zimmer and John Williams, who love to use a lot of brass instruments, but his music is particularly empathetic to the characters.
Collaboration with Wong Kar-wai on "A Generation of Grandmasters"
I still remember April, when the epidemic was at its worst abroad, in Rome's Piazza Navona, a musician in an Italian jersey played the soundtrack "Deborah's Theme" from Morricone's "Once Upon a Time in America" on the roof to encourage his compatriots to get through the storm.
At that time, I was also trapped at home by the epidemic, and when I saw this video through the Internet, I was relieved that I knew that the power of music was borderless. Looking back on the days of "soldiers and horses" now, Morricone's music is like breaking through a heavy stone and revealing the light.
Morricone Soundtrack "Once Upon a Time in America"
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to hear his lectures in person during my college summer camp. I know he's talking about more than just music.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > reminiscent of summer camp with Morricone</h1>
At that time, in addition to going to The Pacificceria Nannini Conca d'Oro three times a day to eat ice cream, practice for 3 hours, attend classes for 5 hours, rehearsals, concerts, and student parties, I also had the opportunity to observe classes by other masters.
With Morricone's soundtrack of Once Upon a Time in America, the young Deborah dances again
Such as Misha Maisky's cello lessons, Yuri Bashmet's viola lessons and Boris Belkin's violin lessons. Morricone mainly teaches film score lessons.
It's a bit funny to think about now, because Morricone doesn't speak English, and I only speak "gelato" (ice cream), "cappuccino" (cappuccino) in a few Italians, listening to his lectures as if "chickens and ducks talking", and communicating with him is only "buon giorno, maestro" (good morning, teacher), "grazie" (thank you) kind of greetings.
I can only speak a few Italians, ©YT
Due to language limitations, I was also not a student in the composition class, and I could only come into contact with Morricone and the orchestra composed of students during rehearsals. Before that, I only knew that he wrote the soundtrack of the film, and never knew that he was a serious classical composer like John Cage, who composed "4 minutes and 33 seconds", and Stockhausen, the "pioneer of modern music"!
A classmate majoring in composition told me that Morricone was actually very concerned about the students behind the strictness. He respects the students' analysis of the compositions and carefully reviews the pieces they have written for the final composition competition.
Morricone at work, ©Shutterstock
And he himself is particularly disciplined in his daily life, getting up at 4:30 in the morning to clean up the house, in order to exercise, he will walk four or five kilometers to buy a newspaper; when he returns, he will read the newspaper until about 9 o'clock and start writing. Only when necessary would he work until the evening, otherwise he would stop creating at lunchtime.
Of course, man has to accept that the body is getting older and older every year, but Morricone feels that the so-called old age life is much better than when he was young, and he does not feel that he is very weak. He has a balanced lifestyle, perhaps because of hard work, or perhaps because of the persistence of walking and eating healthy food.
He said "I like normal things, nothing is extreme." ”
It was a kind of firmness from the inside out, and Morricone went to conservatory from the age of 9, learning through World War II. Morricone's music was unscathed by World War II, he said: "I didn't notice that. It's not that I didn't see the war, it didn't affect my work. After the war, I never struggled to find a job. Somehow, my life was lucky. When he said that, I even suspected that he was a natural master of scoring.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the most popular film soundtrack in All of Italy</h1>
In 1954, after Morricone graduated, in addition to continuing to dabble in experimental and avant-garde music, he also helped arrange music for many pop singers in order to support his family.
By early 1960, a film director named Sergio Leone asked him to help write the soundtrack. At first, Morricone was not very interested in this suggestion, but when he met Leone, the two turned out to be elementary school classmates, and this childhood fate began their long cooperation, allowing Morricone to compose many popular tunes that even appear in Taiwanese cloth bag plays.
Morricone and Sergio Leone, ©Jean-Marc ZAORSKI
The characteristic of Morricone's cooperation with Leone is that Morricone often writes the music before the film starts, records the sound, and lets Leone play it in the process of filming, which can help the actors enter the situation on the one hand, and can also promote the plot on the other hand. This type of cooperation was not only unprecedented at the time, but also extremely rare today.
Morricone wrote scores for more than 30 so-called "Spaghetti Westerns," nearly a quarter of all of his film scores.
Red Dead Redemption
But at summer camp, everyone would warn each other not to mention the term "spaghetti western" in front of Morricone, because if he heard it, he would angrily say, "Pasta is food, my music is not for food." ”
Morricone introduced rock and pop instruments and musical elements, such as electric guitar, to Western films. He also uses bells, reeds, and sounds such as full clapping and whistling, which are rarely heard in the average soundtrack. Some have even said that the reason Morricone's score is easier to hum than other film scores is that many of the melodies are whistled.
That's exactly right, even my grandmother, who has been dead for many years, will play the theme song of "Red Dead Redemption" to our children!
Not just Westerns, Morricone was almost the most beloved film score in all of Italy, especially between 1967 and 1972, when he scored more than 120 films.
At one point, Gillo Pontecorvo, the director of "The Battle of Algiers," is said to be cutting a new film, "Queimada." Meanwhile in the same building, director Liliana Cavalli is editing her film I Cannibali. Morricone wrote the soundtrack for both films at the same time.
Coup d'état of Quemada (left) The Year of the Cannibals (right)
One day Bentekwo heard the music of "Cannibals" in the hallway, took advantage of Cavani's absence, stole her soundtrack, and planned to put it in his own "Coup d'état of Quemada". Cavani was naturally upset, and at the end of the fight, Morricone came forward to compose a song very similar to "Cannibal" for "Quemada Coup".
Quentin Tarantino is also one of Morricone's admirers, but he started out out of the box, using "The Coup d'état" in "Kill Bill" and another soundtrack to Death Rides a Horse, which was also scored by Morricone.
However, when filming "The Hateful Eight", Quentin specially invited Morricone to write the music, and Morricone also won the only Oscar for best score in his life for this film.
Morricone won the Academy Award for Best Score for Eight Wicked Men
While Morricone was happy to receive the Oscar at the age of 87, for him the award was a full 30 years late.
In 1986, when the film The Mission was nominated for an Oscar for Best Score, he was hopeful. In this film, one of the male protagonists, Jeremy Irons, does not play the oboe, and in order to make the plot more realistic, Morricone took this into account when writing music, inventing some beautiful melodies that sound like Irons can be sent up and down the oboe fingers.
Morricone soundtrack "The Church"
In The Church, music is the salvation of the soul.
More than just a devout Catholic, Morricone loved Gregorian Chant from an early age, bringing together his love of ancient sacred music in an epic way that was almost a turning point in his career. But at the Oscars, he lost to Herbie Hancock's soundtrack "Round Midnight." It wasn't until 20 years later, in 2006, that the American Film Institute awarded him his highest honors, and in 2016, he won the Best Score Award for Eight Wicked Men.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > ❤️ Everyone has their own Morricone</h1>
Cinema is only a hundred years old, and Morricone has been scoring films for more than 60 years.
On the day of his death, everyone was socially sharing a different Morricone. His creations are so rich that the list of the most popular fans is very different.
Morricone soundtrack "Cinema Paradiso"
Some composers, such as Nino Rota on the soundtrack of "The Godfather" and "Romeo and Juliet," or John Williams, on the soundtrack of Star Wars and Harry Potter, are also very famous for their music.
But most of the followers have a fixed age group, grandparents may not know the music of Star Wars, and few young people will know Nino Rota.
But Morricone is different, I grew up listening to my grandparents humming the theme song of "Red Dead Redemption", my parents may be fond of "Church" and "New Paradise Paradise", and the younger generation may listen to "The Sea Pianist" every night to sleep.
Everyone, every age has their own Morricone, please tell me, do you have your Morricone too?