July 6th 2020. A sad sad day for all film and music lovers !
He was 91 (born November 10th 1928). He even conducted a concert in Rome this January !
I wrote a LMA piece on his carrer and influence by the time of too long awaited Oscar and the score of The Hateful Eight in the Sunete magazine! Time to republish soon.
I saw him with my buddies Andrei & Relu in 2004, live in Budapest. The Arena Concerto series.
He did great scores for many directors, three for Brian De Palma (Untouchables, Casualties of War, Mission to Mars), three for Gillo Pontercorvo (Battle of Algiers, Burn/Chiemada, Ogro), for
Polanski (Frantic), Joffe (the Mission), John Carpenter (The Thing), Warren Beatty (Bugsy), oh so many, and so many perfect brilliant ones. The giallos, starting with the first Argento films, to Spasmo and
The Black Belly of Tarantula, gli polizioteschi, from Revolver to les French -Le Clan des siciliens, to Peur sur la Ville, to Chi Mai in Le Profesionnel, Le Marginal. Last score of his I heard was in Jose Giovanni, Le Ruffian (1983), that I cought-up with last month.
Love his psychedelic score for The Exorcist II (The Heretic) !!! Love the parodic score for Ochhio a la Pena ! (Buddy Goes West/ Atentie la pana de vultur!), which wierdly he did for Michele Lupo (ans Bud Spencer, and Amidou!). Or the original parodic My Name is Nobody/Mio nome e nessuno. The beautiful Il Grande Silenzio for Sergio Corbucci. Pop-ish Danger Diabolik for Mario Bava ! And of course the dramatic TV series La Piovra !
Finally after forgiving him of using-remashing up -his music and themes he made some music for his fan, Quentin Tarantino
in /for The Hateful Eight. That uncanilly got him his only Oscar of his career ! He got a Honorary one in 2007 after many nominations, first of which only in 1979 (!) for Malick's Days of Heaven ! Last score for his friend, another T-as in Tornatore, for whom he was an attached composer, for La Corrispondenza, in 2016. Unarguably he did some of his finest music for Tornatore, from Nuovo Cinama Paradiso to Malena to Legend of 1900.
The most influential film score composer of all time, over 500 films, my favourite film composer and one of the best musicians EVER !
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“If you scroll through all the movies I’ve worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies and so on. So in other words, I’m no specialist, because I’ve done everything. I’m a specialist in music.”
