SYNAESTHETIC_TAPES 06 / MORE MORRICONE

A retrospective playlist to celebrate the synaesthetic genius and vision of Ennio Morricone, through a selection of lesser known soundtrack cuts defeating the often limited understanding of the Maestro. 

When yesterday we learnt about the departure of Ennio Morricone it felt like a piece of our editorial team had left us. It’s not because the Maestro was a journalist himself, although his accuracy, fantasy, and ability to recreate vivid images would have made him an excellent one. It is mostly because his scores had the peculiar gift of synesthesia. Instruments as diverse and quintessentially Italian as the Sicilian mouth harp were used by Morricone to paint evocative pictures that projected American canyons, factory clanger, and lusty velvet drapes into the listeners’ minds. The wordless use of human voice – mostly that of Edda Dell’Orso - in Morricone’s hands turned into something more powerful and expressive than lyrics could ever be.  

Like most of the soundtrack maestros of his generation, Morricone knew that composing music is no different from being a chef: nothing should be disposed of. Patterns and motifs often find multiple collocations, not simply re-used out of laziness or creative stasis, but re-invented and re-articulated to new uses. Hence, Alessandro Alessandroni’s trademark Spaghetti Western whistle acquires new enigmatic and erotic nuances in ‘Uno Che Grida Amore’, part of the Metti, Una Sera a Cena OST.  The same applies for Morricone’s child-like falsetto lullabies, now thrilling when deafening a Dario Argento Giallo film, then seductive in Verushka.

Morricone’s greatness lied in his willingness to put together classical and pop music, turning the first accessible and elevating the latter to something else, as witnessed by pop singers Mina, Gino Paoli, and Dino’s records for RCA Italia. The Maestro wasn’t afraid of dissonance, he embodied the opposite attitude to the current state of pop, sheltered behind a repetition of commercially rewarding schemes and production techniques limited in creativity and artistic vision.  

Morricone (third from the right) with Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Roberto Masotti.

Although less accessible, Morricone’s work with the experimental group Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza represents a peak of post-war Italian music that put its musicians on the same conceptual level of radical architecture collectives like Superstudio or Archizoom.  

Without forgetting the essential work of guitarist Alessandro Alessandroni, his Cantori Moderni, and of Bruno Nicolai, who arranged and directed many of Morricone’s scores, this installment of Synaesthetic_Tapes aims to explore a lesser-known side of the Maestro, going beyond the Oscars and Sergio Leone’s films.

Chess were as essential as instruments in Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza’s approach to music composition. Roberto Masotti.

The playlist captures Morricone’s sensual aperitif suites, his psychedelic explorations and groovy ventures into disco that once again surprise for their youthful hipness, if considered that the Maestro surely wasn’t a teenager anymore when composing them.   

Morricone’s greatness stands out even further when we look at his human side, a reserved individual who always turned down mundane life and mostly cared about his wife and Roma, the football team of the city he was born in in 1928 and that yesterday greeted for one last time.