Ennio Morricone

I like to feel and understand people's contentment with what I've done. ”

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 with songs, at all. I always thought they were not real, that the songs sounded a little bit false. But in the case of 'West Side Story,' things were different. ”

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. ”