Enio Morricone: Let the musicians who play suffer as much as the victims of scenes of violence

Original title: Enio Morricone: Back on the Road

By Tim Jonze / Translation: Spinas / Proofreader: Juliet

Editor's note: Film score master Ennio Morricone told his wife that he would stop the film score at the age of 40. However, at the age of 87, he has just won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for "Eight Wicked Men". Let's listen to him talk about Quentin Tarantino, the violence on the screen, and how he "tortured" his musicians.

When news came that "Eight Wicked Men" had been nominated for Best Score, Enio Morricone was rehearsing for his last concert. "I stand in front of an orchestra with 90 musicians, a 90-member choir." The 87-year-old master said, "Everyone started clapping, followed by a collective standing ovation. It was a nice feeling and a pleasant surprise because I never thought I would be nominated. ”

This isn't the first time the acoustic master has been favored by an Oscar; it's the sixth time he's been nominated, though none have won before.

In 1986, his masterpiece for Roland Joffé's The Mission lost to Herbie Hancock's jazz score in Round Midnight, which he called "theft" in an interview with him in The Guardian.

In 2007, Morricone did win the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement for his "great and multifaceted contribution to the musical arts of cinema," but the award was insignificant in comparison to his enormous influence: Morricone composed more than 500 film scores, notably the classic Italian Westerns of the 1960s with Sergio Leone, including The Golden Trinity and Once Upon a Time in America.

At the same time, he also inspired a generation of pop musicians such as rock, hip hop, heavy metal, and electronic music. Jay-Z included clips from "The Ecstasy of Gold" from "The Ecstasy of Gold" on his album Blueprint 2; many bands such as Muse and Massive Attack have been influenced by him. Both Metallica and Ramones have brought his music to the stage.

Perhaps because of his refusal to follow the rules of the Hollywood game, Morricone gradually became ignored by the public: he lived in Rome all his life, never studied English, and refused to live in a free Hollywood apartment. "It's naturally nice to be able to win an award," he said, "but that's not my main goal." What makes me nervous is my concert tonight, and I want to do my best. That's what I care about, not the Oscars. ”

Eight Wicked Men marked the first collaboration between Morricone and Quentin on an original soundtrack, although prior to that Quentin had often incorporated Morricone's ready-made musical compositions into films: for example, the theme song for Kill Bill 1 was taken from the 1967 film Death Rides a Horse; The Big Gundown (1966), Revolver (1973), and Aron Sanfang. (Allonsanfàn, 1974) was included in the soundtrack of Shameless Bastards. The soundtrack master, who has worked with many directors and met their various requirements, thinks this direct collaboration with Quentin is "very good because he didn't give me any hints, rules." I was composing the soundtrack without Quentin's knowledge, and then I was recording when he came to Prague and he was very satisfied. So this cooperation for me is based on trust and great freedom. ”

Most of the directors Morricone has worked with have given him great creative freedom. He mentioned that Leone's Westerns are slow-paced, in part, because individual scenes have been lengthened to match his score, a luxury that is almost unimaginable in today's film world.

Morricone coined many unique musical languages in Westerns, such as the cracking of the bullwhip and the sound of Jews plucking the strings of the harp. But as he often points out: these musical languages account for less than 10% of all his original works. The focus on his early work has at times frustrated the musician, and perhaps as a result, his promise to Quentin's eight wicked collaborations was somewhat surprising, after all, it was his first Western since 1981's Buddy Goes West.

But Quentin certainly had a very different vision from Léonne half a century ago, which is one of the reasons Morricone enjoyed this new challenge. "It's not a real Western." He said of The Eight Wicked, "The music I made for Leone belonged only to those films, to that era, but for this one, I wanted to touch more on symphony and even American pop. It's very important to do something that breaks with tradition. ”

There was a time when the collaboration between Morricone and Quentin seemed impossible. In 2013, according to the New York Times, Morricone told his students in Rome that when Quentin put his song Ancora Qui wrote for the film into the movie "Django Liberated" in a way he didn't like, he didn't want to work with Quentin anymore — "his score in the film was incoherent." "This is a devastating conclusion. But Morricone later claimed that the comments were misinterpreted, but that the sheer amount of blood and violence in the film was not very much to his taste. Admittedly, this must make you wonder how he could have been interested in "The Eight Wicked": the film's scenes of unprovoked bloodshed and violence are criticized, but morricone's creations in reality are not disturbed by it.

"In this film, the violence is so exaggerated that you don't take it seriously," he says, "and you can easily withstand it, unlike the violence in other films that may be smaller but more real." "He said the key to composing a soundtrack for violence is to push musicians to their physical and mental limits." You have to express violence, so you first have to pay attention to the range and timbre of the music," he says, "and you try to reach the limits of each instrument's range." For the great suffering that musicians endure when they play like that is similar to the suffering of the victims of those scenes of violence. ”

When it comes to musical performance, Morricone always exudes intoxication at the thought of all the thrompothes of the entire organ pushed to the extreme to form a crown-like pleasing picture. The avant-garde-influenced Morricone was a member of a well-known experimental group (Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza) of the 1960s and 70s, but nevertheless he considered himself to have a great influence among pop musicians stemmed from his simplicity: "I often use the same harmony in popular music, And spend more time elsewhere. ”

Morricone will come to London next month for his O2 show, which is a surprise for some. His last performance in London had been forced to delay for several months due to a back injury, and when he finally appeared on the "My Musical Career" tour in February 2015, the tour that covered his entire compositional career was seen by many critics as Morricone's farewell.

"I don't care," he said, "I'm still playing here." When I was 35, I told my wife Maria, 'Okay, when I'm 40 I'm going to stop the soundtrack and just do pure music.' But I'm still doing the soundtrack, so you can't say when you're going to stop. ”

In fact, Morricone never felt old. Just before his O2 performance, he even issued a statement: "A lot of people ask me if this is my last tour. This is not the case. I feel energetic, inspired and excited to be back on stage. I see this as a comeback after a long absence. ”

As I watched the show, I realized how important his emotional music was in my life, and how closely connected his music was to people. The show chronicled moments of excitement and ecstasy— such as an epic drive through Sedona, Arizona, an important filming location for early Hollywood Westerns. The place is known for its red rocks) – or moments of great compassion: I still need to be careful where I hear the beautiful theme song of Once Upon a Time in the West, because it always reminds me of a relationship that has passed.

So the last question I visited was: "What's it like to create a soundtrack not just for hundreds of great movies, but for the lives of countless people, including my own?" His lively Italian sounded in his ears, and then his translator Gioia smiled and said, "Well, the master thinks that this question does make him sound like a very old man!" ”