Ruadhán Jones
Ennio Morricone Tributes have streamed in from the faithful around the world for Oscar winning Italian composer Ennio Morricone.
Most famous to many Catholics for his score for the film The Mission, he died aged 91.
Morricone died in a Rome hospital on Monday, July 6 after he was admitted days earlier with a fractured femur. Morricone’s lawyer Giorgio Assumma said that the composer died at dawn “with the comfort of Faith”.
In 2019, the composer was awarded Gold Medal of the Pontificate by Pope Francis for his “extraordinary artistic work in the sphere of music, universal language of peace, solidarity and spirituality”.
Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare and Leighin told The Irish Catholic that Morricone’s music reflected his faith and that his music has been played in churches across Ireland.
“The famous instrumental piece Gabriel’s Oboe [from The Mission] has been played I’d say in every church in our country,” said Bishop Nulty. “A tremendous piece of music… a great gift to our Church, to our prayer, to our music.
“He has played in different Church environments across the world and I’ve heard his music in many different liturgies. In that respect, it was good to honour him,” Bishop Nulty said. “Long may his compositions live after him.”
Enslavement
The Mission (1987) depicted Spanish Jesuits’ efforts to protect indigenous people from enslavement in 18th-century South America.
In an interview for the National Catholic Register in 2013, Morricone described the great merit of the soundtrack as being “its technical and spiritual effect”.
Morricone composed scores for more almost 500 films, achieving international fame for his work on the Spaghetti-Western trilogy – A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood.
Recalling that he cried when he met Francis, Morricone said: ‘Don’t get the idea that I burst into tears at every opportunity; those were the only two times…’”
Morricone, who was simply known as ‘Maestro’ in his home town of Rome, won an honorary Academy Award in 2007, and an Oscar for Best Original Score for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight in 2016.
Morricone also wrote the score for Karol: a Man Who Became Pope, portraying the early life of St John Paul II, in 2006.
He also composed a Mass marking the 200th anniversary of the restoration of the Society of Jesus in 2015, dedicating it to Pope Francis, the first Jesuit Pope.
The composer and his wife met Pope Francis before the premiere of the Missa Papae Francisci.
Recalling that he cried when he met Francis, Morricone said: “Don’t get the idea that I burst into tears at every opportunity; those were the only two times I have ever cried – when I first watched The Mission and when I met the Pope.”
Interview
Morricone had stated in his 2013 interview that he had no intention of composing a Mass setting, but changed his mind after a request from the rector of the Chiesa del Santissimo Nome di Gesu, the mother church of the Jesuit order,
“The thing that strikes me most about this task,” he explained in a 2015 interview, “is the fact that I wrote the music for the film The Mission, which is the story of the Jesuits in South America, which after some years, in 1750, they were disbanded.
“In some way I have participated in their dissolution and now I participate in the celebration of the 200th anniversary of their restoration.”
The composer commented that while his new Mass does subtly experiment, musically it is tied to the liturgy and to tradition.
“I was faithful to the modality we have in Gregorian music,” he said, explaining his use of dissonance and polymodality in the piece, as well as an overall air of serenity.
“The drama, perhaps, is located in the dynamism that there is in some moments.”
Works such as this Mass are testament to the ability to adapt traditional music to modern musical language, Morricone said.
“The greatness of the language of today together with the greatness of the tradition. For example, the two choirs and the use of the modality are in the tradition, which is still there. There are tradition and innovation.”
Sharing his memories of the late composer with Vatican News, Giancarlo La Vella, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi recalled that Ennio Morricone was a man of faith.
The President of the Pontifical Council for Culture also said he would remember this great cinematic composer for a least two particular spiritual events.
The first, Cardinal Ravasi recalled, was in Poland when he was preparing an Oratory for Pope St John Paul II.
“The second event is the most recent meeting on April 15, 2019, when I presented him, in the name of Pope Francis, with the Pontifical Gold Medal for his musical work. These two moments testify to what he has always attested: his Faith.”
Morricone was born in Rome in 1928 and began composing music from early age. He worked on radio and television initially, before moving into films in the late 1950s.
Morricone married his wife Maria Travia in 1956, and she wrote lyrics to complement to her husband’s pieces. Her works include the Latin texts for The Mission. They had three children.