Synopsis

Today’s date marks the birthdate in 1928 of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, famous for more than 400 scores he wrote for films and TV.

If you’re a fan, you already know that he wrote the music for a series of spaghetti western movies like the 1964 classic A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood as a taciturn, sun-burnt, cigar-chomping gunman.

If you’re an oboist, you’ve probably played Morricone’s haunting Gabriel’s Oboe at weddings or funerals. It's a melody originally heard in his soundtrack to the1986 film The Mission.

But in a 2006 interview for Dazed magazine, Morricone revealed some things even his fans might not have known: He collected bars of hotel soap as a hobby. And if he hadn’t become a composer, he would have liked to have been a professional chess player.

He also offered a bit of wise advice when asked about scores that were not successes: “A long time ago, I really loved a film that I was working on and I became too involved. That was kind of unbalanced. It made me realize that you can’t love things too much if you want them to work.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ennio Morricone (1928 - 2020) Gabriel’s Oboe, fr “The Mission”; Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Ennio Morricone, cond. Sony 57872