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It certainly makes sense.
For years, I held that as a sign of what a grown-up and precocious child I was.
Listen to the central motifs ofA Fistful of Dollars,orFor a Few Dollars More,orDuck!
They could just as easily be lullabies.
Of course a child would have responded to them.
That was Morricones genius.
Or at least, part of it.
The music loses its innocence, but never its soul.
Over and over in Morricones work we hear this structure repeated.
A lot of people wrote and worked to Morricones music.
I certainly did, and do.
(Im listening toStanno Tutti Beneas I write this.)
I now knowGeorge Pelecanos does.
John Singleton wroteBoyz n the Hoodpowered along by Morricones music.
Without having to look it up, Id bet several body parts that Quentin Tarantino does.
All that, too, makes sense.
And then there are the occasional reversals of Morricones basic approach, which are themselves magnificent.
Take Franks Introduction fromOnce Upon a Time in the West.
But look at how the piece works in the movie itself.
A boy has just seen his whole family massacred.
Its a brief feint, a momentary sense that, maybe, things will be okay.
This is Henry Fonda, after all.
And then, the music dies out … and Fonda shoots the boy.
A ghastly moment given mythic, existential power by Morricones music.
The scene is more than 50 years old at this point.
You dont need the film at all.
Thats what Morricone gave us, I think.
Each piece was an expressive universe unto itself.
It was soundtrack music, but it lived on its own.
He was his own musical genre.
