Ennio Morricone - The Golden Globe Collection (2016)

A European who came to dominate the scoring of westerns, Ennio Morricone is a unique figure in the history of film music. Morricone was born in Rome, the son of a jazz trumpet player, in 1928. He was a precocious musician, starting to compose at the age of six, and studied harmony and composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory. Post-war Italy didn't offer many opportunities for a serious composer, and Morricone worked in various jazz bands, as well as serving as a staff composer, arranger, and conductor on Italian radio and television. During the late 1950's, he landed a job as orchestrator and assistant to Nascio Nascimbene, then the leading composer in the Italian movie industry. Morricone began writing film scores in the early 1960's, but he first distinguished himself in the western field.

When U.S. studios' production of westerns slowed in the early 1960s, Italian (and Spanish) filmmakers stepped in to fill the gap, for the genre had lost none of its luster internationally. Morricone proved adept at writing memorable melodies with his first western, the Spanish-made Gringo, in 1963. His heavy style at that point emphasized the lower registers of the orchestra–cellos, basses, and brass–and often featured an orchestral "growl," a low dissonance that had been a favorite device of Dimitri Tiomkin. The song "A Gringo Like Me" closely followed the dramatic-pop western themes ("Gunfight At the O.K. Corral," "Rawhide") that Tiomkin had been writing for years with Frankie Laine in mind, with an added veneer of pseudo-operatic passion. InMorricone's second western score, Guns Don't Argue, he first hit on a distinctive style: the music emphasized melody more than beat, and had moments of flowing lyricism; it also introduced whistling and featured fairly prominent use of a guitar. That same year, Morricone was commissioned to write the music for A Fistful of Dollars, an Italian-made western by director Sergio Leone, based on Akira Kurosawa's samurai movie Yojimbo and starring Clint Eastwood.

TRACKLIST

01. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (From "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly")
02. The Ecstasy of Gold (From "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly")
03. Once Upon a Time in the West (From "Once Upon a Time in the West")
04. Cinema paradiso (Titles) [From "Cinema paradiso"]
05. Chi mai (From "Maddalena")
06. La califfa (From "La califfa - The Lady Caliph / The Queen")
07. The Sicilian Clan (From "The Sicilian Clan")
08. For a Few Dollars More (From "For a Few Dollars More")
09. A Fistful of Dynamite (From "A Fistful of Dynamite / Giu la testa")
10. My Name is Nobody (From "My Name is Nobody")
11. Marcia di Sacco e Vanzetti (From "Sacco e Vanzetti")
12. Un amico (From "Revolver)
13. The Battle of Algiers (From "The Battle of Algiers")
14. Romanza quartiere (From "Quartiere")
15. Love Theme for Nata (From "Cinema paradiso")
16. Come Maddalena (From "Maddalena")
17. Abolisson (From "Queimada")
18. L'arena (From "II mercenario - A Professional Gun / The Mercenary")
19. Un monumento (From "The Hellbenders -I crudeli")
20. Romanzo (From "Novecento -1900")
21. Ninna nanna per adulteri (From "Cuore di mamma")
22. II figlio e la nostalgia (From "II principe del deserto")