Sunday, May 18, 2008
ENNIO MORRICONE
Here's (above) a Munich orchestra performing Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold" theme from "Good the Bad and the Ugly." Wow! Surely Morriconne was one of the great classical composers of the 20th century! With films or film-like ideas for inspiration the 20th Century should have been one of the great eras of classical music. Jazz was about to enter classical music...you see it coming with Gershwin and Ellington... yet classical died with the onset of the hippie era. Why? So many golden ages were put on hold so the hippie era could be born. Something about those days sapped the confidence of non-hippie art. Maybe drugs did it.
Getting back to Morricone, he evidently needed Sergio Leone for inspiration. His post-Leone work isn't nearly as philosophical and appealing. Maybe it's worth spending a couple of minutes in an attempt to figure out what that philosophy was.
Maybe Morricone was making a religious statement. In the old days the discovery of a murdered corpse filled everyone with terror and awe. That was the time when people still believed in something. People crossed themselves, lit candles, fell on their knees. The fact that someone was deliberately killed meant that a soul was taken to judgement before its time, burdened with all its imperfections, and that another soul had undertaken to defy God and would almost certainly burn for eternity. How different than nowadays when a corpse is just a statistic.
Or maybe Morricone was making a secular statement about the value of life. Our lives are so short and being alive to witness the wonders of nature is such a precious gift. You have to wonder how people could snuff it out so casually.
In the slide show above the bad guys are portrayed as thoughtless demons of the underworld, or as people who are so stupid and debased that they casually risk the loss of life. Henry Fonda is portrayed as different. He's the head of the gang but he's fully human and he knows the horrible consequences of what he's doing, yet he does it anyway. A couple of minutes into the slide show you see him looking into camera with that look that shows the greatness of man combined with the cold indifference of pure evil.
indeed, morricone's scores on leone's films are larger than life - matches (maybe creates, emphasises ,etc) the vast scope of that world in leone's film.
ReplyDeletecouldn't see the youtube clips, though.
To some extent, I think that some of the great film composers like Morricone and Maurice Jarre, are/were more honest than some of their non-film composer counterparts. Most 20th century classical music sounds like a film score.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the list of 20th century composers who composed for film has some pretty impressive names on it. Think of Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Phillip Glass in the USA, and Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian and Dmitri Shostakovich in the USSR.
Leone's brainstorm was to transplant the stylistic motifs of traditional Italian grand opera onto the American western. To that extent, Morricone's music was no afterthought.
ReplyDeleteIt was an integral part of Leone's master blueprint, and ultimately one of the most important factors of what made that film so groundbreakingly innovative. (Not to mention, influential. Anyone who wants to learn what inspired and informed Quentin Tarantino's modern filmmaking style need look no further.)
Morricone's blood-and-thunder "Ecstasy Of Gold" theme is used most effectively in the exhilarating end sequence, when Tuco is frantically searching thousands of gravestones for the name "Arch Stanton".
What could have been a bland exposition scene is instead transformed into a directorial tour-de-force. My pick for the most brilliant narrative use of lightning-paced, crosscut editing to music ever made.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY is, perhaps due to it's comparative low budget and some horrendous lip-synching, still one of the most underrated films ever made. Contemporary critics inexplicably prefer Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH - a film that (in my opinion) is almost unwatchable in comparison.
Peckinpah's "The Osterman Weekend" is just about the worst movie ever made.
ReplyDeleteAnother thought, Eddie. I'd add, in addition to Morricone and Hermann, none other than Carl Stalling to the list of great film composers. Combining his own compositions with those of Raymond Scott, as well as a grab bag containing 19th century opera, folk songs, Stephen Foster ballads, Tin Pan Alley hits of the day, and jazz inflections, he created a unique style of music which is still instantly recognizable. I'd also add that for many people, what classical music they recognize comes from the snippets they heard watching Warner Brothers cartoons as kids. Play most people Rossini's most famous opera, and the impulse to start singing 'Let me straighten your tie, and I will dance for you' will be very strong!
ReplyDeletemorricone is such a master. the reason why is because he was able to soak in the then-contemporary styles of music and add them into cohesive soundtracks. For leone's he used a lot of pop elements, he drew upon previous western scores as well. even when he was doing stuff for other movies he still took stuff like bossa nova and other elements of pop and made really catchy themes for movies. Extremely catchy but still sounding like a score and not a pop song.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mike. after hearing the hype about the wild bunch and then watching it, i was severely disappointed. It is overrated.
however, remember that almost all of the leone films were based off kurosawa's samuri films.
Mike: Interesting point! Opera builds its scenes around stand-out songs and scenes and doesn't worry so much if the logic fits. It's hard to do this on a TV series where story editors and executives of go after logical weak points with a machete.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the Ecstasy of Gold music and the cuts for that sequence fitting perfectly. I can't prove it but my intuition tells me the gold music was originally made for the end gunfight then moved to the as yet unfilmed gold part.
I think I remember reading that Sergio played this music so Wallach could hear it while he was running around the graves. That doesn't contradict what I said above. The decision to make this piece into gold music was (if I'm right) made before shooting.
Stephen: I think you're right! Stalling was even better than he gets credit for!
David: It sounds right! Morricone was a man of his time and wasn't afraid to be influenced. Apparently he really needed Sergio, though. His music after the westerns was good but seldom great.
Pseudo: Film was a great inspiration. Of course you can be inspired by a novel or an imaginary film.
ReplyDeleteMusic was definitely not an afterthought in Leone's films. 'Once Upon A Time In The West' uses that harmonica theme throughout, and variations on that theme throughout the rest of the score. The same for 'For A Few Dollars More' with the tiny music box. I don't know too much about the working relationship between Leone and Morricone but I'll guess it wasn't always visuals before music.
ReplyDeleteAnother Italian film composer worth investigating is Nino Rota, especially his score to 'La Dolce Vita'. It's masterful. Ever see that film, Eddie?
"...yet classical died with the onset of the hippie era. Why?" I have wondered about this a lot. I don't think it was the hippie era that did it. The most recent piece of classical music, they say, to become part of the standard repertoire is Richard Strauss' breathtaking (and appropriately named) "Four Last Songs," which were composed in 1948 (about the time the first hippies were born). My theory is that classical music committed suicide. That is, trends within the CM world -- mainly the aesthetic of Modernism -- made it unattractive to non-specialist audiences, and in fact were meant to do so. Meanwhile, people like Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti wrote beautiful, Romantic music ... and were scathingly attacked for it by Modernist critics. Popular music stepped in to fill the void CM left.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that Leone was looking for music and discovered some of Morricone's experimental work and hired him right away. Also I read somewhere that Morricone never saw any film prior to scoring the movies which I think is cool. One of my most favorite soundtrack composers ever, a corner stone of my childhood.
ReplyDeleteEddie you should never forget John Barry's stunning muscial scores for the James Bond films ! He has written some of the most beautiful music in history in those films. He is also incredibly versatile, I can't name a single composer that as just as good as Jazz, Pop, and Classical music. Barry also never stopped evolving even after 25 years associated with the franchise. On his very last Bond film, THE IVING DAYLIGHTS, he had just as much energy has had in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. Usually artists slow down when they get older but he just refused to. As for Carl Stalling, yes he does not deserve the credit he gets. Imagine if he tackled a Hitchcock film, that would have been great !
ReplyDeleteOh Crap ! I meant he never gets the credit he deserves !
ReplyDeleteWhile on this topic, here's a link to a documentary written by Howard Goodall, who wrote the themes to Blackadder and Mr. Bean, among other things. He argues for the seminal importance of film music to the music of the twentieth century: in this case, the music of Bernard Herrmann. There are six parts, but I recommend it if you want to see how an American film composer reinvented the classical idiom when its European proponents were pronouncing it dead. Here's the link to part one:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtube.com/watch?v=QICbwt8mSs4
In the same series, Goodall discusses how the music of The Beatles had a huge influence on contemporary composers who had been taught that Western music was dead and dismantled.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Zddh5Vp-ApI
There are two other parts, not on Youtube but available as torrents which I recommend, on Leonard Bernstein and Cole Porter.
Did anyone see him on the Oscars a few years back? It was my first introduction to his music.
ReplyDeleteIt's as though Modernism was in a big hurry to stake its claim to the future before everyone else got there. They believed that Reason had shown them the end of history.
ReplyDeleteApollo had banished night with the electric light. There were no monsters in the closet to oppose the sun-god taking the vacant throne of Zeus. Noble sentiment had been mowed down by a machine-gun nest in WWI in a last heroic cavalry charge. Nostalgia had to avert her eyes.
But how do you make art that repudiates sentiment? If you respect nothing above Reason, your art devolves into a mere formal exercise. The only people who are equipped to appreciate it are a gaggle of over-art-educated fanboys. You end up with more & more art criticism & less & less art.
Listening to the entire soundtrack, front to finish, of Once Upon A Time In The West is potent. There is everything tragic, beautiful, wanton, distant, wistful, intimate, understood and longing about it. The music expects something great to happen on the American frontier.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, it is often terribly feminine. Amazing.
I had forgotten La Dolce Vita, but revisiting it, it's hard to imagine it without the music! A marvellous film, in dire need of a video Eddireview!
Holy hell. It doesnt get much better than that.
ReplyDeletePseudo, PC, Adam, William: Herrmann, Barry, Rota and Jarre were all terrific! 8 1/2 is one of my all-time favorite movies! Even the dialogue is musical!
ReplyDeletelester: I'm not familiar with Menotti but I'll keep an eye out for him. Hey, I'm spot reading in Dicey's book. It's great! Your students are lucky to have this as a text. It sounds like your class is actually getting an education!
ReplyDeleteEnnio Morricone and Sergio Leone had a unique working relationship. Morricone would propose themes that he'd written, and Leone would accept or reject many variations. It took a while until they settled on themes, then Morricone did the score.
ReplyDeleteYou should definitely seek out several non-Leone scores on cd: "The Untouchables" "The Mission" and especially "Days of Heaven".
Great topic!
ReplyDeleteHey Eddie, have you ever seen Machine Gun McCain? I saw it at the new beverly center last year and immediately after the screening I ran home and ordered the Morricone soundtrack off Amazon. It's definitely in my top 3 Morricone list.
Mike Sporn: I LOVE the "The Untouchables" score. That movie had one of the last great main title themes.
ReplyDeleteI concur with Mike Sporn's list and will also add Morricone's score to "Cinema Paradiso", my favourite of all. So much honest emotion in his music.
ReplyDeleteMichael: Is THAT how it worked!? I'd like to find out more about that collaboration.
ReplyDeletei'm not as big a fan of the Untouchables music as you are, but i admit to feeling guilty about criticizing anything Morricone does.
Stephen; Thanks! The Goodall sounds great! I'll watch all the installments as soon as I can!
ReplyDeleteMarc: Never heard of the Machine Gun McCain film but I'll look out for it!
ReplyDeleteI think it's a lot easier to be innovative in pop culture than in high culture. The high culturalists often get distracted by the perceived importance of what they are doing and so play to audience expectations. Conversely, pop culturalists feel free of the constraint of having to appear "important" or "meaningful" and can just get the job done the best way possible.
ReplyDeletere opera: Some composer once observed that opera only has to make emotional sense, it doesn't have to make logical sense.
Classical music wasn't what took a dive at the dawn of the hippie era (or rather, the full blossom of rock and roll as the domionant form of pop music); rather, it was all orchestral music. There was an enormous amount of fun, entertaining, memorable orchestral work done in the fifties and early sixties by composers like Esquivel, Les Baxter, Enoch Light, Herb Albert, etc., etc. They fell under the label of easy-listening, exotica, and space age pop. Rock and roll was such a juggernaut, however, that the record companies bit by bit dropped their more expensive orchestral recordings (which appealed mainly to older audiences who weren't likely to buy dozens of albums a year) to focus on smaller, more easily contained bands. Frank Zappa was about the closest thing to a genuinely innovative orchestral composer during the hippie-dippy era since the Mothers of Invention sometimes went onstage with as many as 16 musicians.
There's been a big re-discovery of the lost orchestral music of the mid-20th century over the last few years, and a lot of "nouveau lounge" acts following in that style.
Mark: Morricone never listened to film music before Leone? He was hired on the basis of experimental music? Fascinating! I'd love to hear that experimental music!
ReplyDeleteWilliam; I agree, there is a sense of longing in the cowboy scores. That's odd, considering that the films aren't really about nostalgia. Maybe the longing is about our own attraction to a life which has adventure and meaning, where the demands are great and the stakes are high, but which allows us to be fully human.
ReplyDeleteI saw him conduct live in concert in London last year.
ReplyDeleteHe conducted himself very well and the music was also a pleasure.
Morricone's music is absolute brilliant. So many of his scores were so iconic.
ReplyDelete