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*This is a loosely translated version of my Vietnamese essay. At times, a sentence might sound childish, as the core of the translation is done by Google Translate, I just proofread it and slightly changed a word or two to make sure the content is as faithful to the original as possible. Google Translation has come a long way, and I'm so amazed at the accuracy and quality of the translated copy.
Around the summer of 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic was still raging in the US as well as around the world, shops were closed, workers were either laid off or luckily were able to bring their work home, I happened to hear a very strange and charming tune. Youtube has the good thing in that it randomly chooses things that are similar to what you are listening to, but this song is really not like the previous songs at all. The score is quite melodious with low and high tones, at times leisurely, at times rushed, and the phrases in verse are not of equal length as we often see in popular music. The song's title is "Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso".
Later, when I studied more, I learned that the song was written by Andrea Morricone, the son of Musician Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) (I will refer to him from here on as Maestro, or Morricone). Mr. Ennio added a few small details to make the song more coherent. Mr. Andrea (born in 1964) has just finished a concert of his father's music in Japan and Europe, when will he bring the orchestra to the US to perform?
The more I listen to this song and some of the other songs that Maestro composed, the more I feel like I'm entering a new world of sound with clever phrasing, perfect harmony, pop style, and with symphony orchestra without the use of synthesizers. Much like following a "rabbit hole", I ignored the other types of music that I had been listening to, but just totally immersed into Maestro's life and career, and started to collect works written by him for cinema. Sadly, when I got to know him, he passed away in July of the same year, 2020. Before that, I only knew very little about him as the composer of Chi Mai. The remaining of this essay is a tale of my quest for understanding and appreciating his music.
Ennio Morricone - Musiques de Films - Volume 1
As it happened, I found out that Amazon was (and still is) selling a collection of his music CDs, entitled Ennio Morricone - Musiques de Films- Volume 1. The price is "right", about $90 for 18 discs, which works out to about $5 each, only 25% to 50% of an individual CD, if purchased separately.
After getting this collection, I "rip" it and put it on my iPhone to listen to it daily. With about 400 music titles and nearly 20 hours of listening at a time, I was busy with this collection for nearly a year, before I can say I could recognize which song was on which CD, and for which movie title. For a beginner to Ennio Morricone's music, the collection successfully introduces the world of Maestro sounds. The first five discs are dedicated to director Sergio Leone, whom at first I wondered how important he was to occupy more than 25% of the total number of discs. Only later, on much reading, I found that Leone played a special role in Morricone's career. The CDs in this collection have a distinct quality, that most of the tracks keep the original LP's number of tracks, only when there's a theme like "History of Italy", or "The Face of Italian Cinema", etc. then only excerpts of the most famous and typical songs of the original LP were selected.
The most interesting feature of Ennio Morricone's music, IMHO, is that every song has a structure like a light pop song, with a beginning and an end, filled with drums, bass, etc. Usually, an LP or CD of a movie soundtrack has about two or three "themes", or rather "leitmotif" as defined in a cinema score. Depending on the movie genre, Maestro will create music tracks written according to those themes. At first, it seemed boring, but gradually day after day, I got used to this writing style, and sometimes even compared which instrument I liked to hear the melody played the most.
Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words
Maestro has a very good way of setting the melody and developing it into a song. As someone who loves to learn how to put together tunes, I use keywords like “Morricone motive”, and “Morricone interview” to see how people discuss his music writing method. On Amazon, there is also a book for sale by a young musician, Alessandro De Rosa, written with Maestro and translated into English with the title "Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words", of course, I bought it also.
This book is a headache to read because a lot of it is about Italian, American, and French directors, whose names I don't know, but since I really wanted to learn more about how Maestro collaborated with the director, how to write music, etc. The book is meticulously well written, as Maestro says, “the truest”. I also bought some other Maestro books such as "Ennio Morricone: Master of the Soundtrack", "Reflections on the Music of Ennio Morricone", then a French book entitled "Ennio Morricone, Perspective d’une oeuvre", even Italian books such as "Ennio. Un maestro. Conversazione" or "Morricone, la Musica, il Cinema" (this is the new 25th-anniversary edition), then I used scanning methods to get the text and paste it in Google Translation or Micorosft Word 365's translation feature to get the essence of the text! In addition, I also bought some music books to practice playing on the piano, such as "Ennio Morricone: Anthology", "The Best of Ennio Morricone: Original Soundtrack Collection 1", 2 & 3, "The Legend of 1900", etc. In addition, there is also an online community of Morricone music lovers, who record the full Maestro playlist and publish the free Maestro PDF magazine since 2013, which has 23 issues so far.
https://chimai.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page
The movie "Cinema Paradiso" and "Once Upon a Time in the West"
As mentioned, Ennio Morricone's music can be heard on its own without watching the movie, as the structure of the song is exactly like a pop song, which is usually about 3 to 5 minutes long, with layers and easy to understand, unlike the classical music of other great maestros in the past such as J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, L.V. Beethoven. Whenever a piece of music is structured like a Concerto form or more sophisticated, I don't dare listen to it, as I don't truly understand what they want to convey. But here, since it's the music Maestro wrote for the movie, I tried to buy a few movies to watch. The most "impressive" movie IMHO is probably "Cinema Paradiso", I was amazed at how the tracks matched the scene and the actors' moods so well! The "Love Theme" (that I mentioned at the start of this essay) really suited the mood of a young man growing up, falling in love and being loved, and then waiting patiently for his lover's news. He wrote a lot of love letters that were sadly all returned by the post office, as the address was unclaimed. As another example, in "Once Upon A Time in the West", the music opened up with a brighter mood as the main actress walked out of the train station and ventures into the vast and unfamiliar West.
Ennio Morricone - Musiques de Films - Volume 2
According to "Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words", Morricone composed the music for nearly 500 films and television series during his 60-year music career, this is such an impressive number. I told myself I could never have enough money to buy each LP or CD. Even if I could, it would be difficult to do so as the LP/CD was made in Italy and has been out of print for such a long time. So when I heard that Mr. Stephane Lerouge, who was responsible for publishing Volume 1, would release another Volume 2 containing 14 more Ennio Morricone CDs, I was so excited and reserved a copy on Amazon and looked forward to having it. Finally, the collection arrived and I got to listen to some other rare songs. In addition, I also bought some CDs that Volume 1 either did not have or only introduced a few tracks, such as:
- The Butterfly,
- Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone,
- Morricone 60,
- Morricone Segreto,
- Malèna,
- Quando l'amore è sensualità,
- Ennio Morricone: Piano Music,
- We All Love Ennio Morricone,
- Morricone Duel: The Most Dangerous Concert Ever,
- Paradiso (by Hayley Westenra),
- Focus (Ennio Morricone and Dulce Pontes)
- etc.
There is joy in discovering these individual CDS, as sometimes the arrangement of each song is different than one another, and sometimes there are songs with lyrics, such as Metti, Una Sera A Cena.
If you've read this far, you're probably wondering, what does the writer want by introducing Ennio Morricone's music without discussing how he composed his music, etc. but just talking about buying this and buying that? The truth is, I have been stuck for a while in choosing and listening to music. Music of the European and American of the 60', 70', 80', were all kind of boring now to listen to, and they're no longer suitable for my inner mind. ABBA just released a disc in 2021, but the performance is not the same as before. The Beatles released a documentary last year titled "Get Back" which was interesting, but they've been out since 1970, no matter how many "alternate takes" they put out, those are probably the same material. Other bands in the 70s and 80s each had only a few good songs, and not much more.
I also don't want to sign up for Apple Music, although there is a lot of music there, 100 million copies (!), but with the habit of digging deep into the craft of writing music, so the more I listen to the songs, the more confused I get. Vietnamese music (overseas and domestic), classical music, jazz music, and new music in Europe and America too, I'm not so interested in listening, or when I occasionally heard some of those songs, it bought me such nostalgia for the heyday of overseas music.
I include a set of 3 CDs called “Ennio Morricone – 50 Movie Themes Hits”. They are very hard to find nowadays, but I saw them for sale on Apple Music for only $15. These songs are really an anthology, if you've never heard Morricone's music and you like 60's, 70's, and 80's pop and rock, maybe this collection will satisfy your taste. With 500 movie soundtracks, Morricone music is a rich source of music that you'll probably never get bored of. If you like listening to music on Youtube, Ennio Morricone's channel also has some free videos that are over an hour long, which makes it very convenient for you to enjoy his music.
Ennio DVD
Later this year I was lucky enough to buy and see a documentary about Ennio, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore ( he also directed Cinema Paradiso). I called it fortunate because for the first time I could see European PAL movies in the US. I discover that they sell these players on Amazon, with the price of only $40 (Megatek brand). This player can read all different kinds of discs in the world, as long as they are of DVD format only, and not Blu-ray. So I ordered both the DVD and the player, of course. The DVD was very special, and I learned a lot of new things, some even not mentioned in the "In His Own Words" book. From the time Giuseppe Tornatore won the Oscar (Best Foreign Language Film) in 1990 with the movie Cinema Paradiso until the passing of Maestro, the two have worked together for over 30 years so they understand each other very well. Tornatore himself recounts in the Bonus section that Morricone only agreed to make the movie if Tornatore would direct!
As the documentary progresses, Tornatore revisits Morricone's school days, the playlists of Maestro arrangements for early '60s Italian pop music, then it talks about films such as "A Fistful of Dollars", then to the trilogy of "Once Upon A Time in The West", "Giù La Testa", "Once Upon A Time in America", then to the movies of the 70s, 80s such as "Sacco & Vanzetti", "Allonsanfan", "Days of Heavens", "The Mission", "The Untouchables", "Cinema Paradiso", and finally "The Hateful Eight" in 2016, when the Maestro won the Academy Award for Best Original Score of the Year. The film gives us a lot of details, such as the Maestro's guilt for being "hired" or "lent to" the cinema, when he should have written "absolute" music like his teacher, Goffredo Petrassi. Another interesting detail is Morricone's writing style: just like Beethoven when he was deaf, Morricone didn't use keyboards, the notes were in his head, he just had to write them down, like we would write down an essay. He also wrote the entire score, not assigning anyone else to help him with any part. It is true that seeing is believing.
Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso and Metti, Una Sera a Cena
Fortunately for us Morricone fans, an online professor, Dr. Christopher Brellochs took the time to explain in detail the points that make the "Love Theme" from "Cinema Paradiso" so special. Although the music is difficult to remember, you will never forget it once you remember it.
First, he discusses the harmony of the song, in particular how the Cm7 chord is a "pivot chord" that makes the song sound like a Gm minor but also a related major Bb. Then he lectured on the tempo of the song, with the interjection of a 2/4 time field in a 4/4 time. Next comes a declaration with the note Si, rest for a beat and a half, then a leap down to re, and then slowly fill in the gaping void to balance the previous leap. After that, a glorious arpeggio (Re Fa La Do) is marvelously followed, and so on. Just like that, he explained in detail why the song was loved by so many people.
Another song that is also very interesting because of many different points, is the song Metti, Una Sera a Cena (Wikipedia translates as “Let's Say, an Evening for Dinner”). On the DVD, Maestro mentions a similar example, Se Telefonando, specifying that he uses a motive with only three notes, in Metti, Una Sera a Cena these notes are: Do# Re and Si. This is the same method of creating motive by limiting the notes used by ancient Western musicians, such as using the word BACH (B=B flat, A, C, H=B natural) as motive notes.
Another interesting fact is that there are only three notes, but because of the 4/4 time, Mr. Morricone cleverly let each Do#, Re, Si note fall into the first beat of each small clause, making the verse very syncopated but at the same time very fresh, as the notes are in different accents. After repeating the sentence one more time, Maestro is very clever as he spreads the notes and transposes, making these three motive notes now as Mi Fa Re! The tempo and spacing between notes remain the same, but since these are new tones, the music becomes fresh, yet still feels familiar. Finally, he creates a new motive, which has more than 3 notes (Sol# La Si Si Fa#), and then expands that motive into a melody that plays on the basis of the original three-note melody!!!
In the world of Maestro's music, there are many such interesting points, such as the three melodies and rhythms that blend together in "On Earth As It Is In Heaven" (9) or "Vita Nostra" of "The Mission", or the melodies ("Main Theme", "Deborah's Theme", "Childhood Memories") of "One Upon A Time In America", "Giù La Testa", "The Most Beautiful Wife", etc.
Just like in the previous times when I got to know the composers' Paul Mauriat and Raymond Lefevre, they had passed away before I could listen to their music. This time too, but it's truly better late than never. Ennio Morricone's music has been a part of my spiritual life for more than two years. Hopefully, you will discover more tracks if you already know them. If you don't know, you should learn more, buy and watch the DVD about the career of this great composer, whom composer Hans Zimmer regards as an inspiration and motivation, and who he considers Morricone to be the greatest talent of the 20th century for film music.
Thank you for reading and see you next time.
Little Saigon, December 2022.
Học Trò
Notes:
(1) Love Theme - Cinema Paradiso (Tema d’ Amore) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lRqY7eu0BU
(2) Ennio Morricone Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUAwOBo-ZZ8S8cIH0SGoXpg
(3) Ennio Morricone – Musiques de Films Volume 1: https://www.amazon.com/Musiches-Films-1964-2015-Vol-1/dp/B07YMFZHTV/
(4) Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words : https://www.amazon.com/Ennio-Morricone-His-Own-Words/dp/0190681012
(5) Ennio Morricone – Musiques de Films Volume 2: https://www.amazon.com/Musiques-Films-1964-2015-Vol-2/dp/B09MJK7Z5W
(6) Ennio (DVD): https://www.amazon.com/Ennio-DVD/dp/B09YD6VPC2
(7) Dr Christopher Brellochs’ Analysing “Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfDbqukfZIE
(8) Ennio Morricone - Metti una sera a cena - Uncut Version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmCRNXNVHGk
(9) On Earth As It Is In Heaven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V8aZLTpKXo
(10) Ennio Morricone Youtube Channel – Movie Classics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J21m-3l34qo&list=OLAK5uy_kY8b5GasPtH17PGe39LjKs02Vc7GUqBlM
(11) Ennio Morricone – my inspiration, by Hans Zimmer https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/ennio-morricone-my-inspiration-by-hans-zimmer
(12) Ennio Morricone - The Official Concert Celebration https://www.morriconeofficialconcert.com/