Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer best known for his prolific work in film music, scoring more than 500 films over several decades. He studied at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and initially worked as a trumpeter before beginning his career in film scoring in the early 1960s. His international reputation grew through his collaborations with director Sergio Leone, particularly on the spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Morricone developed a distinctive musical language that combined classical orchestration with elements of jazz, rock, electronic music and avant-garde, using unconventional instrumentation, striking timbres and memorable melodies. Beyond Westerns, he composed scores for films including The Battle of Algiers, Cinema Paradiso and The Mission. In 2016, he won his first Academy Award for Best Original Score for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.