Ennio Morricone

I want people to know about all the kinds of music that I write. Some believe I just write film scores, which is not true.

They're all my children... every score I've done.

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 Canadians soon after the war, when I played with them, they paid me with food. That will give you an idea how widespread poverty was at that time.

When I have to score a film, I watch the movie first and then start thinking about it. And from that moment on, it is as if I were pregnant. I then have to deliver the child, so from that moment on, I think always about the music - even when I go to the grocery store, I think about it.

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

It could have been extremely boring to write musical scores for only westerns of horror films. It was really exciting for me to work in all these various genres.