Rest in peace | Page 77 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

A friend of mine just texted me to give me the sad news of Ennio Morricone’s death this very morning in Rome, Italy. I was left speechless. Aged 91, he was the most influential and masterful film composer of the Twentieth Century and I, as most people, would never have anticipated that he would pass ever, given how much time he’s been around to create masterpieces, even coming up with some in this day and age, most recently the The Hateful Eight soundtrack which was nothing short of brilliant still after all these years. Is just one of those people you blindly tell yourself will live forever, like Kirk Douglass or Richard Attenborough.

I am sad and also glad to be one of the first ones (I hope) getting notified and pass onto others this heart-breaking news. And I feel it is only appropiate that in this forum, I can have the honour to start the “eulogy” with a few words of my own, after all I am a movie fan a notch above a music fan, and Ennio Morricone to me has always represented the best of both worlds. He was wholeheartedly my favourite film composer as he had a personal style that I could point at without any context yet he could paint any film he worked in with vivid, differing colours in thousands of shades. His music could be the most expressive and tearjerker, as well as the most badass.

This man composed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the most defiant and characteristic Western anthem. His style was that of a decided man, who could see beyond a still frame and give it movement with hard drums and soft strings. He was the biggest film composer not just in reputation, but also in his grandiloquent way of composition itself. His style represented the most striking of human emotions, those being love, danger, fear, happiness, regret, longing and death. But not in that shallow, “empty word” sort of way. He dug deep to find the proper notes and textures to represent the very core of those emotions, and he wasn’t afraid to really go there. His legend will live on for many centuries to come and my soul will be burried in the ground and my influence forgotten before someone comes around to even closely parallel his habilities.

I’ve been alone at many times in my life. Even in the worst moments, Ennio’s music was always there. One of the films that has always struck a nerve with me, has always squeezed the most out of my heart has been Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso. It’s the best Italian film ever made, and one of the best ever. The level of familiarity I have with its sentimantal shifts, its melancholic style, memorabilia of a bygone era, how it represents loosing loved ones, as well as falling in love and growing up in a community and see it tarnished is what make it so intriguing and significant in my life, I’ve always strongy identified with the teaching and feelings of it. I never fail to cry when watching it at least a few times, most of all the last scene. There’s never been a film that has made me feel like it and there probably never will be another. I cannot stress enough how important Ennio’s music was for that journey to work the way it did. And I don’t mean just the film, but also my upbringing as a young man and now as an adult. That movie has always been with me. In fact, it was one of the first movies I ever got in my collection, when it was only a half-a-dozen DVDs that has now after more than five years turned into more than 300. I can only think of leaves changing and time passing right before my eyes when I look at it. And when I hear the title theme, I am always in shock by the beauty displayed. I leave a link of it, his best composition in my eyes.

The whole piece is a masterwork. But from 2:21 onwards, those wind melodies overwhelm me in a way is not easy to put into words. I am not an easy crier, and that’s why I love Ennio Morricone and I will always cerrish knowing of his legacy early on in life as a badge of honor. He’s one of the few men who can bend me. Just the power of his writig managed to put together some of the most striking sounds in excistence.

Kind of inspiring how the man who I would pick to orchestrate my funeral is now having his own. What could he pick to play at his funeral? Because any of his thousands of romantic compositions would fit right in. I am not a big believer in Heaven perse. But if there is one, I hope he’s already there, moving his baton. And if there isn’t, well, the closest thing was probably his music anyway.

Rest in peace, Ennio Morricone, I won’t let me forget you.

Famed Nashville fiddle player Charlie Daniels has passed. He had a HUGE hit in the late 70’s with “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” but is perhaps better remembered for his contributions to Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” and “New Morning”, not to mention Ringo’s “Beaucoups of Blues.”