On Morricone

 

Thoughts on the recent documentary:

• Influence of John Cage, aleatoric music, Nuova Consonanza Group. Playing instruments in ways they weren't intended. Traditional melodies were banned, anathema to how Morricone worked. But it was his deepest root. His mother said it would be the secret to his success. To this day, people can sing the melodies.
• Worked at a desk as opposed to the piano--although he would sometimes sit at the piano and not play it. It was a tool to visualize the music.
• Started using found objects like cans and typewriters in the arrangements he did for RCA, and also scored in notation.
• Worked continually on music at every possible moment, even while talking on the phone. He was obsessed and driven. (There are always things you can do in the background like putting in articulations)
• In many ways the medium is the message--new technologies that make art forms that weren't possible before. AI could be that now, and is in some sense like Nuova Consonanza. People don't want what seems old and boring and a composer has to be at least waiting at the water's edge for a moment to dive in.
• His art form survived 60s-era postmodernism.
• He was a "Greatest Hits" composer. People wanted melodies however cloying they might be now.
• Was always taking risks with new directors.
• Was religious but could work on anti-religious films. After the 60s, both he and Leone disliked the commercial westerns with the whistling thing. It was "old hat", archaic, but younger filmmakers like Tarantino and Stone wanted it.
  
• He considered himself a traitor to serious academic composition. But even Petrassi was, as he also wrote film music.
• Fell asleep watching movies--he'd already seen them in his mind because he was writing the music for them. Composers don't see music as entertainment.
• Consulted his wife in all his work.
• People questioned how he could be both a melodist and an experimental composer. "When I score a film I am a composer. When I write for myself, I am someone else. So I become a very diverse and opposite composer--it feels like I have a double face".  He never gave up experimental music and tried to use it in movies. In A Quiet Place in the Country they improvised in front of the screen in sync with the painter's dreams, combining Foley with music. The critics liked it but flopped with the public and he felt responsible. 
• In the film The Bird With Crystal Plumage he experimented with scoring on strips of score paper and the players improvised from it. He pointed to a section number to be played by a specific player. Directors were annoyed by it and he responded by going back to traditional scoring on Sacco and Vanzetti.
  
• The first 20 minutes of Once Upon a Time in the West was musique concrete, inspired by a creaking ladder in Florence. The noises were the music. The harmonica became the dialog. 
• Didn't want to be categorized as someone who composes only for Westerns. 
• In Liliani Cavani's The Cannibals his B-roll footage taken on a beach fit perfectly with the Queimada film. Very often you can take preexisting material to complete the thing you're working on.
• Eventually film music became more "musical direction", as you would use an art director or production designer.
• "Dissonant music destabilizes the senses".
• Once said he was sick of melody.
• Was mathematical and geometrical in his approach to composition.
• Did his inability to speak English make him a better composer--especially in hearing the music internally? How does language (and dialect) affect making music? Music also has slang.
  
• When he would show people his raw ideas at the piano they wouldn't understand what he was trying to achieve. People want the final result, even if they know it's a demo. "You cannot describe music" (That's exactly what we're doing now with AI using text prompts)
• People couldn't accept that he did more than one thing, or were upset that he had given up film music.
• Oliver Stone and Tarantino wanted the old Leone stuff and he was tired of it--more evidence of our addiction to nostalgia--even in people known for their innovative approaches. Can there be innovation using nostalgia? Maybe.
• Ultimately you have to somehow defend the music you're writing.
• "Pre-cursor of cross-disciplinary methods"