July 6th, 2020, we lost a legend today. The great Italian composer Ennio Morricone has left us. But I won’t dwell on the negative. The man left behind a wide legacy, wider then any epic landscape, with more iconic scores then I could possibly count.

Morricone was classically trained and loved playing the trumpet. For most movie fans he changed movie music forever when he scored Sergio Leone’s Dollar trilogy. His music dancing along with the animation in the opening credits to A Fistful of Dollars. Then we see Clint Eastwood ride into a doomed town. All set to unique and soon to be a classic score. It was the perfect one two three punch of a star, a talented director (Leone), and Morricone’s haunting score that made a western remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo into the gamechanger.

But it wasn’t just Leone’s westerns, Morricone scored hundreds of films of all genres and plenty variety. With Dario Argento’s debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, he added a sinister edge to the gialli. He spiced up the Poliziotteschi with Revolver. He even had a huge following in Hollywood with iconic scores for Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, Roman Polanski’s Frantic, and even recently with Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.

My personal favorite of all of his scores is the haunting Duck You Sucker (A Fistful of Dynamite, Giu La Testa). Nothing compares to the chorus as they chant Sean Sean. I get chills just thinking about it now.

The man has worked on so many great films that I could go on forever. He is one of the few composers that most film fans know by name. He could lift up any film with both operatic tunes or subtle melodies. A master that will never be topped. I send good wishes to his family and friends. They are suffering a great loss. Us film fans are too. But while this is a sad bit of news, we still have his countless masterpieces. RIP to the master and Thank you for all of your wonderful work.