There is a scene in the 1986 film
The Mission where Jeremy Irons’ Jesuit priest, deep in hostile territory
and near surrounded by enemies, sits on a rock and plays his oboe. The soothing
music echoes around the luscious clearing, arousing his would-be assailants’
curiosities in a beautiful declaration of the transcultural power of music over
aggression. The track, ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’, is one of the most revered in the late
Ennio Morricone’s legendary career, one that saw him score over 400 films in a span
of over six decades and saw 70 million records sold worldwide.
Before I watched The Mission, the
first time I heard that track was four years ago at my school’s commemoration
service in Canterbury Cathedral. Usually the kind of service that lasts a
lifetime and is a struggle to get through, this one was different. Rather than
another hymn, a fellow pupil sat alone before a thousand people with naught but
an oboe and the song book from which he played that Morricone piece. Among the
gargantuan pillars and distant ceiling of the cathedral, the oboe’s tune was magnified
and the feeling was simply euphoric; a similar experience to what the natives
of South America felt in The Mission. One can’t fathom what his
performances for the Pope in Vatican City must feel like. After the service
there was a unanimous verdict among my friends: it was the best commemoration
service we had been to. Why? Because of Ennio Morricone’s soul-touching music.
It’s one thing to be a great film score composer, but it is something else to
create a single, two-minute track that can be removed from the context of its
film and still touch and transport a cathedral full of teenage boys.
But The Mission is but one
of Morricone’s masterworks. The most prolific person in Hollywood to not speak
English, the Italian Morricone (or the ‘Maestro’) scored for such distinguished
classics as The Untouchables, The Thing (1982), Casualties of War,
Cinema Paradiso and The Hateful Eight, for which he won his only
Oscar for. Whilst overdue, the simple fact is that Morricone transcended the
need for trophies and awards; his genius was already well known.
His unrivalled partnership with
Italian director Sergio Leone rightfully gets the most attention in his filmography,
however. In Leone’s creation of the Spaghetti-Western sub-genre, Morricone’s
input was pivotal. The smaller budgets of these Italian films denied the
classical orchestral instruments that Hollywood was employing, and so Morricone
looked for new musical sources.
The most titanic of these films
is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and its instantly recognisable theme
song contains unorthodox whistling, yodelling and an iconic coyote wail. It is
synonymous with the Western genre, and when an Italian reinvents the entire
sound of the American Old West, it must be impressive. And it is. The final 25
minutes of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly contains arguably some of the
best film composing of all time. But here is where Morricone really shines: the
music for the film was largely composed before photography had even
begun. Connotations of the word ‘filmmaker’ are generally ‘director’ and
sometimes ‘producer’, but rarely is the term used to describe a composer.
Sergio Leone allowed the music to tell as much of the story as the script;
often refusing to cut scenes because he did not want to cut the music and
writing more scenes around the score. Such is the influence of Ennio
Morricone, perhaps the only musician who deserves to be labelled as a
filmmaker.
His influence has inevitably
permeated the mainstream: Quentin Tarantino often recycles existing Morricone
compositions for his films; Metallica, KFC and Nike have all used the ‘Ecstasy
of Gold’ track in some format and it is unavoidable to listen to Hans Zimmer’s
track ‘Parlay’ (from Pirates of the Caribbean) without thinking
of the Maestro’s work on Once Upon a Time in the West. Indeed, Zimmer is
renowned for utilising electric instruments in film composing, but it was
Morricone who first brought the electric guitar to the Western genre, something
that influenced Zimmer to become a composer himself.
But it ultimately comes back to
Jeremy Irons and his oboe, communicating his peaceful intent to those of
another language. With high sales in Italy, France, USA and South Korea,
Morricone’s music achieves what could be considered the greatest desire for an
artist: an instant accessibility, no matter the culture, race or religion. It
is music made to touch and enthral, but ultimately to endure. Without him a lot
of cinema’s highest highs would never have been reached, and a school
commemoration service would never have been remembered so fondly.
Directors shoot, Morricone
scores.
