Example 3.1: Casualties of War, excerpt of the main theme
ALESSANDRO DE ROSA: When was the first time you came across a film in your lifetime?
ENNIO MORRICONE: I can’t remember precisely, but it had to have been in the thirties, when I was a kid. Back then, every theater bill included two movies, adults could watch both with just one ticket, and the entrance was free for children my age. I have a vivid and indelible memory of a sequence from a Chinese film where a kind of statue suddenly appears; it looked still, but slowly started to move. It made a lasting impression.1
Adventure films excited me, while I was not into romantic stories. When we were kids, films came out at Christmas, just like presents.
Have you ever reconciled yourself with romantic films? You ended up scoring a good deal of them over the years.
I would say so, though I always try to maintain a critical detachment when I score love scenes. I think it’s easy to become kitsch if you are not cautious enough. More often than not I don’t have to force myself, as I react automatically to the images. For instance, in the closing scene of Love Affair (dir. Glenn Gordon Caron), which I scored in 1994, the two protagonists hug and kiss after a short dialogue and a panoramic shot of New York City follows, leading in to the end credits.2 I immediately thought to use a fragment of the main theme and repeat it by gradually attenuating it. In this way, the episode of the kiss—that is, the climax, the apotheosis of the characters’ encounter—would have resulted in a unique, unrepeatable moment, and would have become a part of the characters’ memories in the very moment of its happening. The director instead wanted the music to start out lighter during the dialogue, followed by a great crescendo leading to the kiss and then to the panoramic shot—a proper happy ending, a triumph of sentimentalism that really did not convince me.
Those kinds of solutions have always left me dubious.
You don’t believe in triumphs, do you?
Not in full ones. In fact, I believe they don’t exist, other than in movies. They are quite unrealistic in everyday life. Usually, I am not so keen on composing triumphant music, I only do it when I necessity forces me to.
Something similar happened in The Untouchables (1987) by Brian De Palma, though in that case it was not a love triumph.
I remember spending four days with the director in New York, where I composed all the themes. We were about to say goodbye when Brian realized one very important theme was still missing. We went through each of them: “Al Capone’s theme is OK, the family theme too, the theme of the four friends is there . . . what is missing is ‘The Police’s Triumph’!” We decided that I would send him a few options from Rome.
I prepared three pieces, had them performed by a duo of pianists, so as to obtain some fine takes, and sent them off to him. Brian replied that none of them worked. I sent him three new pieces, but he told me on the phone that he was still not convinced, regrettably. I went back to work and sent him three other pieces, accompanied by a brief in which I specified that, of the total nine proposals he received, number six was the least convincing, the most triumphant, definitely the worst for me; so, I recommended not picking it. Guess which one he chose?
I remain silent, understanding that De Palma picked piece number six.
I bet you got it right. . . . I have the same diffidence for violent sequences (all the more when violence is unjustified) that I have for the triumphant matching of images and music in love scenes. Usually I try to compensate violence with music. At times, I interpret it from the victims’ perspective. In this respect, I think that music in cinema can extol or counterbalance the message conveyed by the images.
How important is for you to overturn clichés?
I cannot and I do not want to do it every time. However, in my opinion, it is critical for a composer to gain awareness as to the array of available options, so that he or she can make a deliberate choice and understand where to stand in regard to the images and their meanings.
Speaking about De Palma—The Untouchables was released in 1987, and that was your first film with him. . . .
It was immediately clear that it would become an important film, thanks to its remarkable qualities and stellar cast. De Palma made an excellent first impression on me, though I noticed from the start that he was a very reserved and introverted man. At any rate, his behavior concealed a sensitive and kind person.
We worked quite well together, so two years later, in 1989, he reached out again for Casualties of War, a movie set during the Vietnam War. I was struck by the symbolic figure of a Vietnamese girl who is imprisoned, abused, and murdered, riddled with bullets by a group of US soldiers on a railway bridge.
She buckles onto her legs like a dying bird, before tumbling down from the high ground. I imagined a theme based on just a few notes for two panpipes, which, by ping-ponging their sound, evoke the slowing fluttering of a bird’s wings shortly before death.
The Clemente brothers, the two pipers, amazingly rendered this idea, which was anything but ordinary for the instrument’s traditional repertory. I contrasted the panpipes with a low-range brass cluster, which I believe well renders the soft and yet stifling grip of the cold ground onto which the girl’s body collapses and dies. The main theme gradually emerges from this atmosphere [Example 3.1].3
Example 3.1: Casualties of War, excerpt of the main theme
In the final part of the piece, a choir enters repeating the word ciao [bye], which has the same meaning in Italian as in Vietnamese.
Of the three films you made together, Mission to Mars (2000) was the last and perhaps the least successful one.
Personally, my memories of it are all exceptional. I tried to follow my own path, and the music can be fully appreciated in the absolute silence of the outer space scenes, where it reaches the viewer’s ears in all its pureness.
The film was admittedly unsuccessful, both in reviews and at the box office, and I felt responsible for that. Moreover, communication with De Palma was rather nonexistent throughout the production.
He decided to meet me with his interpreter only after the recording sessions were over, shortly before my return to Rome. It was a very peculiar moment. You see, three minutes after we met, the three of us were already in tears, as Brian said, “I didn’t expect such music, perhaps I didn’t deserve it.”
In spite of his comment, it was the last film we made together, because when he contacted me afterward our schedules never matched up, unfortunately.
Why did you feel responsible for the failure of the film?
It’s simply how I feel. There’s nothing I can do about it, if a film doesn’t meet the box-office expectations, I feel responsible.
How should a piece of music enter a sequence of images?
That depends, there are no fixed rules, and yet I usually prefer a gradual progression. I enjoy when music fades into a scene from silence then fades back to silence as the scene ends. This is why, I have used the so-called pedal point a lot (perhaps even too much) over the years; and by pedal point I mean a low tenuto note, which is often assigned to double basses or cellos, or more rarely to the organ or the synthesizer.
Music enters the scene gradually, silently at the start, so that the listener doesn’t even notice. One may feel something like a presence, but it’s not enough to foresee what is going to happen. It is a neutral musical artifice, static but present, music “in essence” and yet already refined, which supports the rest of the piece and helps articulate the action.
The music may leave the scene the same way it entered, with decorum and discretion. The pedal point takes the viewers by the hand and leads them to a different place and time, before delicately bringing them back to the “here and now” narrated by the images.
How do you usually choose where to place the music in a film?
In this case too, there is not only one answer. I frequently start by watching the edited (or pre-edited) movie, which only lacks the musical track. At that point, together with the director, we take the time codes and discuss every detail. Seldom does the making of music precede the film, but in those cases I usually compose based on the screenplay or even on an exchange with the director, who tells me about his project at a very early stage: the setting, the characters, ideas, and so forth.
Which procedure do you prefer?
The latter for sure, provided that communication with the director is good. However, not every production can afford this way of working: recording the music before shooting increases costs, in that one usually needs a second session after the film has been edited, to correct imprecisions, details, sync points. . . . The whole process becomes more complex—I worked like this with Leone, Tornatore, and a few others.
How about giving me an example of a sequence you realized like this?
Probably the most famous, at least as far as Leone’s films are concerned, is the one with Claudia Cardinale arriving at the railway station in Once Upon a Time in the West.
That sequence was entirely shot following the musical timing. The character of Jill understands that nobody has come to meet her at the station, she looks at the station clock, and the music kicks in with its pedal point introducing the first part of the theme. Then Jill enters the building and asks the station manager for information, while the camera spies on her through the window from outside. Only at that moment does Edda Dell’Orso’s voice enter, followed by a rapid crescendo on the horns leading into the full orchestra, which Leone synced to an upward pan shot of the dolly moving from the window to Jill entering the village. Visually, you move from a detail shot to an establishing shot of the town, and musically from an isolated voice to the full orchestra. Except that in this case, I was not the one syncing my score to the shot list, it was Sergio who adapted his camera movements to the music. Moreover, when they shot the scene, they synced the camera movements to those of the coaches and the extras.
Leone was obsessed with the slightest details.
It has been said that this sequence caught Kubrick’s attention and that he phoned Leone to ask how he made it. . . .
Many asked Leone about that sequence, among them was also Stanley Kubrick. He asked him how the composer achieved such a seamless result with all those sync points involved. . . .
Sergio simply replied, “We had recorded the music up front. I tuned the scene, the movements, and the camera cuts to the music that was played back at full volume on set.”
“But of course, that’s clear,” said Kubrick.
Clear but not obvious, for usually music is the last thing one takes into account when making a film.
Why is that, in your opinion?
Perhaps it is a remnant of silent cinema, when pianists sometimes improvised the music live. Sure enough, however, there are also ideological and practical reasons that have since become habitual.
For instance, several illustrious composers of the past denigrated film music as functional music: according to Stravinsky, film music, just like café-concert music, had the mere task to accompany dialogues without disturbing them, while Satie spoke of a sort of “furniture music.”
All too often, no less today than in the past, music is not considered as a language that concurs to shape the content of a film, but as something that plays in the background. Starting from this bias, film composers have themselves underestimated their own contribution, and in so doing they have made directors and producers accustomed to very fast working times, not the least by resorting to myriads of clichés.
How do you typically work on films that have already been shot?
The director and I examine the film at the Moviola. I take notes and collect all the useful information, draft ideas or demands, and together we decide the entry and exit points of each cue. I time the duration of each piece and supply durations with a brief in which I outline the requirements of the transitions from one cue to the next, then I add identifying letters and time codes. When possible, I try to bargain for a few more seconds before the start and after the end of a cue, to best fit the fade-ins and fade-outs of the music, as I was saying earlier. This is the first step.
However, every time new compromises must be found, new demands must be fulfilled.
Composers must take every sound and visual element involved in the structure of the film into account, they also need to be creative and agree with their director on how to proceed.
At this point they go home, lock themselves in their studio, and work hard to figure out their own solutions.
How important do you consider the relationship with the director?
This is the most delicate and most important link in the chain. The director is the master of the work of art, which I am serving. Generally, discussions throughout the creative process stimulate me, enrich me with perspective, compel me to look for new solutions. When, on the contrary, the production phase lacks dialogue and everything is seemingly too tranquil, I feel a little “abandoned” and I can’t always be sure that I am giving my best shot.
A good conversation always helps, no matter what, because it can optimize similar viewpoints or help bridge the gap between initially distant ideas and approaches.
When did you find the atmosphere to be “too quiet”?
It’s happened several times. To name a few names, it occurred with Carlo Lizzani, Sergio Corbucci, even with Pasquale Festa Campanile, who never came to the recording room to listen to the music before editing.4
After a few films together, I told Festa Campanile that if he didn’t change that habit, I wouldn’t work with him again. He replied that, unlike scenography, cinematography, and screenwriting, music lives a separate life of its own; it is completely autonomous, and directors who think they can control any aspect of it are just daydreamers.
His comment left me perplexed, but it made me stop and think. All in all, he was implying that he trusted me and my work; what’s more, he probably had a point. Directors often feel incapable when faced with music and the composer’s decisions.
How do you remember him?
He was a very nice man, always on the phone with his girlfriend (naturally, a different one every time). I often developed solid friendships or some sort of affinity with the directors I didn’t have a lively exchange with during the production process. . . .
I had similar issues with Pedro Almodóvar, with whom I worked on Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (¡Átame!) in 1990. I could not understand whether he liked the music I wrote or he didn’t. . . .
Didn’t he attend the recording sessions?
He attended every session in Rome. The problem was that he would always tell me: “All right.” No hint of enthusiasm, warmth, or engagement. Everything was just “all right.” I even started suspecting that he was depressed, since he did not seem to enjoy anything in particular.
We met again some years later in Berlin, where we were both to accept an award. I asked him, “Tell me the truth, did you like my music for Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! or not?” He didn’t let me finish the question before exclaiming with great enthusiasm, “I loved it so much!” And then he burst into laughter. Who knows, perhaps he didn’t even remember the music. . . .
To this day, I am still in doubt as to whether he liked it or not.
His overemphatic “so much” didn’t convince me.
The main theme of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! has a very distended character.
Yes, it was precisely this aspect of the melody that I liked. The fact is that many directors need some time to get acquainted with music they may not have expected—filmmakers live in the anticipation of a type of music they have already in mind, usually because it relates to something they have heard somewhere else, without knowing what it is. Sometimes they can get accustomed to novelty, sometimes they can’t.
Do you think the way directors couple music with moving images has changed over the years?
Yes, I think that generally speaking they have made remarkable improvements. As far as I am concerned, I always try to explain to filmmakers the way I work, the options and ideas I look for, in order to create an ever more conscious and mindful relationship. The director needs to understand why I use a certain kind of orchestration, as it may affect the features of a theme.
Sometimes I’d rather avoid writing themes altogether, but that’s quite hardly an option, as the director usually expects or the kind of film requires that I include a theme. At times, I think that my reputation for composing nice themes is precisely what got me some jobs.
Is it true that your wife, Maria, is the first person you put in charge to judge your themes?
Yes. Many a time directors had chosen the worst pieces among those I had proposed. As a consequence, I was then forced to do my best to rescue those themes, by means of instrumentation, for example. This led me to realize that I best let directors only hear the good themes. To this end, I devised a new method: first my wife would listen to all the options; then she would give me her opinion, “Keep this; throw this away; Ennio, this is nothing special.”
She does not have a technical knowledge of music, but she has the same instinct as the audience. And she is extremely severe. So this is how I solved my problem, from the moment in which Maria started giving me her feedback, directors ended up listening exclusively to the best pieces she had already preapproved.
When, on the other hand, a theme is not required, the responsibility is neither the director’s nor my wife’s, but exclusively mine.
Customarily, do you propose one or several versions of a theme to a director?
Generally I prepare different pieces so that the director can choose, I propose four or five options for a single theme. As a result I come up with approximately twenty pieces for each film; this can be disorienting for some directors. Eventually, through reasoning, we usually find the right path. We stop, we listen patiently, and gradually things start to come along with time.
The same goes even for directors I have already worked with on eight or nine films.
Usually they visit me here in my living room, I sit at the piano and they listen.
How long have you had this piano?
I point at the instrument next to the sofa where we are seated, under the tall and bright windows of the living room.
Since the early sixties, I believe. I’ve never been a real pianist, even though I passed the ninth-grade piano exam at the conservatory. However, one day I decided that I needed one of those. I called Bruno Nicolai and asked him, “Bruno, I need to buy a piano. Come with me and help me choose one.” He ended up making the choice. It is a beautiful Steinway grand piano.
Nicolai was a great friend, and I miss him.
Besides conducting many of your compositions, Bruno Nicolai also co-wrote some film scores with you.
That’s correct, but I wish to clarify the terms of our collaboration once and for all, as too many misleading rumors have been spread over the years.
First, let me say that Bruno started to work with me because he was a brilliant conductor: I knew and appreciated him since our conservatory days; for a long time, he conducted several of my film scores in the recording room, leaving me free to sit next to the director during the delicate synchronization process.
The author of an article I recently read claims that our friendship deteriorated because of those collaborations. Others wrote that we went through legal issues to ascertain the paternity of some stylistic solutions we had in common . . . some depicted Nicolai as my secret “aid,” the one who ghostwrote some of my scores. Those are all unfounded claims, journalistic inventions!
He becomes indignant.
I have always composed alone, from the primary idea to the last refining aspect of the orchestration. Moreover, never were there lawsuits between Bruno and me, simply because there was nothing to ascertain: everything was always transparent and in the light of day!
As you know, after the success of A Fistful of Dollars everybody reached me to make me score new westerns. In 1965, Alberto De Martino proposed me to score $100,000 for Ringo.5 As in those days I was working with Leone on For a Few Dollars More, I replied to De Martino’s kind request, “Thank you for thinking about me, Alberto, but why don’t you ask Bruno Nicolai? He’s a very solid composer.” Therefore, Bruno scored $100,000 for Ringo and a few other later movies by De Martino. But when De Martino made Dirty Heroes (Dalle Ardenne all’inferno, 1967), he contacted me again and pleaded with me, “Ennio, you must do this one.” I firmly replied that I would never take Nicolai’s place. He was so insistent that eventually Bruno and I mutually agreed on scoring the film together—each of us would write half of the pieces. From that moment on, we co-scored all of De Martino’s films in which one of us was hired, except for Carnal Circuit (Femmine insaziabili, 1969), which Bruno scored alone. We even decided to share credit in those cases in which one or the other authored the whole score.
After The Antichrist (L’Anticristo, 1974), another director contacted Bruno to hire the Morricone & Nicolai team. But I was opposed to creating a brand akin to “Garinei & Giovannini,” because I thought it would be inconvenient for both our careers—it meant to work in two and earn for one.
I straightforwardly clarified my position with Bruno and added that I thought it was better if we took separate paths. We both agreed on this new direction, and our friendship always remained intact and sacrosanct.
We were talking about your way of working when you write a theme. Do you prepare different orchestrations as well?
At times, yes. As I record a theme, I tend to keep the director’s expression in my sight. For the more “audacious” and experimental pieces, which I know are riskier, I usually keep a second, completely different version ready. This way, I can swiftly replace them. Giuseppe Tornatore, whom I call Peppuccio, once asked me how it was possible for me to compose new pieces so quickly. “I already have the alternative ready,” I answered him.
Did you feel your creativity was ever curbed having to compose “thematically”?
Some years ago, I went through a rather long period in which I was obsessed with the idea of “destroying the theme,” because I have always believed that relationships with directors are very limiting when based exclusively on “themes.” In 1969, I was working on He and She (L’assoluto naturale) by Bolognini, a philosophical movie based on the homonymous play by Goffredo Parise. We reached the third and last recording session and Bolognini had not yet uttered a word. That kind of reaction was unusual for him, as he generally gave me generous amounts of feedback. That time, though, he did not make any comment, he kept on drawing on a sheet of paper, without looking at me. He was sketching faces of crying women.
Suddenly I asked, “Mauro, what do you think about the music?”
Without raising his eyes from the page, he uttered these very words, “I don’t like any of it.”
“How is that possible? Why did you wait until the last session to tell me?” I replied.
“These two notes . . . they don’t convince me,” he concisely concluded.
I had written a theme based on two tones, so I told him that I would add a third one and everything would be resolved. I went to the orchestra and made all the necessary corrections. His reaction was excellent at that point. I retaped all that we had already done in the previous two and a half sessions. Eventually, it worked “fine.”
One day, ten years later, after we had made several other films together, I met Bolognini in Piazza di Spagna and he told me, “Today I listened to your soundtrack for He and She. You know, it’s the best you’ve ever made for me.”
This anecdote led me to conclude that novelty, namely, whatever is not “trendy” at a given moment in time, ends up being irksome and baffling both for the filmmaker and the audience. And yet, when all is said and done, innovation is what enables compositions to endure in time and be remembered.
This was my way of making sense of Bolognini’s sentence, as I had written other equally good music for him! In sum, hearing that was a great reward for me on the one hand, and a real blow on the other.
Have any of the directors you’ve worked with progressed in their musical competence?
Tornatore is among those who has learned the most. At times he has been able to go as far as to give me advice, which is unprecedented in my experience. I remember how his eyes lit up the first time he listened to the inversion of a major chord. In time his musical knowledge and sensibility have made giant leaps forward, and he is now very good at describing his feelings—his “ghosts” as he calls them—in musical terms. His style continues to become more and more technical; he absorbs new concepts like a sponge. On top of that, we work in great professional harmony.
Peppuccio made very remarkable films, touching upon a range of deep existential issues.
Take for instance the meanings enclosed in Malèna (2000). . . .
. . . which brought you another Oscar nomination . . .
Yes, in 2001. Aside from the nomination, I care a lot about this movie because it deals with the important and delicate question of womanhood. It is, in the end, just a film, but can you believe how many times in the past and still today women are discriminated against by our chauvinist society? Too many. All too often, especially in Italy, men are likely to ruthlessly misjudge women for a matter of convenience, in an attempt to subdue them and put them in an inferior position compared to men. This is really unbearable for me.
I employed some geometrical and mathematic procedures to build up musical passages and arpeggios in the film, so as to suggest the automatism of idiotic social clichés. The main theme, on the other hand, departs from everything else and escapes to a different place. Perhaps it flies toward utopia, or at least toward the way I wish things were [Example 3.2].
Example 3.2: Malèna, excerpt of the main theme
Your first film together was Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, 1988). How did you first meet Tornatore?
Franco Cristaldi phoned me and told me he wanted me to score a movie he was producing.6 I was very busy, and I was about to start working on Old Gringo (1989) by Luis Puenzo, starring Jane Fonda, Gregory Peck, and Jimmy Smits. So I told him that I couldn’t. He insisted so relentlessly that I was nearly exasperated when I hung up the phone. Shortly after, he called back to say that he was going to send me the script anyway: “Read it and then decide!”
I read it because Cristaldi was a dear friend, and we had always worked well together over the years. When I got to the final scene, the famous reel of kisses, I was convinced. I turned down Old Gringo and devoted myself to Cinema Paradiso.
That’s life: at times there are unexpected encounters and one has to muster up the courage to seize the opportunity. The kisses scene struck me so, already while reading the script. When I then saw how Tornatore realized it in the film, he confirmed my first impressions of his narrative and directing talent. The idea of recounting the history of cinema by editing together all of the kiss sequences that had been censored by a provincial priest was just fantastic. I never understood why he had Cristaldi make the phone call and didn’t do it himself—perhaps Peppuccio was too shy.
To begin, I prepared the theme of the cinema, indeed called “Cinema Paradiso” [Example 3.3].7
Example 3.3: Cinema Paradiso, excerpt of the homonymous theme
On the other hand, you co-wrote the love theme—the one occurring both in the kisses sequence and in the sequence when the lead character returns to his childhood bedroom after many years—with your son Andrea. How come?
I took a theme he had composed and made some irrelevant adjustments—as his original idea was brilliant. We scored the whole film together.
For the following two Tornatore movies we shared the credit again, even though I composed everything on my own this time around. We did that as a good omen—because the first movie had done so well, we hoped for the success of the next ones.
Meanwhile, Andrea has become a talented composer; in addition he studied orchestral conducting. . . . Despite my concerns about him starting a career in music (because it is always such a tough and uncertain choice), I can say today that I am glad he insisted. Indeed, one could already recognize his talent in that theme.
So far you and Tornatore have made eleven films together in total. . . .
I’d rather say ten and a half, because Il cane blu [The Blue Dog]—besides containing a lot of music, almost like a silent film—is an episode in a multi-authored film, Especially on Sunday (La domenica specialmente, dir. Francesco Barilli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Marco Tullio Giordana, and Giuseppe Tornatore, 1991).
In 2013, Peppuccio phoned me and asked, “Did you know that today is our silver wedding anniversary?” It was unbelievable that twenty-five years had flown by so fast!
A great friendship has flourished between us, and when relationships of this kind develop, I feel stimulated not only on a personal level but also on a professional one. He is a competent author, attentive to details, broadly versatile. In other words, his movies never fail to thrill me. Therefore, while on the one hand I am engaged by the technique, personality, and content of his cinema, on the other, he is always sure to provide me with the best working conditions, allowing me all the time and room to tailor a musical idea to the images and sounds of the film, to carefully ponder the mixing phase, to decide which emotions to amplify and how to do so, all of which is crucial for me. . . . Peppuccio and I work in great synergy. It is so rare to build such a working relationship.
Was it demanding to work on The Legend of 1900 (La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano, 1998)?
It was a colossal movie, one can tell this just by listening to some of the orchestrations I made for the main themes.
I composed a great deal of music for this film, spanning different genres, combining full-orchestra effects with jazz sonorities and inflections. Still, I must confess that perhaps my favorite version of the main theme is the simplest, the one for solo piano, which can be heard in the track “Playing Love,”8 when the character named 1900 [Tim Roth] gazes at the face of the girl [Mélanie Thierry] through the ship’s porthole as he is recording on a rudimentary gramophone [Example 3.4].
Example 3.4: The Legend of 1900, excerpt of the main theme
The biggest trouble I had since first reading the script was the requirement to write “music which has never been heard before”—these are Peppuccio’s exact words in the script, but also the words used by Alessandro Baricco in the book from which the film was adapted—to describe the music played by 1900.9 A beautiful phrase, for sure . . . but what if you are the one who is supposed to comply with that expectation?
Even from a technological profile I discovered aspects that would have been unthinkable just a few years before. Do you recall the scene of the piano contest between 1900 and Jelly Roll Morton, the legendary black pianist?
Sure.
Well, all of Jelly Roll Morton’s recordings were quite outdated, the quality of the disks was very poor, and hence it was impossible to use them directly in the film. Naturally there was the option to newly record them, but at the price of losing Morton’s unmistakable touch. My sound engineer, Fabio Venturi, came to our aid.
Together we collected the tracks we were interested in and managed to extrapolate the dynamics of every single note, thanks to digital and MIDI procedures.
And what about the piece 1900 eventually wins the contest with, inflaming the audience and literally setting the piano strings on fire?
It’s a virtuoso piece played beautifully by the extraordinary pianist Gilda Buttà.10 We overdubbed some parts, since it had to convey the impression of more than one pianist playing at once. Peppuccio’s editing was also very convincing.
If you were forced to save just one score among those you wrote for Tornatore, throwing everything else away, which would you choose?
That’s a very difficult question. I would not throw anything away, as I love everything I made. But if I had to choose, I think that I devised the best intertwining between music and film in The Legend of 1900, The Unknown Woman (La sconosciuta, 2006), and The Best Offer (La migliore offerta, 2013)—perhaps even more so in A Pure Formality (Una pura formalità, 1994), a very special film for me.
Roman Polanski starred in the role of a detective psychoanalyst . . .
I worked with him twice. The first time it was in a film he directed, Frantic (1988), with Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner (who later became his wife), the second time in A Pure Formality, in which he costarred with Gérard Depardieu. One time I saw him acting in a stage drama, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and I was absolutely stunned: he is a great director and a superb actor—a smart, correct, amenable, and generous man.
How did it go with Frantic?
I can’t recall the way he contacted me, but when we met he decided to show me the film right away. Ideas flowed immediately after that first meeting. It was a crime thriller.
I used a predetermined harmonic scheme, which I then worked out in numerous ways. It was combinatory music, just like “Inventions for John,” yet more complex. Something similar can be found in the combinations of themes I realized in The Mission for the “Requiem glorioso” [Glorious Requiem], the piece that later took the title “On Earth as It Is in Heaven,”11 the difference being that such a procedure is much less apparent in Frantic, and only a trained ear can notice it.12
How do you recall working with Depardieu? You scored a number of films in which he starred, and in A Pure Formality he sang your song “Ricordare.” . . .
Initially Claudio Baglioni was expected to sing that song.13 We rehearsed it once in my studio and he was magnificent, but eventually nothing came of it. At that point, Peppuccio himself wrote the lyrics and we considered having Depardieu sing it.
I remember the moment we were in the recording studio: I gave him the cues and, all in all, he worked them out quite well.
For that song, I had imagined the word ricordare [remember] woven into the melody, right from the start: “Ricordare, ricordare . . .” [Example 3.5].
Example 3.5: Vocal line of “Ricordare” (A Pure Formality)
What is your attitude toward songs in film?
It depends. I wrote some songs in agreement with directors, but the choice of the singer was always up to the production—I have never personally chosen one. Unfortunately, the presence of a song in a film nowadays is all too often determined not by the wish of the director or the composer, but rather by the producers, who chase easy fame.
I turned down some productions where requests came up at the last minute to insert a song that was well ranked on the charts.
On various occasions. I turned down Zeffirelli’s Endless Love for this very reason. As I was about to tell you earlier, I traveled to Los Angeles, where I had already composed several themes, including the piece that would eventually become “Deborah’s Theme” in Once Upon a Time in America.
Obviously I had signed a contract for the production; then one day in a meeting Zeffirelli mentioned that we ought to insert a song by Lionel Richie, sung by Diana Ross.14
I found it absurd that a song composed by someone other than myself would be inserted into my score.
Zeffirelli explained that later agreements were undersigned with the producers after my contract had already been signed and that he had to comply with Richie at that point. He asked me to turn a blind eye.
I replied: “Franco, that’s not written in the contract I signed. I’m not going to make the film.”
He insisted, but I turned him down anyway. The producers paid me a congruous amount for the work I had done thus far. After nine days spent in Los Angeles, I left with my earnings in hand.
Nine years later I would collaborate again with Zeffirelli, on Hamlet (1990), starring Mel Gibson.
Then the moment arrived when Leone listened to that particular theme and wanted it for his film. Sergio fell in love with it right away, and once he heard the story about its origin he burst out in sarcastic comments. He was always eager to know every single detail, and he knew how to be ruthless toward his colleagues.
Do you consider song a lesser genre?
No, I myself have composed a lot of songs and have nothing against them or against singers. However, the moment in which a composer is hired to write the score for a film, he or she gets to developing an integrated whole. To introduce a heterogeneous musical identity at the last minute is not something that one can do haphazardly . . . it must be pondered with careful attention.
Another bizarre episode more recently occurred with Quentin Tarantino on Django Unchained (2012).
Are you referring to “Ancora qui” [Still Here], the song performed by Elisa?15
Exactly. Our common publisher (Sugar, Caterina Caselli’s company)16 commissioned me to write a song. I accepted, wrote the music, and sent it to Elisa. A demo version, combining Elisa’s voice and a rough mix of my arrangement, was then delivered to Tarantino.
He liked it so much that he put it directly in the film, without waiting for the final mix, which eventually was released only in Elisa’s official album.17
Tarantino is famous for his very peculiar way of dealing with music, but that time he went so far as to use a provisional version!
That demo is now in the film, and I still haven’t figured out why. Perhaps he deliberately wanted it, or maybe he thought that it was the definitive version. . . .
It’s a totally different case when a song is foreseen in the screenplay, right from the outset—identifying a specific meaning in a film, its story, and thus its musical articulation.
For instance, my collaboration with Joan Baez on Sacco & Vanzetti was conceived of up front for explicit reasons, and, above all, the storyline justified the song’s presence. The same can be said for A Pure Formality, where the song “Ricordare” plays a specific symbolic and functional role.
What is your attitude toward music that is inscribed at a film’s internal level, that is, that comes from within the scene?18
I have always been interested in distinguishing between musical underscoring and source music, that is, between the music stemming, say, from a record player, a ballroom, or a car stereo.
The times in which I was asked to write for the internal, diegetic level, I sometimes even worked the tracks in such a way that they would sound rawer, for they are usually of secondary importance, and I tend to make sure they don’t blend with the external, accompanying score.
I feel like it is important to emphasize the difference between music which directly expresses my ideas about the film and its characters, and applies to an external, extradiegetic level, and music that is extemporarily connected to an internal sound source.
At times, however, the music coming from a radio or from the story is of fundamental importance to the storyline.
To what extent do you think music can be adapted to predetermined images?
Everything depends on what one aims to express. After so many years working in this industry, I have come to realize that music has a singular flexibility in regard to movies, stories, and images. One can test such adaptability particularly in films featuring few themes. There it is easier to notice the extent to which the same music can achieve different goals when it is synced to different images.
For Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, I composed only two themes, both of which recur throughout a number of scenes. This is a good example of what I mean—Petri was very ingenious and was able to obtain several variants of meaning, thanks to his edits.
Do you think that there is such a thing as “perfect” music for a given sequence of pictures?
I have ever fewer certainties as I go on, and I would probably say that the right music does not exist, and yet every piece of music has its own character and its own evocative potential. Applying music to film connotes poetical, and consequently mysteriously empirical reasons. The blend between music and images is always determined by something that is not completely controllable by those in charge. This procedure can be accomplished in different manners and with different goals. And these very variables lead to the mystery I am referring to.
The same sequence can be musically interpreted in manifold ways, some of which work better than others, but after a certain point we enter into the land of subjectivity. To give just one example, I love Nino Rota’s work with Fellini, especially in films like Fellini’s Casanova (1976). And yet, in his place, I would have written completely different music, arguably not less “right” than his. The same is true for him, had he scored the movies I did.
It appears that you have reached a very flexible vision as to how the relation between music and images should be. . . .
Some years ago, when I was in the jury of a music symposium in Spoleto, I launched an experiment: ten composers were asked to score the same film sequence. Afterward, each one of them was given the chance to personally discuss the scene with the director. As a result, each proposal turned out very different from the others, though all of them were excellent in themselves.
Now, which one was the most appropriate? Which one worked best?
We noticed that the visuals acquired different meanings thanks to each score, and this affected the viewers’ perception. This aside, we were not able to single out the “rightest” piece of music: there were too many variables at stake.
Oftentimes, for example, Tarantino has benefited from this kind of openness when he utilized music that I had composed for older films and fit it into new scenes.
What was your opinion of him and his cinema before you first collaborated?
I had and have always considered him a great director. Tarantino “eats up” cinema each time he makes a new film.
I like some of his films better than others. Django Unchained, for instance, is not my favorite: his approach to the history of black slavery in America is original, as he always manages to be; however, when he makes blood gush so much, it’s not my cup of tea. Django Unchained “terrorizes” me.
Besides the original song “Ancora qui,” which I co-wrote with Elisa, he also used “The Braying Mule” and “Sister Sara’s Theme,” two pieces from an American production I worked on with Don Siegel in 1970—Two Mules for Sister Sara, starring Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood—as well as some pieces by Luis Bacalov.19
His previous film, Inglourious Basterds (2009), was realized very well, for my taste. The same amount of violence is present, that is after all a cypher of his work, but it is employed differently. The dialogue is extraordinary and the acting is fantastic. Inglourious Basterds is an outstanding film.
It too features a lot of your music. What runs through your mind when you find out that a piece you composed for a different occasion is used in one of his films?
It feels strange. Tarantino often appropriated my music to dislocate it in a completely different context from the one it was meant for. Part of my reluctance to work with him derived from the fact that I was somewhat afraid to come up with new music for him, as I feared that he might be too conditioned by his own musical habits. . . .
Before The Hateful Eight, Tarantino had always compiled preexisting music. How could I write something that would sound new for him and yet keep up with his idea of my music, which he knows so well and considers perfect? “Keep this perfection for yourself,” I would say. “I’m not going to work with you.”
Moreover, I was concerned with the eclecticism of his musical choices, as he always juxtaposes such a diverse array of pieces, following very subjective associations. On the other hand, there was so much of my music already among the tracks he had used in his films, that I might have been expected to compose something akin to the stuff I had already done. Frankly, that idea didn’t particularly thrill me, as I worried that, due to that sort of expectation, the outcome would never please him as much as the model he had in mind. . . .
At any rate, I believe that he has frequently made remarkable musical choices. For instance, the building tension in the first sequence of Inglourious Basterds draws on a part of a cue I used in the television series Secret of the Sahara (Il segreto del Sahara, dir. Alberto Negrin, 1988), entitled “The Mountain.”20
Right, that’s the kind of silent but increasingly uncanny tension so typical of masters of suspense, that we referred to earlier when comparing it to the tension that builds up during a chess game. . . .
Exactly. The Nazi official [Christoph Waltz] talks quietly with the farmer, the same way you and I are talking just now. But in a matter of a few minutes he turns into an incredible son of a bitch!
Naturally, when I originally composed that music in the sixties, I was not thinking about a Nazi official who ruthlessly kills a group of poor women hiding beneath the wooden floor. But it works fine anyway.21
Among the main pieces used in Inglourious Basterds there is also “Rabbia e tarantella” [Rage and Tarantella] from the film Allonsanfan (1974) by the Taviani brothers.22 In that film the piece was originally the theme of the Italian revolutionaries when dancing a tarantella, but Quentin associated it with the armed group of headhunters.
He then used “The Verdict,” from Sollima’s western The Big Gundown (La resa dei conti, 1966). In a scene of that film I even quoted the melody of “Für Elise” by Beethoven.23 He took the piece “Un amico” [A Friend] from another movie by Sollima, Blood in the Streets (Revolver, 1973), and used it to underscore the double murder of the woman [Mélanie Laurent] and the German sniper [Daniel Brühl] in the projection room of the movie theater where the Nazi movie is being screened.24
Then again, the film features “L’incontro con la figlia” [Meeting with the Daughter], “The Mercenary (Reprise),” “Algiers: November 1, 1954” (co-written with Gillo Pontecorvo), and “Mystic and Severe.”25 He is definitely a director who uses music in a very singular way.
So, what was it like? You went to the movie theater, took your seat, Tarantino’s new film began, and . . . ?
I enjoyed it. At that point, I didn’t care about the music anymore. “If he’s happy with it . . . ,” I would think.
I mentioned “The Verdict,” the track in which I quote “Für Elise.” I had already started a piece with the same quotation in Sollima’s first film.26 The quotation didn’t have anything to do with the film, but the movie sold so well that Sollima started to consider it a lucky charm, so from then on he wanted to open every new film with that quote. I did so for his two following movies.
When Tarantino utilized it, there was no reason in trying to justify the presence of that quotation . . . why? What could I object to at that point? If you like it so much, keep it. . . .
When a piece is decontextualized, it loses its meaning for you.
Yes. But I must say that his cinema has many merits. Sometimes I spoke against his way of proceeding, and the press misinterpreted it. Some wrote that Morricone didn’t like Tarantino’s films enough to say “yes” to him. But if I decided to collaborate with him, it was certainly not out of caprice, it is because I have always admired him. Moreover, so many people, such a wide and diversified audience, watch his films, and it appears that young people especially get in touch with my music primarily through his cinema.
Right, but what made you change your mind and accept to score The Hateful Eight?
As you know, we had already been in touch for the making of Inglourious Basterds, but at the time I was already working with Tornatore, and Quentin had a very tight deadline because he wanted to be able to premiere his film in Cannes. I could not make it in that moment, but I never precluded myself from collaborating with him on another occasion. Sure enough, all the things I was saying, my admiration for him, my wish to cross generational boundaries, the fact that the screenplay he proposed was really well written . . . a new challenge like this at my age—all these aspects eventually convinced me.
Tarantino insisted on a lot, he even came to Rome on the day before the ceremony of the David di Donatello Award in 2015 and brought me a translation of the script in Italian.27 He made me realize that, besides following my work for such a long time and knowing it so thoroughly, he really wanted me the way I am now.
Surely, the advice of people around me also played a role. When the chance to work with him started to be concrete, many friends I esteem such as Peppuccio, Fabio Venturi, yourself, Maria, my children, and even my grandchildren told me, “Why do you always say no to him?” And I answered, “Perhaps this time I’ll say yes, but if it’s a western I’m not going to do it!”
And yet . . .
And yet, nothing. I don’t consider this to be a western. Rather, I see it as a historical adventure film, in a sense. The characters are described with such meticulousness and universality that the fact they wear cowboy hats is nothing more than an alternative setting.
In fact, when I first listened to the music before seeing the film, I immediately thought it had something to do with a macabre ritual, as though the theme was black magic. Furthermore, two bassoons in unison convey a visceral quality and a brutal undertone. . . .
The main theme starts with two bassoons in unison, and I reprise it later in the film with a contrabassoon dubbed by the tuba. As you just said, I needed to express a visceral, hidden, or buried core, something latent and yet bodily present [Example 3.6].
Example 3.6: The Hateful Eight, excerpt of the two bassoons’ line in the main theme
Quentin was very satisfied with the outcome, he even came to Prague to attend the recording sessions, and then they mixed the whole thing in the United States. That worried me a little, but they did an excellent job.
I told Tarantino that if he wants to make another film with me, I’m fine with it, provided that he gives me more time. . . . I hate to work in haste.
Besides Tarantino, your music convinced several international juries as well. Among the many awards, it earned you your third Golden Globe and, finally, an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Yes, it was a very happy moment. I received a wealth of congratulations and international acknowledgments by illustrious colleagues.
It took me a long time to decide whether or not to go to the United States—you know, such a long trip at my age . . . it actually caused some health issues. . . . Most importantly, I had to make my decision without knowing if I would win.
The Oscars are like a lottery . . . you go there, you sit and wait, you may even be the favorite, but if your name is not the one to be called, you can be sure you’ll have a hard time afterward. It happened five times to me already, as you know. “Do I go? Do I stay?” Eventually I told myself that I should go and so I did.
And you were right to do so!
I smile.
Yes, this time.
He smiles too.
Besides, the Academy Award was not the only ceremony in those days. I was honored with a star in the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard.
I confess that it was as tiring as touching. Tarantino came too, with producer Weinstein.
I was enormously pleased, also because I know how beneficial these kinds of accomplishments can be for Italian cinema as a whole.
I was at the Academy, sitting in the audience, and I was struck upon observing that your modesty completely set you apart from the general tone of the event. These kinds of get-togethers are usually very pompous, important of course, but also very glamorous, so to speak. In your address you spoke instead about a composer’s troubles to write for a wide audience, how this issue brings a deeper dimension related to the difficulty, but also the opportunity, to discover a way to match the public consensus with your own inner demands and needs. Despite what the market appears to suggest most of the time, consensus and quality don’t have to be totally disconnected.
I was terribly sorry for not being able to speak English, but as you know I never learned the language. At any rate, I think that you perfectly grasped the tone of my speech. It is fundamental for me to remind myself and others not only about the struggles I go through in complying with the several inner needs embedded in my stratified experience as a composer (not exclusively for films) who has lived with curiosity throughout the twentieth century; but also of how complicated it is to pursue a thin, mutable balance of communication between the composer and the listeners.
I am always chasing that particular point of convergence, even when I aim to contradict it, to do without it, but still holding it in the highest consideration.
Always “chasing that sound,” so to speak?
Sure, always looking for the right sound . . . or maybe for a group of sounds, their reciprocal relations, and beyond . . . but this is an extremely mysterious matter. . . .
He stares into the void and stays silent for some moments.
You know, Ennio, when Tarantino received your Golden Globe on your behalf, he declared that you are his favorite composer. He put you even before Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. . . .
I took that as a joke, spoken with honesty, but still a friendly sort of sacrilege. Luckily, I don’t have to judge myself; history will put all these day-to-day events in perspective.
The right time for assessment will come in some centuries. What will remain and what will not? Who knows!
Music is mysterious; it doesn’t offer many answers. Film music, on the other hand, is even more mysterious at times, both because of its bond with images and because of its way of bonding with the audience.
I would like to go back to the relationship between music and images and ask you something slightly more technical and personal. Given the variety of ways in which music can be employed in a film sequence, and the infinity of its possible associations with the image, what is your stance as a composer of film music?
I acknowledge that music is very malleable. On the other hand, in trying to stay musically coherent to myself, I have always sought for new ways to interweave music and the other elements of a film, principally the visual ones, and respond to the demands I’ve perceived in them. It is a way of working that embraces ambiguity, as you can see. However, absolute relativism does not lead anywhere, and perhaps I would have never succeeded in this profession had I disregarded cinema’s most empiric, aleatory, random, and extemporary facets.
The only certainty I have is that music must be finely written, even when it is intended for a different art, another expressive form. It must be based on internal, formal, and structural parameters, solid enough to hold its own independently from the images. At the same time, musical ideas must be attuned to the elements and suggestions of the specific cinematic context.
This job presupposes a thorough analysis of the script and the film—one must dig into the scenes, the characters, the plot, the editing, the technical realization, the light treatment and its typology. Story and space—everything is important for the composer.
Only after I’ve read the shooting script or the screenplay do I begin to work out some ideas. Characters, with their interiority and psychology, are especially important for me. Even when they are one-dimensional—intentionally or not—I try to imagine their thoughts, their unspoken intentions; in other words, I try to comprehend them in depth to be able to present them in a more personal, intimate light. One should not superficially stick to the image, but transform it into a resource.
I have always seen this as a personal challenge: to ensure that the music can stand autonomously, that it conveys my mindset, and that it at the same time enhances the director’s visual ideas.
I don’t know if I have managed to achieve this every time, but I have always worked with this principle in mind.
What about the viewers? Why do they usually trust the music in a film, in your opinion? Consciously or not, it is as though paradoxically they give more credit to the music, rather than the image.
These are difficult questions. Firstly, I believe that one goes to the movie theater to watch a film, not to listen to it. At least this can be said to be the general attitude among filmgoers. Music thus situates itself in a rather concealed position; in this sense, the viewer internalizes it almost deceivingly. Music succeeds in orienting, inspiring, and letting people get carried away for that very reason. Most of the time, people experience the music in a film as a subconscious suggestion. This is even truer when considering how broad the audience to which cinema appeals is—oftentimes a multitude of musically uneducated people.
In other words, music manages to show what is not visible, to work against the dialogue or, even more, tell a story that the images do not reveal. In this respect, the film composer has a great responsibility, a moral duty, which I have always felt deep inside me.
Indeed, the majority of viewers accept and trust the music without being aware of the variety of interpretive layers of a film, or being cognizant of the historical development of music in the twentieth century, and so forth. Hence, how can a composer be simultaneously true to him- or herself, respectful of the director’s intentions and producer’s ambitions, and also communicate with the audience? The answer is different every time.
What ties music to images, in your opinion?
Film and music are paired first and foremost—before their meaning, before their will to mean anything—by a particular employment of time. In fact, it is over the course of a given time span that a piece of music builds up and then reaches a conclusion, on a sequence of tones and silences; likewise the frames that make up a film sequence evolve over time.
In this sense I speak of temporality, that is, a controlled distribution of information within a specific time unit, which is shared on both the sender’s and the receiver’s ends.
What is music’s main function in relation to the moving pictures?
My friend Gillo Pontecorvo used to say that behind every story cinema tells there is a real story, one that really counts. Well, music must find a way to bring out the value of that hidden story and highlight it.
Music should help clarify the meaning of a film, whether it is of a conceptual or sentimental nature. Whatever the case, music makes no difference between the two. Rather, music “helps sentiments be conceptualized and concepts be sentimentalized,” as Pasolini used to say. Therefore, its way of working is always ambivalent.
This ambivalence is justified by the fact that, while music aims to emotionally involve the viewer, it cannot deny or neglect its descriptive and interpretive goal. This being said, I guess that all of that is and will remain a mystery.
How does the association of music to the visuals work from a technical point of view?
Technically, the application of music—even preexisting music—to images obeys dual parameters of immobility or movement, stasis or rhythm, depth, consequentiality, verticality, and horizontality.
What I call the “horizontal application” of music to moving pictures occurs along the unrolling of images; music adds rhythmic values to visual perception, reaching the brain through the ears. “Vertical application” instead concerns the perceived depth of the image; now, given that the cinematic image is essentially flat—in spite of its illusionary potential—the vertical dimension is much more important than the horizontal, as it carries somewhat of a spiritual, rather than physical, component. I think it is fair to say that vertical application better serves to highlight the conceptual content of a film.
I believe that the application of music to the moving image marks a decisive moment in the life of a film. Music replaces the image’s illusory depth by providing, or rather, newly creating a poetic depth. To this end, music is even more effective when it has a life of its own and its specific musical qualities hold up to critical scrutiny. However, music can only fulfill this role if the director allows it the necessary room to manifest itself naturally. It is essential that music be given the right space to release itself from the other sounds in the film. Here we are entering a technical ground, typical of the mixing process.
A poor mix can ruin a film, as much as the lack of proper space for music’s deployment. On the other hand, an overabundance of music can just as equally damage the ultimate outcome of the film, the comprehensibility and the effectiveness of its communication. Music is all too often either excessively low in volume, too sparse, or too continuous. The timing and modes of music’s entrances and exits in a visual sequence should be cautiously considered, as well as how it is balanced within the overall soundtrack—including effects, noises, and dialogue. Too frequently this doesn’t happen.
I’ve been asked many times why the music I’ve composed for Leone has been my best. I don’t agree with this judgment, in fact I believe I’ve written better scores. But it is true that, compared to other directors, Sergio left more space for my music to express and reach its full potential; he valued music as the supporting architectonic structure of certain passages in his films.
One should also bear in mind that the eye has more possibilities than the ear to consciously draw together different elements and “understand” them.
In what sense? Does this last point relate to a specific kind of audience?
In my experience I have come to believe that it is mainly a physiological matter. Eyesight, most likely, has a sort of sensorial priority over hearing, and yet, immediacy does not equal comprehensibility.
The eye can decode complex elements and synthesize them into a single unity, conjuring up general meanings through contrasts and relating the various fragments it observes.
The ear instead cannot distinguish the identities of more than three sounds at a time; it can only add them together as though they were one. For instance, if five people speak simultaneously in a room, it is virtually impossible to understand what they say, the result being a buzzing sound. Interestingly, a person with decent ear training can singularly grasp each voice in a three-part fugue but cannot distinguish the horizontal lines (the melodies) in a six-voice fugue; the only aspect one can perceive in that case is the fugue’s vertical totality (the harmony).
All these features must be considered during the mixing phase, precisely to avoid confusion in the viewer. In order to achieve a clear communication, it is in fact opportune to monitor the mixing of the music with the other sounds.
With directors, and not only with them, I often talk about a principle concerning the soundtrack (meaning the totality of music, its sound effects, dialogue, and noises) and its perception in relation to the images. I call it “EST,” that is “Energy, Space, and Time.”
These are three very important parameters for the functioning of a message that a director and composer deliver to the audience. I find that music is more and more relegated to a background function in today’s world, and it necessitates these three elements in order to release itself and reach its destination.
I can still recall the sense of amazement in the people who attended this incredible installation we did some years ago, one evening in Piazza del Popolo. Loudspeakers were scattered all over the place and transmitted a piece I had composed for Mission to Mars by De Palma.
Even though I am used to listening to my music in the most disparate contexts, I could appreciate the technical perfection of that installation: the volume was overwhelming, the body vibrated, and the sounds floated through the air. Silences were wounds. That experience confirmed what I already believed about the concept of “sonic energy,” that is, when music reaches its proper volume, one can no longer pretend it does not exist and cannot help but inhabit it; even the most distracted people stop minding their own business and start listening.
In other words, for you film music exerts a power over the listener that goes well beyond its relationship with images.
The most important thing, which perhaps I’ve never said out loud in my previous reflections on film music, is I believe that music is independent of cinema. Even more radically, I dare to say, that true cinema can do without music precisely because music is the only abstract art that does not belong to the reality of film.
Sure enough, a film can display a radio device or a band playing a melody and characters dancing to it, but that is not the real music in the film. The real music cannot be seen and is tasked with expressing what the images are otherwise unable to say. For that to happen, during the mixing phase one ought to avoid overlapping music with other noises, other musical elements, or too much dialogue.
The general appreciation of my music in Leone’s and Tornatore’s cinema goes beyond music per se: the truth is that Leone and Tornatore mixed it better than others. How? They left it alone, washed it away from other sounds; the listener can therefore focus on the music and better enjoy it.
Leone, Claude Lelouch, Elio Petri, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gillo Pontecorvo, Tornatore, and other skilled directors do isolate sounds, be they noises or music, because they always demand the highest effectiveness and signifying potential.
Not only is the argument that cinema is more image than sound beside the point: it is false. Yes, film started as projected images, and the lineage of that origin still persists today. But cinema is an art form that includes both hearing and viewing, and the richness of its meanings can only be extolled in the democratic equality of these two senses: experiencing the projection of a film in the recording room, devoid of any sound or just with the dialogue, would do justice to my point. However, this does not change what I have said earlier, that is, that a film can in theory do without a musical score.
How important are the sound technicians working on your side?
They are fundamental in film music, because what the audience experiences in the movie theater is not a concert but a digital rendering obtained by means of recording, mixing, and mastering.
In the sixties and seventies, I used to let the director mix everything alone, then I realized that it was better to be present, to be in control, and prevent mistakes.
I worked with extraordinary sound technicians throughout the years: Sergio Marcotulli, Giorgio Agazzi, Pino Mastroianni, Federico Savina (Carlo’s brother), Giulio Spelta, Ubaldo Consoli; lately and for a considerable time stretch, I have been working with Fabio Venturi.
In 1969, Bacalov, Trovajoli, Piccioni, and I even bought a recording studio in Rome, where we could carry out our activities as film music composers. Those were very intense years.
Is it the current Forum Music Village?
Back then it was called the Orthophonic Studio. It was Enrico De Melis’s idea, who was also my agent for a while—a very honest person.
We owned the studio for ten years; we then decided to sell it in 1979, because the expenses for technological maintenance and implementation had become too high.
All in all it was a good experience, and the studio is still there, in Piazza Euclide. We sold it to Marco Patrignani, who is still the owner. I recorded almost everything there.
Composing for film means conceiving a type of music that does not reach the listener “acoustically,” as in a live concert, but through mechanical or digital reproduction.
How often have you used a piece and its orchestration in such a way that the outcome stands for itself from an acoustic standpoint, and how often have you instead relied on mixing as an added resource for your orchestrations?
Generally, I write in such a way that the music is acoustically balanced and would work as well in a live concert. The score that gets to be performed in the studio is recorded without the need to emphasize some parts over others. Then, during the mixing phase, one can take some liberties and change some small things. Nevertheless, I compose for the orchestra in a classical sense. When mixing, one may treat the oboe with a little echo, percussion with a particular reverb, or specific balancing issues may be corrected. As it happens, even when everything appears to be fine in the recording room, a microphone may exalt a detail that is not acoustically relevant and for this reason needs to be lowered. It is a complex process.
Then again, in some cases I created scores by exploiting the creative potential of multitrack recording and mixing, as was the case for the multiple or modular scores I composed for Dario Argento’s early movies, for Yves Boisset’s films—one for all, The Assassination (L’attentat, 1972)—and then for Damiani’s films, up to my most recent experiences with Tornatore.
Studio overdubbing represents an option, a potential, as much as the use of effects and technology in general, which has dramatically improved in recent years.
The composer’s work therefore can and should embrace these resources, in my opinion. Composers must foresee and speculate on the new “instruments” at their disposal and integrate them into their musical thinking, without forgetting “tradition,” so to say.
Could you give me an example?
I could tell you how I worked on Tornatore’s The Unknown Woman, because that score represents a step forward in my way of composing music, especially from a combinatory point of view.
The film is based on flashbacks and recollections. The way I had envisioned it demanded that I keep several options open during the mixing and editing stages, until the very last minute.
Recording sessions were organized with this idea in mind—we needed music that could marry “whichever” visual cut we’d eventually end up with.
I wrote seventeen to eighteen pieces that could be intermingled in multiple ways. They could be overlaid as double or triple counterpoints, so as to engender a different sound material every time. I did three recording sessions in total, partly because I believe the director has the right to know what the potential outcomes of such a radical experiment might be.
In the first session, I recorded all the themes. In the second, I recorded the modular cues, which could then be combined and overdubbed as needed; at that point, Peppuccio and I assessed them and we picked different takes for the editing. In the third session, I recorded various thematic options that would fit in with the material from the second session (among these were the piece “Quella ninna nanna” [That Lullaby] and the strawberries theme).28 This last session was carried out following a more traditional procedure, that is, I conducted the orchestra hitting the sync points as the visual track played.
This procedure harks back to older experiments. . . .
Definitely, back to my time with the Gruppo d’Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza and to the multiple scores I had first created for Argento’s film. . . .29
This is also a very time-efficient way of writing. The compositional effort is considerably optimized because you can continuously derive new pieces from different combinations of partial material.
Yes, although this is relative. I tend not to focus so much on how long it takes to compose a score, but rather on how well a new method works for me—so that I don’t get bored. Besides, I can’t use this composing procedure all the time, it must be justified, there needs to be a reason to use it.
Certain directors’ demands can be met in different ways according to what they wish and what their film needs. However, these experiences also serve the composer to experiment with new ways to achieve a result (which can comply with or radically differ from expectations). It is curiosity that triggers the search for new pathways.
Thanks to this system, you save the option to reach a final decision together with the director for later—for the mixing phase—almost as if it was a chess game. . . . This is highly effective for a film’s production process. . . .
And not only. Following traditional methods, composers find themselves at a vantage point, even if it doesn’t seem so. When a piece is recorded, directors are not left with many options. They must accept it as is. This system, instead, enables the director to step in and make changes up to the editing stage and even afterward.
Before, directors had no choice, at least not as many as the system I invented allows.
Still, you can only afford to work in this way assuming you trust the director with whom you collaborate.
Of course. Otherwise I would go crazy, as the director would too. Similar procedures make the director co-responsible for the music. Therefore, they cannot be shared with everybody, because not everyone would accept such an open-ended system. I was making this same case when we were talking about Petri and A Quiet Place in the Country.
I repeated this experience and brought it to the next level, especially on “Volti e fantasmi” [Faces and Ghosts], from The Best Offer, in which I recorded each part independently.30 I made a first mix myself, and Fabio Venturi made the second at his house, but in the end we didn’t use it. Tornatore and I made other mixes directly in the editing room while syncing them with the visuals.
When we were done, overcome with emotion I told Peppuccio, “This is both a point of arrival and a new start.”
For instance, should Tornatore ever manage to make Sergio’s dream come true and realize his own version of The Siege of Leningrad,31 I think I would use this system. Perhaps after recording and mixing I would be able to chronologically order all the fragments and draw out a score, which I would then reperform exactly as it would be assembled in the film.
Obviously, working in this way would be rather expensive, but for a production like Leningrad, should it ever happen, it might be possible. . . .
You speak about your latest experiences with Tornatore as the beginning of a new thread of research.
These new compositional resources are very stimulating for me. I am interested in the unpredictable, in chance and unexpected outcomes, even more in that my music always reflects a defined score, a fixed form and structure, my own mindset. But the different options that this system makes available are all acceptable. Especially in regard to the images.
This sort of “organized improvisation,” or “written improvisation,” makes the aleatory and the determinist aspects coincide. I guess that pure improvisation would not excite me as much, but cinema has an aleatory facet that needs to be integrated into the compositional process. All this—uniting chance and randomness with a rational and precise organization—is possible thanks to the technological advances.
With my ideas, with this way of working, the director becomes a sort of coauthor of the music—I still write all the music, but we improvise together in mixing a piece with the rest of the soundtrack. For these reasons, at my Academy Honorary Award acceptance speech in 2007, I claimed that I was at a starting point in my career, rather than at an arriving point. I was specifically referring to these new paths I was discovering, and particularly to those I was experimenting with when working on The Unknown Woman.
I had gone through a period in which I took fewer risks, but that film represented a leap forward!
I wish I could always start with a “leap” like that, but I understand that not every film offers room for similar experimentation. The Unknown Woman was sort of a prelude to what I later realized with The Best Offer.
The modular writing enabled me to elaborate upon fragments that I could then superimpose in collaboration with Tornatore. The parts are not pre-organized; their combination takes place either during the performance, via the entry and ending signs I give to the instruments or to the orchestra sections when I conduct, or during the mixing stage.
In 2007, after being honored with myriad prizes and acknowledgments of all kinds, you received an Academy Honorary Award. How important was that for you? And how do you explain the belatedness with which you received it?
As far as the belatedness, I wouldn’t know what to say. What I do know, however, is that for a long time I was quite disappointed for not having won an Oscar, especially considering I had scored so many American movies. It was significant for me to receive one, eventually.
Another acknowledgment I deeply care about came from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; they appointed me the title of “Academic.”32 It was important for me, especially after years of feeling snubbed by the academic music world.
You know, prizes mark but moments, and in between there’s life. That is perhaps why, the longer you struggle for an acknowledgment, the greater the satisfaction when you finally get it. It’s probably necessary to undergo a certain amount of frustration. Then again, the award itself is just part of the acknowledgment. For instance, on the occasion of my honorary Oscar I received a phone call from Quincy Jones, who told me things I will never forget. One by one, I received many personal recognitions—all of which are important to me—from people I admire.
It was a rather emotional ceremony, and you looked decidedly moved. Would you like to tell me what that experience was like?
It was Clint Eastwood who handed me the statuette and translated my acceptation speech. To my recollection, that trip was full of events. The night before the ceremony, Eastwood wonderfully surprised me by showing up at a party that the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles had organized for me. He came to greet me of his own initiative, without saying anything to anyone. He congratulated me on my achievement, and I was deeply moved: we had not seen each other for almost fifty years.
The evening of the ceremony I sat in my box at the theater with Maria and one of my sons, who translated what Eastwood was saying from the stage.
At a certain point, Céline Dion, who was sitting in the first row and was expected to sing the melody of Deborah’s theme from Once Upon a Time in America, came to my box and said, “Maestro, tonight I’m not going to sing with my voice, but with my heart.”
This was the first “tearjerker” of the evening. Her performance was extraordinary; I would have never imagined that such a famous piece, written so long before, would still touch me so deeply.
When they called me, I went backstage. There, suddenly, someone patted my shoulder; it was the signal that my moment had come.
I went onstage and found the audience standing—I was overcome. Times were strictly defined, I had a five-minute speech ready, which the Academy had already translated so that Clint Eastwood could read it on the teleprompter.
During the rehearsal, I was stunned by the precision with which Americans calculate the times of award ceremonies. Everybody has a few seconds allotted and is warned not to exceed that time. When the teleprompter lights up, words run fast on the screen, and the crew is instructed to cut the speech off in the event someone doesn’t respect the time. Under the stage some huge madmen from the staff start to flail around when the time runs short: true, I don’t speak English, but I can assure you that they can be very eloquent. That whole frenzied machine made me so anxious that, when I received my award for Tarantino’s film in 2016, I wrote my entire speech on a small piece of paper, in order to stay within my time. Anyway, those strict time limitations did not apply for the Academy Honorary Award speech, so in 2007 I was lucky enough to be allowed to take as much time as I wanted for my speech.
I had rehearsed it several times, so I had no reason to be moved by my own words. However, that phrase by Céline just before her performance, the audience on its feet, and the strong applause overwhelmed me. . . . I guess that my emotions got the best of me the moment I dedicated the Oscar to my wife, Maria.
As a man of cinema, I am used to seeing things in slow motion, and in that instant it was as though I was looking back at my whole life with her.
All of this emotion, in such a short time, had kept me from noticing the colossal mistake I was making meanwhile: I had inverted the order of my speech’s points, and Clint Eastwood, who was reading next to me from the teleprompter, found himself befuddled. Luckily, he remembered a little Italian from his early career and managed to fix everything. Somebody in the theater realized what was happening and smiled. It was fun.
In the end credits of American Sniper (2014), Eastwood used “The Funeral,” a piece you composed for The Return of Ringo (Il ritorno di Ringo, 1965) by Duccio Tessari. Did he tell you he would do that?
I remember that piece well because it is an arrangement of the military bugle call “Taps.”33 Anyway, no, he didn’t tell me anything. I heard about it later. We aren’t really in touch, you know.
Because of Leone’s films, people may get the impression that you are old friends, almost schoolmates, but actually you never scored one his movies. What do you think about his cinema?
His films are gorgeous, in my opinion both Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Gran Torino (2008) are masterly written and realized. Eastwood is an excellent author with a great personality.
Why did you never work on his films?
You know, he did call me when he started directing movies. I said no, as a sign of respect for Leone. It didn’t feel right to work for him, as he had acted in Sergio’s films; it would have felt like betraying our friendship. It might seem absurd, but that was my reason for refusing.
He contacted me twice, and then he understood my point and stopped. I was relieved when I heard that he started composing his scores himself. . . . “Thank goodness,” I told myself. The last time I met him was actually in 2007, at the Oscar ceremony.
Along with Two Mules for Sister Sara by Don Siegel, another film featuring Clint Eastwood that you scored was In the Line of Fire (1993) by Wolfgang Petersen.
In that film, Eastwood’s antagonist is John Malkovich, who was nominated as best supporting actor. It was my first collaboration with Wolfgang Petersen, and it turned out to be a very lucky partnership, because that film was a hit in Hollywood and marked the beginning of his success in the United States.
We met in Los Angeles—I was traveling all the time in that period. We brainstormed several ideas and then I went back to Rome, where I recorded the music.
I have always preferred recording in Rome, and I have every time I could. Besides my score, the film also featured some hits by Miles Davis, such as “All Blues.” Davis is one of my favorite trumpet players. Petersen was so satisfied with my work that for a moment we toyed with the idea that I would conduct the orchestra live at the Berlinale premiere.
Unfortunately, nothing came out of it, due to some organizational hitches. It was a positive experience, and the tight editing rhythm of the film, the action and the suspense scenes allowed me to work on rapid and tensional pieces. Regrettably, I never again crossed paths with this phenomenal director, but I greatly enjoyed watching The Perfect Storm (2000).34
What was the first US film you agreed to work on?
Two Mules for Sister Sara, which you mentioned earlier, starring Shirley MacLaine (Warren Beatty’s sister) and Clint Eastwood. The director was Don Siegel.
How was it to work with him?
He was a brilliant director, but we didn’t communicate much. On the one hand, there was the language problem; on the other it seemed to me that Siegel wasn’t used to talking much even in his own language. He didn’t offer me the kind of feedback that I was looking for. He was a friendly man and an excellent filmmaker, but he acted like he was fine with anything, including the music. Maybe it was a form of respect toward me, but in these cases, as I already said, I begin to feel a little uneasy because I no longer understand what the other person thinks about me and my way of working.
Is it very different to work with directors from other countries?
It depends. Usually it’s not, when one works in top-class productions. Generally speaking, I must say that I find American directors to be more pragmatic. One name above all, Barry Levinson, with whom I worked on Bugsy (1991). He was not the type to waste time chitchatting about art. He was rather focused on how to technically and aesthetically work out a scene, which is a way of doing things that has many positive aspects.
When did you go to the United States for the first time?
I think it was for Exorcist II: The Heretic by John Boorman, between 1976 and 1977. I remember the first time we met was in Dublin, where Boorman was shooting, and we watched the film together. He allowed me a considerable amount of freedom; I took some initiative and scored everything before going to Los Angeles to record the soundtrack.
John Boorman once said that you work with passion for the cinema because you love it: “He is a tremendous enthusiast and he loves films. What he’s doing with music is responding like an audience.”35How was it to work with him?
Everything worked out for the best. You know, at the time Los Angeles had the reputation of being a place where one could make six recordings with six different orchestras and compare them all, only to realize that they were all equally extraordinary. There was a lot of competition and many excellent musicians to work with. For that film I wrote pieces like “Little Afro-Flemish Mass” for a multiple chorus formed by six or seven solo singers, percussion, and other instruments, and “Night Flight,” for which I used the same multiple chorus but with nontraditional vocal techniques.36 In both pieces, each part was thought out to be independent; it could play or remain silent depending on my arbitrary decision to give soloists the signal. This procedure engendered a free counterpoint, an agglomerated texture where the harmonic relations were no longer decisive and where each resulting combination could be different every time. I remember that the director employed both the pieces in a very clever way—he used “Night Flight” in the moment in which Father Philip Lamont, the exorcist, meets the demon Pazuzu shortly before climbing on his wings; in that context, one of the chorus’s voices becomes precisely that of the demon.
Even more than in “Little Afro-Flemish Mass,” it seems like there is never a union between the parts in “Night Flight.” The single hysteric caprice wins over the combination of tones.
It’s true, this is primarily due to the underlying harmony and the performance of each single part. Based on my experience thus far, I was very anxious that the recording with the American choir would turn out good. I arrived in Los Angeles a week ahead of schedule, because I was so stressed about it and I wanted to attend the choir’s rehearsal. The first thing I did after I landed was rush into the studio where they were rehearsing. As I walked through the door and approached the rehearsal room, I could hear those voices gradually becoming more intense—they were rehearsing the “Little Afro-Flemish Mass.” They were incredibly talented and extraordinarily committed. “Holy cow,” I gulped, and almost broke out in tears of joy. They had already studied everything. When I entered, they stopped, and I applauded. I was moved. “Bravissimi,” I exclaimed with great emotion. Thinking about it still gives me goosebumps. Suddenly one of them approached me and told me, “You should listen to how well our choir conductor sings.” The conductor was a black woman, like nearly all of them, with a head full of hair. I remember her well. “Madam, I was told you sing beautifully, why don’t you join the choir?” I asked her. She accepted and went to the microphone. Her voice was so profound that it sounded like it came from a baritone, and she knew all the parts by heart.
Unfortunately, despite the emotional beauty of that experience and the good craft of the film itself, the movie was not as successful as its predecessor. Curiously enough, in 1987, William Friedkin, the director of the first The Exorcist (1973), called me as well, asking me to collaborate on Rampage (1987). This film was a drama, rather than a horror, the story of a serial killer—a lot of blood, too much for me. Still, I accepted.
Have you ever considered moving to the United States?
Once, Dino De Laurentiis proposed it to me and even offered me a free villa, but I didn’t take him seriously.
How come? What was your relationship with him like?
We met several times, but to be honest we never really got along, I guess both for behavioral reasons and because more than once he got me interested in films that he eventually gave to others. He would offer me something and then vanish.
Such as, for instance?
In 1984 he offered me Dune by David Lynch, a very intense and peculiar filmmaker with whom I would have liked to work at least once. I accepted, but De Laurentiis disappeared, and only later did I find out that he made the film with Toto. I pretended that nothing happened; I usually avoid arguing over situations of that sort. But I started to trust him less and less.
A good dose of fatalism.
His offer to move to Los Angeles predated those experiences, but he had already accustomed me to such behaviors. So I refused his invitation and, frankly, I don’t regret it at all.
In spite of these rifts, however, De Laurentiis was a great producer. He often came up with ingenious ideas and had a huge sense of pragmatism. I was told that whenever he was unsatisfied with the way a film was edited, he would lock himself up in the editing room and recut the film the way he wanted. In other words, he was the type of person who claims total control over his productions. He believed in his investments.
After the two incidents with Hercules’ Pills by Salce, which I already mentioned, and The Bible: In the Beginning by John Huston (1966), the first production I worked with him on was Menage Italian Style (Ménage all’italiana, 1965) by Franco Indovina. He liked my score, so he offered me two westerns. I accepted on the condition that, in addition to those, he would also give me two other films, which were not westerns. Unfortunately, I had to play these games with him as with many other producers.
You just mentioned the hiccup in John Huston’s The Bible, which was eventually scored by Toshiro Mayuzumi. What happened exactly?
RCA, the company I was working for at the time, around 1964–1965, asked me to score this film produced by Dino De Laurentiis. It was a big opportunity for me, as I had not yet been involved in movies of that importance. The Bible was an international production, and Huston would have been the first non-Italian director I would have had the privilege to work with. Initially they had hired Petrassi, but his score, though good and interesting, did not convince the director. It was at that point that RCA stepped in and offered me the film.
I hadn’t seen a single frame of the movie; I was just asked to prepare a piece inspired by the Creation as narrated in the Torah and the Bible. Aside from that request, I was left completely free. In short, my task was to demonstrate my worth and convince them.
I was very dedicated to the music for the Creation sequence, and I decided of my own initiative that I would add another piece related to the Tower of Babel. I remember that in the latter I added a Hebrew text, which my wife brought me from the Roman synagogue after an audience with the rabbi. He selected the passages and recorded them with the right pronunciation, then translated them for me.
Thanks to this text, I managed to complete the second piece quickly: voices enter on a C pedal point of contrabasses; the first voice calls, the second seems to respond, and so forth. Then, little by little, new voices join in until they become a chorus, a great crescendo of soloists, leading to a nondissonant burst of brass instruments, five trumpets, and a trombone. That’s how the piece ends.
I recorded both pieces under the direction of Franco Ferrara in RCA’s magnificent Studio A. Not only did Ferrara conduct the RAI orchestra and choir wonderfully as usual, but he also corrected a “bridge” of “The Creation,” which I had written in too much of a hurry.
The realization convinced everybody—the company, the editor Castella,37 and above all Huston, who congratulated me vividly. Everything was going beyond any positive expectation, when at a certain point Dino De Laurentiis asked me to make the film directly with him, totally cutting RCA out of the deal. His offer was generous, but incorrect.
I dryly refused, though I was aware of the consequences. I was bound to RCA by an exclusive licensing, and apart from my contract, the label had already invested a lot of money in that production. I revealed what had happened to the company and tried to reach an agreement, which would have allowed me to keep the film.
The record company refused, pointing out that exclusive licensing did not leave any room for negotiations. The chance blew by, and the film’s score was entrusted to the Japanese composer Mayuzumi, who did an excellent job, by the way.
Apart from The Rover (1967) by Terence Young, which was produced in Italy, the first movies you were involved in that were produced abroad were French productions, namely, by Henri Verneuil and Yves Boisset,38the Russian production The Red Tent (Krasnaya Palatka, 1969) by Michail Kalatozov, and the Yugoslavian film The Master and Margaret (A mester és Margarita, 1972) by Aleksandar Petrovic. Except for Two Mules for Sister Sara, made in 1970, the American market had to wait until 1977 to hear from you.
In that year, you scored Exorcist II: The Heretic by Boorman, Orca by Michael Anderson, then in 1978, Days of Heaven by Terence Malick. Is there a reason for your belated debut in the United States?
As I was saying, especially after The Dollar Trilogy, several US directors and producers got in touch with me because they liked Leone’s films. Therefore, they invariably proposed me westerns. Two Mules for Sister Sara was an excellent movie with Clint Eastwood, and Siegel was a brilliant director, but yet again it was a western.
Although I enjoyed working on American cinema, I was born in Rome and for no reason would I have abandoned it, because I care for my affects and my town. My life is here. Moreover, I’ve never liked flying. Had I been from Los Angeles, I would have certainly worked more in Hollywood. . . . However, could and should have make little sense; I follow Woody Allen’s motto: “Like my mother used to say, ‘If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a trolley car.’ My mother didn’t have wheels, she had varicose veins.”39
Do you reckon that the US film industry bore a grudge against you for your refusals?
I don’t think so. However, I can’t deny that not winning the Oscar for The Mission in 1987 particularly disappointed me; not so much for the defeat, but because the winner was ’Round Midnight (1986) by Bertrand Tavernier, which features mostly nonoriginal music, notwithstanding Herbie Hancock’s excellent arrangements. Obviously, I have never believed in a plot against me, but even the Academy’s audience openly protested on that occasion.
I must confess, anyway, that it was up to me to decide to slow down relationships with American cinema for a period, and for a precise reason: I found out that my fee, one of the highest in Europe, was comparable to that of a mediocre composer in the United States.
In other words, Americans were very familiar with my work since the days of Leone’s movies, and I even found out that my soundtrack for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ranked second in an important film music ranking of the last hundred years, right behind John Williams’s soundtrack for Star Wars (dir. George Lucas, 1977). As I didn’t have enough information about the fee issue, I decided to rein in my collaborations. I never dealt directly with this part of the business because of shyness, and nobody ever warned me about it.
Still, when The Mission came out, it was a turning point in my career, and my fee was adjusted accordingly.
Besides my last trip to the Academy in 2016, I have returned often to the United States lately, especially for my concerts, and I’m always glad to go.
Are there any US composers you esteem and admire?
There are many. I’ll start by naming Quincy Jones, who is a friend of mine, beside the fact that I greatly admire his work as an arranger, producer, and composer for film. He was the one who handed me my last Academy Award. He is a great connoisseur of the orchestra and its resources. Among his many film scores, the one for The Pawnbroker (1964), by Sidney Lumet, impressed me the most—I think it’s just fantastic.
Along with Jones, I would undoubtedly mention John Williams, a complete musician who has scored myriads of films, some of which are known worldwide.
Then, among the classics, I surely put Bernard Herrmann, who became a landmark especially thanks to his collaborations with Hitchcock, as well as Max Steiner, Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, and the French composer Maurice Jarre.
This being said, however, I noted a rather common trend in American cinema that I don’t approve. It would seem that entrusting the orchestration of a soundtrack to third parties is a totally usual praxis there. As it happens, famous composers sign scores when they have actually just written the themes, the so-called condensed score.40
It was an immense delusion for me to find out about such a widespread phenomenon, because I come from a background in which orchestration is an integral part of musical thinking, as much as melody, harmony, and every other musical parameter.
Unfortunately, today music is thought of merely as “melody,” and everything surrounding it is considered of secondary importance. This is absurd, because in my opinion a composer should be the one who writes the music from the beginning to the end. This practice was and still remains common in Italy too, among some authors and singer-songwriters who advertise themselves as film music composers. I too began my career “assisting” established composers in this activity. But, to realize that so many American legends work like this. . . .
I found out about this in 1983, when Gianluigi Gelmetti involved me in the organization of a film music concert at the Parco dei Daini at Villa Borghese in Rome. It was broadcast by RAI, and we performed music by Steiner, Bernstein, Goldsmith, Williams, Herrmann, Jarre, and myself.41 On that occasion, we had the scores delivered from the United States, and I was thus able to read some of them, full of curiosity. The score for Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) was magnificent, clear, written by one hand only: Herrmann’s. The score for Gone with the Wind (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939), on the contrary, consisted of five stems noted by Steiner, while someone else orchestrated the rest. From that moment on, I paid more attention to the end credits and realized that many composers worked like that. Even today, it continues to be beyond my understanding.
Speaking of John Williams, it was very moving to see the two of you sitting side by side on February 28, 2016, waiting for the verdict of the Academy Award. Your hug, the moment after Quincy Jones pronounced your name, and your speech in which you reaffirmed your admiration for Williams are very eloquent gestures that need no further comments, in the face of those who still claim that competition comes before cooperation and self-respect—which automatically becomes respect for others.
I know, however, that you were quite critical of the music for Star Wars, a legendary saga that started right at the end of the seventies. Is it the science fiction genre that doesn’t appeal to you, or is there something else?
I like science fiction. My criticism was not directed to the genre or to Star Wars in particular, which I enjoyed a lot from the very beginning of the saga, but to the scoring style with which (especially Hollywood) composers and directors have made us used to.
What seems hazardous to me is to associate a march, no matter how well written, to outer space. Oftentimes, solutions of this sort stem not so much from the lack of creativity or skills, but from mere commercial concerns—as consequences of the rules imposed by the film industry.
I attempted a new direction with my score for The Humanoid (L’umanoide, 1979) by Aldo Lado, in which I devised a six-voice double fugue based on tonal harmony (the six voices were split in half between the orchestra and the organ, with a double subject and a double countersubject). The piece was titled “Incontro a sei” [Six-Faced Encounter]; the work was grueling, but very stimulating at the same time.42 Although that production could not remotely compete with Star Wars, to me this piece seemed to somewhat mirror the imaginary of the universe, the infinite spaces and the sky, without giving in to clichés.
Obviously, such experiments were self-imposed necessities, rather than obligatory pathways. Still, speaking both as a composer and a filmgoer, I believe that a rather simplistic standardization of stylistic choices has made film music less interesting over the years, in terms of both conceptual depth and compositional methods.
John Williams is an exceptionally gifted composer whom I greatly respect. Like all of his other film scores, his music for Star Wars is also the work of a true musician; and yet, in that case, he made a commercial choice—understandable, but still commercial. I could not have scored Star Wars in that way, maybe that’s why neither Lucas nor Disney has ever considered hiring me for the new trilogy . . . at least not so far.
He smiles.
A director, rather than a musician, who in my opinion had great intuition about how to musically complement outer space was Kubrick, when he used a very slow performance of Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). I immediately found this solution highly compelling and sophisticated.
Your first Academy Award nomination dates back to 1979, for Days of Heaven by Terrence Malick. It was the only film that you scored for him.
It’s one of my favorite movies. Malick came to Rome in 1978, after we had discussed the film for months on the phone, with the aid of an interpreter. Those phone calls led me to draft eighteen themes that served him to make his selection.
I found that he was very attentive to the music, he even asked me to insert a quotation from The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, which I did in one of the cues I composed for the film.
Malick is a poet, a man of culture, with interests spanning painting to sculpture to literature. His film describes a world outside of time, a magic place where poetry and reality coexist. It is one of the films that I feel closest to, even after such a long time.
I was utterly stunned by the imagery and the sophisticated cinematography, which had an impact on me. The natural landscapes of Canada where the film was shot were truly suggestive, and the farmers’ rural activities conveyed the simplicity of the origin of mankind. Evidently I was not the only one to be struck by Néstor Almendros’s mastery, as the film won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography: Almendros’s work can almost be considered an homage to the great nineteenth-century landscape painters.
In scoring some of the sequences I got the inspiration straight from the images, aiming to achieve a sort of solemn symphony of image and sound. At a later stage of production, despite our long exchange during the spotting sessions, Malick asked me to utilize different instruments from the ones I had originally planned. Usually I am not welcoming toward these kinds of interferences, but in this case an excellent dialogue had developed between us. It was Terrence himself who afterward changed his mind on this subject, and so we decided to go back to my earlier orchestrations. I usually trust my initial intuition, which proved to be right on that occasion, considering that it led me to my first Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, my score did not win, but it heightened my reputation in US cinema.
Do you remember who won?
Certainly: Giorgio Moroder, with Midnight Express (dir. Alan Parker, 1978). The other nominees were Jerry Goldsmith with The Boys from Brazil (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978), Dave Grusin, and John Williams, who respectively scored Heaven Can Wait (dir. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, 1978) and Superman (dir. Richard Donner, 1978).
Why didn’t you collaborate again with Malick?
Nothing personal. Our relationship was great over the years, and once he asked me to make a Japanese musical, which unfortunately we never realized.
I was terribly sorry for not being in The Thin Red Line (1998), an extraordinary film, which came out exactly twenty years after Days of Heaven. He did try to reach me, but in that period I was traveling so much that we didn’t manage to talk. There was a truly unpleasant misunderstanding, which came about not due to him or myself, but to my agent. By the time things were finally cleared up, it was too late: Malick was compelled to finalize contracts and went on without me.
Have you always dealt with foreign directors via interpreters?
Yes, story of my life, though it bothers me, as I’ve said. From time to time this issue has made me feel deeply uneasy, but unfortunately I’ve never found the time to study English. I have worked like a madman all my life; I might have managed to learn a new language only through an incredible amount of commitment.
Sometimes the dialogue with directors didn’t work out precisely because of my linguistic inadequacy. Not only did this happen with Don Siegel, as I mentioned. John Carpenter too, who commissioned me the score for The Thing (1982), talked very little with me. In reality, he hardly said a word and even vanished during our first meeting, right after the film preview.
In what sense?
It was a very curious happening. When he came to Rome, we watched the film together in the hotel where he was staying. As soon as the screening was over, he took the VHS with him and went away, leaving me alone in the room. Was it a sign of respect, modesty, or what? After all, he had insisted so much on us meeting (he had even confessed to me that he used my music from Once Upon a Time in the West at his wedding).
I went back home. With the notes I had taken, I composed several different options covering as many different genres as possible—dissonant, consonant, and in some cases I reprised the idea of “multiple” scores which I had already employed with Argento and in other TV productions. I devised two versions of a quite long piece—in Rome I prepared a version for synthesizers only, while in Los Angeles I recorded an instrumental version of the same together with the other cues.
The recordings went perfectly, all the tracks were ready and things were going smoothly, to the point that I received enthusiastic compliments at the end of our sessions. “Ah, thank goodness!” I whispered to myself in a sigh of relief. They were supposed to take care of the mix, so I left for Rome happy and satisfied.
I waited for the film premiere; I was curious to assess the final outcome. Only at that point, with my enormous surprise, did I realize the “misdeed”; there was no trace of the LA recording! Carpenter had used the version with synthesizers throughout the film. . . . I was astonished, if not upset. What could I do at that point? I had to live with it.
It’s customary of Carpenter to compose his own scores for his films, aiding himself with synthesizers. What do you think of the end result?
I think that, in spite of his being an amateur musician, his music very well intertwines with the images in his films. Escape from New York (1981) is an excellent case in point, in my opinion. I must say that when he contacted me in 1982, I was already aware of this habit of his, but he insisted so much on working with me. . . . By the way, cases like his have always fascinated me and made me reflect a great deal over the years.
I wouldn’t be honest intellectually if I didn’t acknowledge that amateur musicians sometimes accomplish remarkable results. They may be extemporary or momentary, but can turn out as convincing as those by an established professional. I believe that the simplicity and the functionality that one is obliged to maintain when composing for cinema mostly depend on the fact that music is usually secondary as compared to the visuals and other sound elements in a film, such as the dialogue, among other things. Experienced composers probably achieve simplicity by means of reduction, almost by frustrating their creativity; for amateurs, instead, simplicity is often an absolutely normal starting point. This is an aspect of film music that some may even perceive as a limit. This sort of constraint can heavily affect our ability to distinguish between what is good and what is not; it can go as far as to level any attempt at analysis and end up in relativism. In sum, one might even conclude that, given that simplicity is the ultimate goal, why care about how it is achieved?
Now that we enter a more specific field, would you mind expanding on the more serious issues you’ve faced after deciding to devote your creativity to cinema’s service? That is, which criterion do you follow when deciding whether or not to accept a film commission, and to what extent do you adapt your way of composing to different projects?
In the beginning I accepted everything, because I needed to work. Later, I became more selective and demanding. In any event, once I say yes to a director, I always work to the best of my abilities. It is important to understand the context, in that, as I have explained already, it affects the composer’s approach. Put simply, movies can be divided into three categories: art films (the so-called films d’essai), overtly commercial films, and films that fall in the “middle.” The last are movies that are ambitious enough to attain a good artistic level, but that don’t renounce accessibility to a wide audience, accordingly they don’t cut themselves off from the possibility of box-office success.
We have already talked about art films and the experimental pathways they open up for a composer; you also mentioned your necessity to maintain a high musical quality even when scoring deliberately commercial movies. What can you tell me about “middle” films?
They are the most complex category, in that they carry lots of constraints along with them. They generate all kinds of issues and a higher level of responsibility—if composers act with “conscience,” they won’t allow themselves to give into facile and banal solutions and will do their best to help the film achieve good artistic and commercial success. It goes without saying that I feel this to be the category closest to my way of being. I have basically always found myself in this situation. But let me go back to the constraints, at least to a part of them. One should keep in mind that, whenever a composer starts scoring a film, he or she normally engages with three figures: the director, the music publisher, and the public.
I shall start with directors, who (sometimes together with the producers) are responsible for choosing the musician they want to work with. Their demands are motivated by their expectations of the film and must be taken into the highest account.
The music publisher is the individual or the company in charge of everything concerning the organization and the realization of a film score. The publisher and the record label may coincide. They may even go as far as to recommend a composer for a production, based on their regards and predilections, but especially on the preexisting agreements they have undertaken with the composers they have in their catalogue—regarding soundtrack expenses, collaborations for commercial use of the music, mid-term and longtime interests, and so on and so forth. . . . After all, the less the publishers spend, the more they earn. The more commercial the music, the broader the public likely to enjoy it, and the higher the profit.
It is thus very easy to understand why, whoever invests in a film, be it the producer, the music publisher, or anybody else, tends to prefer a well-known composer to an emergent one, in that the former is more likely to offer guarantees of success. Similarly, commercial composers are usually favored over experimental ones, because the latter are less likely to give in to compromises that would put their expressivity at stake for the mere sake of success.
This is the kind of framework I have gotten accustomed to throughout my experience, notwithstanding the many changes in recent years. This system entails tangible and quite serious consequences, in that it implies that a composer’s work is first and foremost a product that must generate revenues, regardless of the actual value it brings to the film.
Here we come to the last type of constraint, though not the least in terms of importance—the public, with its tastes and demands. Where does taste originate, what determines it? Undoubtedly, all the elements discussed so far have an impact upon it, but there are also other reasons, which are frequently overlooked. They are somewhat linked to the development of certain kinds of music, which, in one way or another, have modified the nature of communication throughout the twentieth century. What is modern music, what is a film composer expected to write in order to belong to present times? There is not a univocal answer, because our time is not univocal.
Avant-garde music, which was part of my background, increasingly detached itself from the masses during the second half of the past century. All too often today definitions are confusing: the approximation and superficiality with which terms like “classical,” “modern,” “contemporary,” and “commercial” music are mishmashed is a sign of the widespread ignorance and lack of critical conscience about what happens nowadays in music.
As Pasolini well understood so long ago, consumerist societies are founded upon advertising. Now, advertising requires the utmost simplicity of a message, in order to be easily metabolized by buyers.
Obviously, the goal of commercial advertising is not to wake up consciences, but to sell a product in a highly condensed time frame. For a composer of advertisement music, this opens up different technical options—pursuing the regularity of phrases, the incisiveness and brevity of melodies, employing the traditional tonal system, and, of course, reducing the variations of these parameters to a minimum, aiming for repetitiveness and timbre nuancing. These are the keys to commercial success (which, after all, have features in common with what we know about primitive music).
Necessity and constraints become integral elements of the writing style, ways of expression in themselves. They forcedly keep the public within the boundaries of what they already know, discourage new experiences and critical thought, and invite passive consumption.
Technological inventions such as the synthesizer and the computer surely brought about something good, besides making it easier for anyone to claim to be a musician. At the same time, however, they have pushed dubious musical products light years forward. We touched on this topic earlier, when, drawing on Carpenter’s case, we addressed cinema’s demand of simplicity and the confusion between amateurs and professionals.
For the wide audience, “electronic music” does not have anything to do with the kind of music I was interested in during my years as a student. That was a music of research and experimentation; today it is instead mistaken with dance music and DJing, as well as with the music of some rock and pop bands.
This is the kind of environment in which composers of film music are immersed. Provided that they aim to preserve a moral and ethical dignity, they must cleverly figure their way in this scenario. They should try to reinvent or rediscover their own background each and every time, put it into historical perspective and re-experience the development of music history in the first person. In other words, they must mediate between their own culture and the sociocultural context of their time, split as they are between the director’s, the publisher’s and the public’s conditioning, and all other correlated dynamics. Neither do they want nor can they afford to lose touch with the audience’s favor, nor should they look forward to disregarding their agreements with directors and publishers. On the other hand, though, they may aspire to be true to themselves, strive for their personal progress, and—why not?—continue to be happy in their work, carrying out their job to their best ability.
Finding a middle ground is a source of distress every time, not devoid of sufferance and fatigue, as one must disentangle themselves from an intricate and ever-changing set of dos and don’ts. I believe I’ve followed this path, this research, over the years, that I’ve gradually come to define a “double aesthetics.” Getting to nuance it and putting it in practice represented the key motor that has kept my creativity going and my identity challenged until today. But it was a gradual conquest . . . and I am still working on it.
What do you mean by “double aesthetics,” more precisely?
The term refers to the necessary mediation I was talking about. On the one hand, it is as though I was “using” the public to make myself understood as a musician, on the other I strive to stay active, without giving in to banality or admitting defeat. It is necessary to respect and inform the audience, by suggesting to them, even unconsciously, that other things exist beyond what one is accustomed to listening to.
It almost sounds like you are interested in a pedagogic approach. . . .
No, I have never thought about it in that way. I have always done it for myself. I usually take the average musical culture of the public into account and bear in mind the standard prerogatives of mass-media music communication. As I was saying, a strong analogy can be traced between the features of primitive music and modern music, especially the music used in TV commercials. This analogy often leads me to reason on the fact that adapting to constraints is at times acceptable and perhaps even positive.
The double aesthetics thus also has to do with the ability to combine historically present procedures with modern technique.
In order to convey a sense of mystery and irrational abstraction to the viewers, I have sometimes drawn on pointillist, electronic, even aleatory compositional criteria, and combined them with the tonal system. One example can be seen in Giordano Bruno by Montaldo, in the way I approached the philosopher’s abstract speculations. Other examples might be war films and, most of all, the detective movies I scored, where the traumas of characters and situations are intermingled in dramatic sequences.
To sum up, I could say that double aesthetics bridges elements that are apparently far apart, both within and beyond a purely musical context. And, yes, I believe it has enabled me to draw parts of myself closer, that I would have otherwise considered opposite and irreconcilable.
I suffered greatly due to the extremely limited audience feedback received on extraordinary films such as Half a Man by Vittorio De Seta or A Quiet Place in the Country by Elio Petri. For those films, in agreement with the directors, I had dared to adopt languages that belonged mainly or exclusively to my absolute music. After these delusions I sought to develop a personal writing “system” that would allow me to adapt contemporary procedures of musical composition to the comprehension necessities of the average cinemagoer.
Would you mind going into more detail about this “system”?
Sure. I tried to transpose Schoenberg’s twelve-tone theory into a seven-tone system, and ordered all the other musical parameters following the rules of Webern’s serialism. More generally, I drew on the compositional techniques developed by the Second School of Vienna. I organized timbres, pitches, silences, durations, dynamics, and the like, within a harmonically tonal way of writing. Thanks to this system, each sound acquires an equal importance: the characteristic tensions and attractions that are so typical of the tonal system (the seventh going downward, the leading tone going up to the tonic, and all the other rules we have assimilated over an extremely broad and continuous period of time) lose their historical and dynamic qualities; this way, sounds are freed from their reciprocal constraints.
Realizing that it is easier to memorize three sounds at a time, rather than seven or twelve, was a natural consequence of my day-to-day experience, as much as finding out that static harmonies facilitate the listener, or that the repetitiveness of short and fine-profiled melodic cells is easier to remember than long and articulate melodies.
As far as harmony, or rather chords are concerned, at times (though not indiscriminately) I opt to ease the bass from the supporting function with which it is typically bestowed in the tonal tradition. On certain occasions, I even get rid of the isochronic relations between the other voices. In this way I am able to create freer harmonic groups that consist of the same notes that one can relate to traditional chords, and yet—instead of implying a triad (tonic, third, and fifth)—they may include up to six or seven notes that I link to that specific chord. Other times, I even go as far as to dismiss these vertical relations altogether, and choose sounds according to different criteria. In this way I create a harmony that sounds suspended and ever-changing, static and yet dynamic, giving way to a sense of familiarity which at the same time remains fleeting, not fully graspable.
From this standpoint too, I pursued a research path that would lead me to integrate techniques derived from atonality with the traditional tonal system, and I did this by isolating and limiting myself to certain chords, as Wagner had done in the first bars of Das Rheingold (where he used only one E♭-major chord for several minutes). None of this was in fact a response to external pressures (or at least I have never interpreted this research as a demand from my clients), but rather as a moral commitment to compose dignified music.
When you talk about moral commitment, you introduce a very personal note, a necessity of the man before the composer; could you elaborate more in depth on this?
As I dispose of a limited amount of exterior freedom, I try to feed a sort of secret inner freedom, which has to comply both with the requirements of my commission and with my own idea of music, allowing me to defend my musical identity. This is how I define morality.
I have always thought of myself like one of those monks in the Middle Ages, capable of the same concealed, almost hidden, yet steady tenacity. The most exterior facet of this attitude is perhaps perceivable to everybody; proof of this is in the number and the variety of films I have scored throughout the years, in the strenuous attempt to shape my musical mindset. . . .
I know I have compensated the necessity to constantly adapt to the different demands of each movie with a personal research guideline aimed at reconciling musical worlds and genres that are apparently distant. This guideline responds to a commitment I feel deep within, almost a vocation that I believe to be the mission of composers in this day and age.
Digging even deeper, I could claim that in my attempt to synthesize and fuse together the highbrow and the popular, the poetic and the prosaic, the folk and the classical, I have possibly found the way to rescue my “craft” from pushing me into indolence and boredom. Maybe I have found my true self.
All this has gradually become a style, by which I mean a set of technical and expressive intentions that lead to a personal syntax of composition—a sort of individualization.
I should add that this has not only functioned as a moral rescue on a personal level. Especially on those occasions when I emphasized experiences I felt close to my deeper compositional needs, I realized that the unforeseeable can happen, that is, the miracle of comprehensibility, the pleasure of listening, and the public consensus. On other occasions, to the contrary, the same determination cost me great dissent.
Which have you enjoyed more as a spectator, between theater and television?
Certainly theater. I hardly watch television, and when I do, it is usually either the news or sports. On Sundays, for instance, I enjoy watching AS Roma games.43
As for theater, instead, my preference is undoubtedly Shakespeare, many of whose tragedies I learned by heart when I worked as a young composer trumpeter in the Company of Renzo Ricci & Eva Magni in the early fifties.44
For a long time Maria and I regularly frequented the main theaters in Rome. We had three subscriptions: two for us and a third for our children, one of whom would always decide to join us at the last minute.
Are you fond of musicals?
No, but I liked West Side Story (1957) by Leonard Bernstein. In that musical, music always starts from a reality, from a level that is internal to the scene and reaches a more external, abstract level. A boy snaps his fingers, another joins in, and then more add in until the whole orchestra enters. Music starts, blends with reality, and leads to somewhere else as it continues.
Years ago Roman Polanski asked me to compose two musicals, but nothing came out of it.
What about Michael Jackson’s musicals?
I don’t like them very much; they seem too exaggerated to me, overly produced, somewhat unspontaneous. I can recognize the gimmicks, the artifices of fiction; this being said, however, I’m certainly not denying that they are well conceived.
What do you think about new American TV series and the ways they are devised?
I don’t watch those that are distributed in Italy.
You have scored several TV series and films. How does your way of composing change when you approach the small screen?
TV productions present notable differences as compared to cinema: usually the time and space for the music are reduced, and rarely is the grandeur of a movie theater achieved. All this notwithstanding, my approach has always been the same with television as with cinema, dialoguing with the director, chasing the right idea capable of interlocking what is seen with what is heard.
Moreover, TV productions are always cheaper than film productions and tend to chase the audience’s taste, which is generally very varied. This usually leads to a lesser research, to privileging the safest way.
Speaking of which, I remember my score for The Betrothed (I promessi sposi, 1989), an excellent TV series based on the very well-known novel by Alessandro Manzoni.45 The series was directed by Salvatore Nocita. I turned to a thematic writing, which I linked to the psychology of the characters finely rendered by the actors.
The cast was phenomenal: Danny Quinn, Delphine Forest, Alberto Sordi, Dario Fo, and Franco Nero. I also composed two rather sophisticated themes for the confession of The Unnamed [F. Murray Abraham] and for the series finale. In the end, Nocita said he found them to be too “highbrow” for the television public, so he dropped them.
But this is not always the case. . . .
It isn’t, you’re right. A great director I have never had the pleasure to work with is Ermanno Olmi.46 He made a TV movie called Genesis: The Creation and the Flood (Genesi: la creazione e il diluvio, 1994), which in my opinion is a masterpiece, very epic. It contradicts a set of stereotypes typical of television, some of which I’ve just mentioned. Italy has an excellent tradition of TV movies—beginning in the seventies, RAI produced truly big-budget productions.
Even though it was a British-Italian production, Moses, the Lawgiver (Mosé, la legge del deserto, dir. Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) was one of the first big-budget TV movies to be realized in Italy. What do you remember most of this?
I worked on this project for six months, one and a half of which I spent in the recording studio. It was a huge endeavor, which brought me a lot of satisfaction, but also a few minor annoyances.
I wrote both of the main themes for the viola, which is one of the closest instruments to the human voice, in terms of texture and timbre. Dino Asciolla’s performance was flawless, as always [Example 3.7].47
Example 3.7: Moses, the Lawgiver, excerpt of the main theme
A couple of years afterward, a version of the film was recut as a movie and I had to re-edit the music for it. The production decided to engage an Israeli composer named Dov Seltzer to write the incidental source music, for the dance numbers and so forth. He worked very well. When I met him on set, he very politely asked me to not replace his music in postproduction. I reassured him immediately; I had no intention to do so, as I found his music excellent. And that ended there.
Then, as I was reviewing the footage during postproduction, I noted that in one sequence the character of Aaron sang a three-note song and repeated the word “Israel” three times. De Bosio, the director, told me that it was a traditional Hebrew song; I then decided to quote it in my piece “Lamentazione seconda” [Second Lamentation].48 Everybody reacted enthusiastically to the idea. Only that, after the film was over, Seltzer called me to warn me that that theme was his composition. I tried to explain how it went, but he did not want to hear it. We had to start a legal process, and eventually the issue was settled with a transaction in which Seltzer became the author of the very short song (three repeated notes). I really disapproved of the way he behaved. Needless to say, had I known that he was the author of that melody, I would have written a different theme.
In 1982, you scored another big-budget TV series, Marco Polo, produced by the RAI and directed by Giuliano Montaldo. The film received several nominations and acknowledgments, including two Emmys.
The producer was Vincenzo Labella, who had also produced Moses. Montaldo and I were very close after all the movies we had made together since 1967. It was a monumental work, which allowed me to express myself through a broad spectrum of musical languages. “Farewell to Mother,” “Ricordo della madre” [Memory of Mother], and “Nostalgia of Father” are all pieces that deal with the memories of the Polo family. “On the Way to the Orient,” “The Legend of the Great Wall,” and “The Great March of Kublai” are the pieces describing the new horizons discovered by the protagonist.49
I then chose two solo instruments, the harp and the viola, supported by a light string orchestra, to evoke the more introspective side of the main character, played by Ken Marshall [Example 3.8].
Example 3.8: Marco Polo, excerpt of the opening credits’ music
It was challenging for me to compose such a thick and eclectic score to accompany Marco Polo’s journey in the unknown Oriental territories, to the point that I felt compelled to visit those places and grasp their tastes, timbres, and sounds.
Montaldo and I studied the details of the historical epoch, the musical references, and all this turned into a crucial research-based, experimental study for me. Film music can and should involve research, otherwise it’s meaningless. I sought to reproduce the static harmonies of the Oriental music I had gotten acquainted with during my journey.
Obviously, for me it was important to “evoke” those types of music, rather than nitpicking at them . . . but those efforts were fundamental for me.
The concept of harmonic and melodic spatialization, rarefaction, and expansion concerns indeed many of your scores for both the big and the small screen. I am thinking of the above-mentioned Moses, the Lawgiver, The Desert of the Tartars (Il deserto dei tartari, 1976) by Valerio Zurlini, but also of Arabian Nights by Pasolini and Secret of the Sahara by Negrin.
Long, expanded, and scattered semiphrases, distended pedal points, and, on a more general level, the described spatialization created an expansive and extended musical breath, analogous to the boundless lands covered with sand and soaked in the sun which the film shows. Space and time, between the graphic signs on a music sheet and what the eye perceives through the images, could they be compared? My answer was an affirmative, yes.
The main theme of Secret of the Sahara as well unwinds over a static chord, evoking the stillness of the desert. The piece opens with a long introductory section, before reaching its melodic and expressive peak and folding back on itself until concluding with the same idea from the beginning.
Secret of the Sahara marked my encounter with Alberto Negrin, with whom I would work many other times in the following years. Today we are close friends. Secret of the Sahara is one of the finest TV films I ever realized in Italy, in my opinion. It was not an easy task to script such a mysterious adventure set in the North African desert. I think that Negrin and I figured out a way to work out the issues of the story and collaborated well together. On that occasion, I made a great use of electronics.
In the meantime, in 1984, another very popular TV series started in Italy: The Octopus (La piovra). The first season was directed by Damiano Damiani and scored by Riz Ortolani, while you started from the second season onward, in 1986.50
Exactly, the director changed too, Florestano Vancini replaced Damiani from the second season.51 I had long talks with Vancini about how to score this series. It was the first film set in Sicily and dealing with the dark plots of the Mafia that I was to score. Therefore, I decided to derive the harmonic structure and the melodic chromaticism of the main theme from Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion.52 Then, in each new season, I changed the orchestration to give each timbre its own meaning in the storyline.
Did you borrow any elements from the first season?
No, in fact I totally disregarded it. I actually hadn’t had the chance to see any of the episodes from the first season when I was hired. I continued to score this story of Mafia and justice for several years, up until the seventh season. Then I took a break from it and resumed in the tenth season, which was realized in 2001. I drew on similar sonorities to score other more recent works for television, such as Giovanni Falcone, l’uomo che sfidò Cosa Nostra [Giovanni Falcone, the Man Who Challenged the Mafia] (2006), starring Massimo Dapporto and Elena Sofia Ricci, and L’ultimo dei corleonesi [The Last Corleone] (2007), directed by Alberto Negrin.
Briefly going back to your score for The Octopus, Sting performed the main theme “My Heart and I” in 2001. Did you have the chance to meet him?
No, but I enjoyed his cover version. I had composed the song eleven years earlier, in 1990, for the fifth season. Amii Stewart originally performed it.53
When did you meet her?
Shortly prior to that recording, in London, she was with her sister. From the very first moment I realized she was a fantastic singer, and we’ve collaborated a lot since then.
Do you wish to mention other scores you’ve written for television? It’s simply impossible to talk about all of them. . . .
I think that the music for Nostromo (dir. Alastair Reid, 1996) allowed me to take a big step forward with respect to certain solutions, some of which I had already started to deploy in Leone’s westerns. Even if it was not a western, that series still represented a stepping stone on a path tying back to Leone.
Among your various longtime collaborations with directors, the one with Roberto Faenza is one of the most lasting.
I believe we made nine movies together. We started in 1968 with Escalation, in which I experimented some nonconventional vocal solutions. Then we made H2S (1969), Forza Italia! [Go Italy!] (1978), Si salvi chi vuole [Every Man for Himself] (1980). . . .
In Order of Death (Copkiller, 1983) you wrote several pieces in a rock style, arguably due to the presence of the Sex Pistols’ lead singer, John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) in the cast. . . .
I don’t have many recollections of that movie, while one that deeply struck me was Look to the Sky (Jona che visse nella balena, 1993), which won Roberto a David di Donatello Award. I was especially moved by the scene set in the concentration camp, where the kid spies on his parents making love in the infirmary, after they have managed to meet thanks to a guard’s help. That scene caught me off guard—it’s an unexpected, yet very human moment.
In 1995 you worked at According to Pereira (Sostiene Pereira), starring Marcello Mastroianni. In that score you used a rhythmic figure played by woodblocks, which was reprised by the orchestra; it’s such an earworm! Were you inspired by the main character’s heart malfunction?
No, I was completely out of ideas. . . . As I went on working, nothing came to me. I decided to take a walk and found myself in Piazza Venezia, right outside my house. There were some youngsters beating on drums, while demonstrating for a strike. They were playing a rhythmic pattern. I took it home with me, assigned it to a woodblock and made it become the “revolutionary” pattern, which would eventually drive the employee character, played by Mastroianni, to set up a revolution [Example 3.9].
Example 3.9: According to Pereira, rhythmic pattern from the main theme
Drawing on this idea, which became the key of the piece, I overlapped a ternary melody to that binary rhythm. It came out spontaneously, I didn’t even have to think about it . . . but be sure, nobody will ever notice it [Example 3.10].
Example 3.10: According to Pereira, excerpt of the main theme’s melody
The song “A brisa do coração” [The Breeze of the Heart] was performed by Dulce Pontes.
She is an extraordinary singer, and I think that she fully expressed her talent in that song. She made it resemble a true fado.54 Moreover, Dulce Pontes has performed in several of my live concerts where she has also sung “The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti.” In 2003, we worked together on her album Focus.55
Your last experience with Roberto Faenza was Marianna Ucrìa (1997), but the score is credited to Franco Piersanti. What happened?
Piersanti replaced me at a late stage. Once I was done with the themes, Roberto said something to me that still stings today: “What if I don’t like the music when we get to recording?”
My reply was, “Roberto, hire someone else to write the music, and leave me be.”
At first he didn’t think I was serious, so I had to insist until he understood.
We stayed on very good terms, I even suggested he hire Franco Piersanti, an excellent composer who did a wonderful job. For similar reasons, I had already refused The Scarlet Letter (1995) by Joffé.
The moment you get to the recording stage, there is not a lot of room for afterthoughts; the orchestra must be paid, and I must respond to the payer. If a director shows such a level of reluctance, it means that he or she is not convinced and full of doubts. I can’t stand these kinds of doubts, because they put me in the position to waste money that is not mine. . . . These too are responsibilities that affect me, not unlike the ones we talked about earlier. . . .
Are there other Italian film composers whom you particularly admire, besides Piersanti?
For sure. Nicola Piovani, Antonio Poce, Carlo Crivelli, Luis Bacalov. . . .56
What was your relationship with Nino Rota? What do you think about his music today? And about him in general?
He invented extraordinary melodies. But his score for Orchestra Rehearsal (Prova d’orchestra, dir. Federico Fellini, 1978) didn’t particularly thrill me, like most of his other scores for Fellini. This was not due to his music, but to Fellini, who pushed him into writing circus-like music. He used to give him two main musical references, the “Entry of the Gladiators” and “Titine.” When Nino tried to break out from those rules and started to improvise new things, Fellini, who was a very clever man, understood what he was up to and started recording him during his improvisations. He exerted a control over him.
In spite of all this, I discovered Nino Rota’s greatness gradually in time, and I appreciated his collaborations with Visconti in Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli, 1960) and The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963). Of all his works with Fellini, perhaps the one that most struck me was his score for Fellini’s Casanova (1976), where I can recognize his greater degree of freedom.
(Who knows, maybe Fellini was distracted and forgot to insist on circus music. . . .)
Did you know Rota personally?
He was several years older than me, but we hung out with the same circle of people and in the same places; over the years we had the chance to meet many times. He was an exquisite person, equally generous as distracted.
Years later I learned that he had been secretly interested in spiritualism and was very fond of seances. For a period, he privately studied with Alfredo Casella, a composer who had a 360-degree academic background and was the mentor of my mentor Petrassi. Rota won a grant to study in the United States. Upon his return to Italy, he graduated with a thesis on Gioseffo Zarlino, a composer who made a remarkable impact on the development of counterpoint in the Renaissance.57
Like me, he constantly pursued careers in both absolute and film music, and I always appreciated his qualities of a great musician, even when I did not share his aesthetics.
We had the chance to work on the same film, shortly prior to his death, when UNICEF contacted me for an animated movie by Arnoldo Farina and Giancarlo Zagni, entitled Ten to Survive (1979). It was a ten-part film, and each episode was produced in a different country. I could have worked on the film alone, but I preferred to involve other composers I admired.
I recommended Franco Evangelisti, Egisto Macchi, Luis Bacalov, and Nino Rota. We scored two episodes each. I wrote two pieces for a children’s choir, Grande violino, piccolo bambino [Big Violin, Little Child] and Bambini del mondo [Children of the World], that are still very important to me and encompassed a research thread I have never stopped pursuing.58 When Rota listened to them, he came to me enthusiastically and told me, “This is tonal pointillist music!” He was complacent and smiled subtly. Nobody had ever realized this feature thus far, or had come up with such an accurate definition of my music, that sounded completely appropriate to me. I felt understood.
What is the biggest pain for a composer of film music?
It is immensely painful when a director refuses my music at the recording stage. I could kill myself. You get your recording done and someone tells you they don’t like any of it. . . .
Never in such a direct way. But once, for What Dreams May Come (1998), starring Robin Williams, the producers didn’t like my score and replaced it.
I met Vincent Ward, the director, in Los Angeles. When he described the plot of the film to me I could not help feeling emotional. Eventually we agreed on the themes and recorded them. To cut a long story short, the production was already over, but at the last minute they decided not to use my music and called Michael Kamen in to replace me.
According to rumors, your score was deemed to be too sentimental. What did they tell you?
My music was not at all sentimental. Unfortunately, their decision was affected by the fact that it was a poor mix, and the volume of the music was too high. It could have never worked like that.
Another time, when working on Lolita by Adrian Lyne (a remake of Kubrick’s famous film), the director listened to the music at my house. He said that he found it wonderful, but not immortal. At first I was baffled, but it turned out that it was just the initial phase, he had only listened to the themes at the piano and our dialogue developed in a really constructive way. He tried to explain what didn’t convince him, and eventually I decided to rewrite everything from the beginning. Those are delicate moments, because everything plays out in a fragile bond of trust.
Was he convinced by your second try?
Yes, I guess that time I managed to write immortal melodies. . . .
He smiles.
Going back to dismissals, once it happened with Bolognini on He and She, although in that case I remediated by adding one tone, as I mentioned earlier. . . . Fortunately, he did not lose his trust in me, because the base of our relationship was already solid by that time. However, when things like this happen during first collaborations, it’s like being stabbed. It’s hard to remedy the situation.
Also troubling is when directors are too shy to tell you that they are not convinced. To that I must add my own shyness, which inhibits me from asking, “Do you like it or not?” Sometimes I would be tempted to reply to objections by saying, “The music I gave you is very good, because I put a lot of thought into it.” But it is not a question of absolute truth, it all depends on the musical background of the director and my own—if the two meet, it’s likely that we work well together, otherwise issues may arise.
Sometimes directors don’t have a clear idea after the first round of listening and need more time. Their role entitles them to imagine a certain kind of music for their film; for this reason they may expect the composer to go in the same direction they have in mind. We were saying this about Tarantino, but the same is true in different ways for all the directors I’ve met. It’s naive, you could say.
When directors speak out about their skepticism in time, they give me a chance to understand what new directions to take, though at times I’ve refused to do so. There are times, however, when you get to the recording stage without having the slightest clue as to the director’s expectations, because he or she was simply too shy to explain them. Thus, it can happen that the composer writes something completely different which deludes the director.
You have to be a psychologist. Especially with those you work with only occasionally.
In my first experiences I was anguished, I still am in a way, by the desire to do my job well, to serve the film and satisfy the director’s expectations and personal taste . . . but without giving up mine and those of the public. . . .
For State of Grace (1990) I wrote a score, which director Phil Joanou didn’t like so much. He didn’t say so explicitly, but I realized it little by little. One theme in particular, “Hell’s Kitchen,” didn’t convince him and so he opted to mix it at a very low volume.59 I was not present during mixing because we had recorded the music in Rome, but it was mixed in the States, hence I was only aware of this mess after the film had been released. I was even more sorry because, in my opinion, that piece was noteworthy and representative of a research thread I had been working on at the time.
I thus decided to redeem some of the insights concerning overtones I had worked on in that piece and develop them further for Bugsy, by Barry Levinson, starring Warren Beatty. Everything went well, and my score was nominated for an Academy Award. At that point Janou was offended and publicly accused me of having reused the same music from his film. I replied that I could not have possibly thrown away one of my experiments just because he hadn’t liked it.
What was the experiment about? You mentioned overtones.
I profiled the main theme for solo viola with a very cantabile shape [Example 3.11].
Example 3.11: Bugsy, excerpt of the main theme
The theme comes across in a neat way and takes the listener by the hand, working as a melodic “compass” that points toward the direction to take. I surrounded it in a basically tonal structure, thus there is nothing particularly new to it. Over this harmony, however, I set up a texture, which I obtained from the sequence of the overtones generated by the melody. I selected the farthest overtones from the fundamental pitch, the most dissonant ones, such as the thirteenth, the fourteenth, and even the fifteenth (not the eighth), and I exploited the unforeseen dissonances they produced by letting them surface in the moments when the melody paused. In this way, I “dirtied” the supporting harmony and enhanced this effect through the orchestration.
Joanou did not realize this aspect, or rather he did too late . . . too late for him! He was a very young director who made an excellent film, but our collaboration ended there.
Did you have the chance to go back to this overtone research in other movies?
Yes, in 1997, in U Turn by Oliver Stone, a very unconventinal psychedelic film with an extremely unlucky male character, played by Sean Penn, and a problematic female character, played by the beautiful Jennifer Lopez.
Do you have any lasting memories of this production?
It was Stone who got in touch with me, and we immediately had a deep connection. When such chemistry exists, it’s a double-edge sword, because sometimes the pleasure to work together gives way to choices one might end up regretting afterward; or, even worse, one might feel encouraged to put too much music in the film. Nevertheless, everything went fine with him. I remember that we went through the film together and spent an entire day discussing it. He had already pre-edited it, using some of my preexisting music, especially from Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion and Once Upon a Time in the West.
At the cost of sounding repetitive, I insist that I don’t like this kind of praxis. He also used several American songs. Initially, I told him affectionately that the film was fine like it was, in my opinion. He insisted that I should take inspiration from the temp tracks in terms of harmonies and sonorities, but then create new music. I realized that Stone was speaking in good faith and that it was his best way to explain to me what he had in mind. I found him sensible and attentive; he also confessed to me his particular wish that I use the harmonica and the mandolin. I did, though I emphasized different features of those instruments as compared to what I had done in my two previous themes.60
In the theme “Grace” you again exploit the overtones phenomenon with the orchestra.61
Yes, I employed it there because the film deals with a rather shady and scathing love story. Compared to what I had done in Bugsy, the music here is much more dissonant in some points, and the emergence of “jarring” harmonic elements is more audacious. In addition, I made a massive use of the electric guitar, at times even crossing over to a rock style. It was an interesting collaboration!
Unfortunately, the movie wasn’t very well received, especially in the United States. Even on this matter, Stone distinguished himself from other filmmakers with whom I collaborated. He sent me a letter of apology about the film’s failure, adding that it had penalized my excellent music.
He was really caring . . . the last time we met he gave me a very refined edition of a book of sonnets by Petrarca as a gift, which I heedfully keep in my studio.
Among the American personalities you repeatedly crossed paths with, there’s also Warren Beatty.
We have become close friends; every time we are in the same town we go out for dinner together with our wives. I first made his acquaintance when he asked me to score Bugsy, which he produced. However, I had already learned to appreciate him much earlier, as a magnificent actor, brilliant director, and shrewd producer. We met again in 1994, when I scored Love Affair, directed by Glenn Gordon Caron. Warren produced that film too, along with starring in it with his wife, Annette Bening.
We made three films together in total, and the only one he also directed was the last one, Bulworth (1998), in which he played an atypical politician. He came to Rome to show me the movie in person, and we watched it in my living room. He rushed to my house straight from the airport, so he was completely jet-lagged and fell asleep while the film was playing. When he woke up, we started to plan the music and he asked me whether I could compose two instrumental accompaniments for some rappers, to which I replied that I was not up to that.
Right, among the pieces featured in this film is indeed also “Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are),”62a song that achieved discrete fame at the time. But then there are the two suites you composed. The first is eighteen minutes long, the second twenty-four. . . .63Did you conceive them along with the visual timeline or did you assemble them later?
I indulged my whims in those two suites. It was not the first time that I had written more music than necessary for a film, thus enabling both a unitary performance and the fragmentation in several segments. Basically, I remember that the two suites drew on different connotations: the first was decidedly dreamlike, while the second was persistent, repetitive, obsessive, and grotesque, a bit in the guise of Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion. That suite was insistent and even full of tension in some moments.
Do you often go on set?
No, I would say I go only when I’m needed. I think that I only went twice on set for Leone’s films. The first time was during the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, because of Claudia Cardinale’s presence, the second time Sergio wanted me there out of superstition. He was shooting the sequence of Once Upon a Time in America in which Robert De Niro smokes opium at the shadow theater. I escaped after about forty minutes: the Chinese lady kept failing her part, and I don’t know how many times they repeated that scene. . . .
Then I think I returned on set for that movie because Gianni Minà was shooting a TV documentary about the making of the last scene at Cinecittà, when De Niro enters the house of his friend whom he has not seen in many years.64
That evening became something like a party—Edda Dell’Orso and her husband, Giacomo, a pianist, performed some of the pieces I had composed for Leone. It was emotional.
More recently, my presence on set was needed to supervise the duel between the two pianists—Tim Roth and Clarence Williams—in The Legend of 1900. It was a difficult scene to shoot.
Among all the movies you’ve scored, which one are you most affectionate toward?
I’ve become especially attached to the films that made me suffer, or to the scores of good movies that sold badly, such as A Quiet Place in the Country or Half a Man. . . . Of course, I am also attached to The Best Offer, which seems to me to have something more, especially in the paintings scene.
I greatly enjoyed A Pure Formality as well, for the type of story and the music, which starts dissonant and gradually becomes tonal. The fact that the plot determined and dictated the evolution of the music was very important to me. But also The Mission, and Vatel (2000), by Joffé as well.
Do you regret to have worked on any films?
I regret ugly films. I must say, however, that I don’t feel sorry to have taken part in them, but because I tried to help them with my music. . . . Well, I regret that kind of attitude I sometimes had toward bad films, because I later realized that my good and perhaps naive intentions ended up being exploited commercially.
What is the most difficult moment during the scoring process?
There are many. Every film poses different challenges for a composer, and the solutions must be suitable to listeners, producers, directors, and ourselves. But what makes it most difficult to compose a score are those directors who need to know and control every detail of their work, and therefore don’t let composers do their job. In my career, I have met many of that kind, namely, the Taviani brothers, Lina Wertmüller, and Roland Joffé, one of the most peculiar under this profile. Relationships must be based on trust.
Would you mind telling me something more about your relationship with Joffé?
As I was saying, over the years, it was not always easy to work with him. Joffé is the kind of director who wants to control every aspect of the creative process. When we were working on The Mission, he insisted that various themes should intertwine with each other, against my will. Producer Fernando Ghia kept him at bay and advised him to give in. Had it been up to him, he would have had his say on everything.
“Ave Maria Guarani” has a very authentic and tormented sonority, something of a rough performance. How did you accomplish this overall effect?
It was fundamental to achieve a vocal blend within which some voices would occasionally stand out and be freely reabsorbed by the choir. Thanks to the British embassies, we involved nonprofessional singers from various nationalities, whom I randomly distributed in a professional choir. A soprano might find herself amid tenors and an alto amid sopranos: it was a crucial mechanism aimed at obtaining a realistic effect. “Ave Maria Guarani” was another example of diegetic music. In my mind, it stemmed from the world of the narrative and needed to be a credible element of the story. In the film, Jesuits and indigenous people sing together as the church of the mission is being built. . . .65
You mentioned Fernando Ghia, with whom you built a friendly relationship, but not David Puttnam, the other producer of The Mission.
In reality, I don’t have a totally positive memory of Puttnam. He was always proper during the production, and after the film’s success he asked me to work on an adaptation for the musical theater. I was intrigued, but once he told me that Ghia ought not know anything about it, I made it clear that I could not accept.
Following The Mission’s success, you and Joffé worked together again on Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), a film about the invention of the atomic bomb.
If I remember correctly, Paul Newman was in that movie. . . .
That’s right.
The only thing I remember about it is that at first I thought about composing some pieces almost devoid of a theme. In fact there was a melody, but it was so simple that it floated on the sonorous blend I had devised for the orchestra. I thought that it would have fit well with the suspended and fluctuating thoughts of the physicists who invented those terrible weapons. In the recording room, Roland told me in a quite sorrowful tone, “Ennio, I’m sorry but this theme doesn’t convince me.” I improvised a different one and it went over much better. . . . It always felt like he didn’t trust the musician, but time after time I began to suspect that he didn’t trust himself to begin with.
Once he kept me in Paris for ten days because he was editing a film there—it must have been Vatel—and he wanted to hear how the music was turning out in the meantime. I didn’t make a fuss and we proceeded in the agreed direction. On that occasion, however, I took a very serious risk. Joffé had asked me to provide him with some temp tracks and I gave him some cues from The Night and the Moment (1994), a film directed by Anna Maria Tatò, Marcello Mastroianni’s last partner. A few days later, Roland told me that those pieces were perfect and that he wanted to use them in his film. I was terrified at the thought of it, so I dissuaded him in every way possible, and eventually he heeded my pleas.
To keep him far from any temptation to use the same music as Tatò’s film, I stayed on longer in Paris to continue offering him new ideas, which I would play on an electronic keyboard I had with me in the hotel. Every evening he would come over and I would show him what I had composed. It was hard to convince him, but I eventually managed. And, to be frank, the music for Vatel is very good, some of it I developed to recall the music of the seventeenth century, the epoch in which the story is set.
Were there any directors you had big fights with?
I know it seems like a joke because I always repeat it, but it’s not. . . . I never fight with directors. I drop them before ever getting to that point. I end the argument and that’s it. I’m not ashamed to admit that this is the reason why I don’t have fights; I leave when we are still on good terms, that way I can stay friends with everybody.
To be fair, I have gotten upset on occasion. Once, for example, Flavio Mogherini called me to score his latest work. I had met him while working on one of Leone’s first films.66 It would have been our second collaboration after his first movie, Anche se volessi lavorare, che faccio? [Even If I Wanted to Work, What Am I Supposed to Do?] (1972). However, something went decidedly wrong during that phone call.
He told me, “This time you must write a score in the style of Tchaikovsky . . .”
I didn’t let him finish the sentence and replied, “No way.” I told him to go to hell and hung up abruptly.
Today, after so many years, I feel sorry for my behavior. I guess I was extreme and rude, but back then I felt very upset. I admire Mogherini’s films; on other occasions he had been very kind to me, he was a good director.
To sum up, I think it is fair that everybody follows his or her own way with determination, I don’t see anything wrong with that. But one can’t make such demands. . . . I can’t be asked to make a Tchaikovsky-like melodic piece without discussing it first. When I take a job, I come up with ideas, start composing, work out my thoughts into a musical shape. . . . If a quotation from Tchaikovsky is needed in a film, then I will open-mindedly welcome the prospect and review my intentions. But not like this.
Was this the only episode of that kind?
With Mogherini, yes, we never talked again. I had similar problems with the Taviani brothers.
Our first film together was Allonsanfan, for which we reached an agreement only after some deliberation. At our first meeting they already wanted to tell me what music to write and how to do so. . . . When they called me again for The Meadow (Il prato, 1979), they contested the presence of a specific note. They wanted me to change it. . . . It’s a legitimate way to work, but I feel deprived of my spontaneity, of the satisfaction I get from taking initiative. This is risky perhaps, but always personal—being open to the unpredictable makes me feel greatly responsible.
With both Paolo and Vittorio we are good friends still today,67 I greatly admire their cinema, but I definitely didn’t like their attitude toward the musician, so I stopped working with them.
Their musical competence is decidedly superior to the average directors I have worked with, but sometimes they overdo it. The composer is not an executor! Impositions of that kind I have never taken from anybody; I told you about Pasolini . . . asking is fine, but ordering is not!
So, there are directors you admire but you find too straightforward in their demands. . . .
It’s not fair to behave like that. Another I stopped working with was Zeffirelli. I’m sorry to speak like this about such a talented director.
You made Hamlet with him.
Before me, Zeffirelli had worked with Ortolani, but they didn’t get along. For Hamlet, I went to London to see the film, took the time codes of the scenes where the music was to be, and made plans with him. Mel Gibson was there too.
Zeffirelli told me, “Ennio, this time I would like to have music different from the norm. I would like it to be devoid of themes, a music of moods and atmospheres, a music made of sonorities.”
“It’s a wonderful idea! I revel in it,” I told him. In that period I used to teach in Siena over the summer, together with Sergio Miceli,68 so I informed my students that I had been appointed to score Hamlet and emphasized the fact that the director asked me something that nobody ever dared to—to avoid themes and make a music of sonorities. I was overjoyed.
When the music was ready, Zeffirelli listened to it and said, “You didn’t write any themes.”
“As you had asked me,” I replied.
“It seems like Chinese music,” he retorted.
I had drawn on medieval modality—building the music on five, maximum six tones—which must be why he was reminded of “Chinese” music. . . . He insisted on the fact that there were no themes, to which I answered, “Don’t worry, Franco, I can fix it right away.”
We were in the studio and it was very late. I wrote a theme for the scene “To be or not to be” and asked the first oboe to stay over after the end of the session, in order to record it. In addition to this, Zeffirelli made an offensive comment, for which some of the musicians were almost ready to beat him. . . . So, when he called me for Sparrow (Storia di una capinera, 1993) and later for another film, I turned him down. After my second refusal, he never called me again.
When trust is compromised, it becomes impossible to distinguish between what’s legitimate and what isn’t. . . .
The movie was beautiful, excellent, but I must add that the music I wrote for the sequence “To be or not to be” was cut from the American release. We were spotting the cues during our first meeting, and as we got to that sequence, Mel Gibson told Zeffirelli something like, “But Franco, do you really think that my acting is not good enough and that you need to support it with music?”
Something similar happened with De Niro in Once Upon a Time in America, but Leone had found a way to reassure him.
How many films did you turn down?
At least as many as I accepted.
During this long conversation, several chess games have followed our first one. It goes without saying that I’ve lost all of them. At this point we decide to take a break. While Morricone gets some water from the kitchen, I seize the chance to stretch my legs a little. I look around his huge living room, until my eyes are drawn to a big wooden statue representing a quite disturbing inlaid warrior next to an adorned, rather mysterious door. Then some paintings and an arras catch my attention. A quick look to the left and I see a painting on the wall right next to the piano. Meanwhile, Morricone is back with the water.
Ennio, I imagine a whole story lies behind each and every one of these items. . . .
Absolutely, each of them is tied to a memory in my life. The painting you were just staring at, for instance, I bought with Petri, while the wooden “Warrior” is a sculpture by Ferdinando Codognotto. I find it very representative of his style and I confess that it has always evoked the ghost of Hamlet’s father for me. Although he looks harmful, I think of him as a positive figure. Since the first time I met Codognotto, I have always been inspired by his constant return to recurrent basic patterns, which he then creatively combines.
Another sculptor who has always fascinated me is Henry Moore. You know, in time I’ve realized that I’m mainly interested in the work of contemporary artists whom I’ve personally met.
What about painting?
Painting was my first love, my passion for sculpture came later. When I used to live in Monteverde, in the early sixties, I bought many artworks by Eva Fischer, who lived in my same building.69 I owned so many of them, for a period it looked like I was living in her personal gallery. I ended up giving them as presents to my children.
In time I had the privilege to observe the changes in style of many painters, among which Mafai, Salvatore Fiume, Rosetta Acerbi, Bartolini, and Sergio Vacchi.70 I was very interested in the latter’s “first period,” but when I made his acquaintance I decided to buy La donna e il cigno [The Lady and the Swan], which belongs to his “second period.” From the very first moment, I thought that his pathway quite resembled that of a composer who begins by writing dissonant music and ends up conceiving beautiful melodies. . . .
Do you think that painting has ever influenced your music?
I don’t think so, and frankly it is difficult for me to draw direct links between the two arts. Petrassi was a true lover of painting. In one of his analyses of Petrassi’s music, Boris Porena pointed out links between some of his works—especially his Concerto for Orchestra No. 8 (1972)—and his passion for painting. I have my favorite painters as well. For example, in Canaletto I have always admired the wisdom in treating heavy shadows—I often associate him with De Chirico. Once I found myself staring at a canvas by Carpaccio showing crucified men along a road. It was so hyperdetailed that I thought that one would need a whole life to realize such a painting. The care, the attention to detail and shading, are aspects I feel very akin to my way of working.
If I had to pick one artist in the twentieth century, my choice would go to Picasso.
Some time ago I came across a French documentary that showed Picasso while he superimposed several layers in his paintings; a chicken became a fish and then transformed into something else. . . .71He risked everything, chasing a fleeting balance. . . .
There is a particular aspect of Picasso’s art that has always intrigued me; guided by his obsession, his yearning for research, he invented a technique, which is halfway between painting and photography. He put a camera with the lens wide open in a dark room and recorded the movements of a candle he held in his hand while drawing on a canvas. In this way, his gestures were recorded on film.
A gesture frozen in the act of its happening.
I was extremely fascinated by this idea.
Do you have any portraits of yourself?
I have a few, they are all different and each shows a different side of me—one of them was given to me by a street cleaner. One morning he came to me and said, “I’m a sanitation worker and I made this for you.” I hung it next to the others. I equally respect all of them.
So you are also attracted to amateur painting?
Yes, I have some paintings made by my wife, who for a period was into ceramics decoration, and two others I kept because of their incredible story. Not long ago, after a concert in Bari, I had to go to Potenza for a conference. A driver picked me up, he was a nice man and the trip was going well; however, when we reached Matera, he suddenly pulled over, telling me that his father wanted to meet me.
An abduction?
In a certain sense. He brought me to his father’s house, where he gave me those two paintings as a gift.
He points at them.
He was a farmer who enjoyed spending his spare time portraying the rural life of those areas.
I also collect musical paintings. Let me explain better; those are two scores: one is mine, the other is by Antonio Poce, who was my pupil at the Conservatory of Frosinone. In the early nineties I worked with him, together with Macchi and Dall’Ongaro, at Una via crucis.72 He realized this score that resembles a painting.
What about your score?
It is my score of Bambini del mondo, which I mentioned earlier. Maria liked it very much, so we decided to hang it on the wall.
We sit back on the sofa and, as we sip some fresh water, a memory is stirred.