EnnioMorricone
Stockholm August 2010
The 19th Polar Music Prize Ceremony was held at Konserthuset, Stockholm on in the month of August. The evening continued with a banquet in Vinterträdgården at Stockholm’s Grand Hôtel.
HM King Carl XVI Gustaf presented the Prize to the two Laureates Ennio Morricone and Björk.
Special arrangements of the Laureates’ music was performed by Kungliga Filharmonikerna and conductor Hans Ek together with an amazing line up of international and Swedish artists honoured the Laureates by performing their music both at the ceremony and banquet.
The event was broadcast live on Swedish national television (TV4).
Barbara Hendricks performing "Deborah's theme" at the Polar Music Prize ceremony 2010
The Laureates of the Year 2010
Maestro!
Ennio Morricone was born in Rome on November 10, 1928. The son of a jazz trumpet player, the young Morricone started his musical career also playing the trumpet, receiving a diploma in the instrument in 1946. He began composing theatre music after this, and in 1954 received a diploma in Composition at the Conservatory under the guidance of Goffredo Petrassi. Morricone’s artistic career spans a wide range of composition genres, from absolute music to applied music, and has seen him working both as orchestrator and conductor in the recording field, as well as a composer for theatre, radio and cinema.
Goffredo Petrassi (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Early works and collaborations
Instant Composition
In 1965, Morricone joined the Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza, a collective of musicians devoted to pushing the traditional boundaries of music through avant-garde musical improvisations.
Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza and their peers around Europe defined new musical structures during the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
Olivier Messiaen (right) and Iannis Xenakis (left) , another Polar Music Prize Laureate involved in the same musical streams as Morricone and GDIDNC. (Source: Les Amis de Xenakis)
Claps & Whistle
Ennio Morricone has scored over 400 films since he began his career as a film music composer in 1961. Among his most famous scores are the ones he composed for Sergio Leone’s Western classics A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), For A Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966), Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) and A Fistful Of Dynamite (1971).
"A fistful of dollars" and "The good, the bad and the ugly" at the Polar Music Prize ceremony 2010
The soundtrack as a genre
The so called "Spaghetti" Westerns were often shot in Italy or Spain with low budgets. Since there was rarely much money left over for musical scores, Morricone learned to compose his scores using the simplest of means possible. Morricone recalls that he "reused realistic, concrete material, and everyday sounds” such as gunshots, cracking whips, whistles, voices, mouth harps, trumpets, and electric guitar in place of more "classic" orchestral arrangements. Though sonically bizarre for a movie score, Morricone was able to use his sonic effects to punctuate and comically tweak the action of the film, creating a soundtrack that was viscerally true to Leone's vision. His trademark sound ushered in a new genre of popular film scores and became a new reference point for expressive film music.
Polar Music Prize campaign
A legacy of inspiration
Morricone’s memorable melodies and distinguished orchestrations have inspired many different musicians over the years. In the 1980s, his music received new recognition from outside the film music community when New York-based avant-garde saxophonist John Zorn offered up radical jazz interpretations of his classic film scores.
Do you recognize the original score?
The Big Gundown is an intriguing avant-garde jazz concept album by American composer and saxophonist John Zorn. The album consists of nine tracks built upon themes originally written by Ennio Morricone for Italian films, as well as Zorn's own "Tre Nel 5000." (Source: © Tzadik records)
Classical compositions
Apart from the movie scores that have made him famous in many different musical circles, Maestro Morricone has composed over 100 pieces of music over the course of his career. Some of these works include: Concerto per Orchestra n.1 (1957), Frammenti di Eros (1985), Cantata per L’Europa (1988), UT, per tromba, archi e percussioni (1991), Ombra di Lontana Presenza (1997), Voci dal Silenzio (2002), Sicilo ed altri Frammenti (2006), and Vuoto D’Anima Piena (2008). In 2001, Ennio Morricone began an active schedule of concert appearances, conducting his film music and concert works for symphony orchestras and polyphonic choirs in over 100 concerts across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
Ennio Morricone at United Nations HQ, date unknown
Content of biography is presented here as it was published in 2012.
All pictures from the ceremony and the banquet by Karin Törnblom © Polar Music Prize.
In memoriam Ennio Morricone 1928–2020.
Marie Ledin
Managing Director
marie.ledin@polarmusicprize.org
Alfons Karabuda
Chairman of the Polar Music
Prize Award Committee
alfons@polarmusicprize.org
Polar Music Prize
Po Box 55777
SE-114 83 Stockholm
Sweden
Visiting address:
Banérgatan 16