Ennio Morricone Quotes

“De Palma is delicious! He respects music; he respects composers. For 'The Untouchables', everything I proposed to him was fine, but then he wanted a piece that I didn't like at all, and of course we didn't have an agreement on that. It was something I didn't want to write – a triumphal piece for the police.”

“Everyone has to die. I'm not particularly scared about it. What really frightens me is that if I go before my wife, I will leave her alone, and vice versa. The ideal would be to die together.”

“I can't be enthusiastic as soon as I write something on the music sheet. The music sheet is only the beginning: it has to be listened to, played by the instruments, and then heard by the director, but most importantly, it has to be listened to by the public.”

“I dislike cats. I like horses, some monkeys, and sweet dogs that aren't too aggressive. I used to have a wonderful, big cat, and one day I came into the kitchen and it was on the table, ruining all the food we were about to eat. I was so annoyed that I took it to a friend's house in the country.”

“I don't know the names of any pop musicians. Pop music is standardised; it's made to please the largest audience possible. I also compose to please a large audience, but when you listen to my music, you understand that I have studied and applied the whole history of composition.”

“I have to see a definitive cut of the film before I even start thinking about the music, I tell the director what my feelings are and what I would like to do. He accepts what I say or discusses it or destroys it. Eventually, we have to find a compromise.”

“I like composing music, but I love being with my family.”

“I like to feel and understand people's contentment with what I've done.”

“I never watch the dailies. What I usually do is have a look at the rough or final cut, and I just get something from the story. Sometimes I start composing even before the director has shot anything. The dailies don't help me at all.”

“I often use the same harmonies as pop music because the complexity of what I do is elsewhere.”

“I really like conducting my music in concerts because I'm convinced it's not just for films; it has its own life. It can live far away from the images of the movie.”

“I want people to know about all the kinds of music that I write. Some believe I just write film scores, which is not true.”

“I was born in 1928, so in 1943, 1944, we had the war in Rome. There were a lot of hardships, a lack of food, many shortages. So when I worked with the Americans, the English, and the Canadians soon after the war, when I played with them, they paid me with food. That will give you an idea how widespread poverty was at that time.”

“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.”

“In music, what is very important is temporality of space and length, based on the breathing space the director gives the music within the film, by separating the music from various elements of reality, like noises, dialogues... That's how you treat music properly, but it doesn't always happen this way. Music is often blamed, but it's not its fault.”

“In my youth, cinemas showed two films in one day. I used to watch both of them. It may sound strange, but 'West Side Story' was the only musical I liked. I didn't like musicals, or films with songs, at all. I always thought they were not real, that the songs sounded a little bit false. But in the case of 'West Side Story', things were different.”

“It could have been extremely boring to write musical scores for only westerns of horror films. It was really exciting for me to work in all these various genres.”

“Music is an experience, not a science.”

“Music needs room to breathe.”

“My favourite type of pizza is a Napoletana: tomatoes, mozzarella, and very few anchovies. It must have a thin base.”

“My more risky or avant garde music is not that well known to a wider audience, but I wish it was.”

“Popularity doesn't bother me. It attests to the affection and comprehension of the public. The important thing is to retain the pioneer spirit. I profoundly love the profession, and I work on each film as if it were the first – and the last. Giving the best of myself. Many of the 'greats' ask their arranger to write their scores for them. Me, I write all alone, from the first note to the last. All.”

“Some movies work really well with music from Bach or Mahler that existed long before the film, so music has its own autonomy.”

“The respect for a musical score must come from the director... If the director has no power and has to surrender to budgetary constraints, this is where we have the problem.”

“There are some directors who actually fear the possible success of music. They fear that the audience or the critics will think the film has worked because there was a very good music score.”

“They're all my children... every score I've done.”

“We live in a modern world, and in contemporary music the central fact is contamination. Not the contamination of disease but the contamination of musical styles. If you find this in me, that is good.”

“When I have to score a film, I watch the movie first and then start thinking about it. And from that moment on, it is as if I were pregnant. I then have to deliver the child, so from that moment on, I think always about the music – even when I go to the grocery store, I think about it.”

“Bernard Herrmann used to write all his scores by himself. So did Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky. I dont understand why this happens in the movie industry.”

“I also used these realistic sounds in a psychological way. With 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly', I used animal sounds – as you say, the coyote sound – so the sound of the animal became the main theme of the movie.”