Ennio Morricone

“Bernard Herrmann used to write all his scores by himself. So did Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky. I don't understand why this happens in the movie industry.”

“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.”

“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 wit...”

“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 ma...”

“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...”

“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 m...”

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

“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...”

“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 Canadia...”

“I was offered a free villa in Hollywood, but I said no thank you, I prefer to live in Italy.”

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