I’m sad to say that Italian composer Ennio Morricone (born November 10, 1928) has died of undisclosed causes, age 91.

Morricone has few equals as a film composer both in quality and length of career.  (Mancini?  Williams?  Schifrin?)  He wrote legendary pieces of Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti westerns” of the 1960s, working continuously over the decades (“The Mission”, “The Untouchables”) right up until the 2010s, with Quentin Tarantino’s “Hateful Eight”.

His career in writing film scores has few parallels, from the 1960s to the 2010, producing masterpieces all the while. From Morricone’s official youtube channel:

The Best of Ennio Morricone

The soundtrack to “Cinema Paradiso”

“Wisdom and Beauty” music collection

Do listen, it will enrich your life.  From the BBC:

Ennio Morricone: Oscar-winning Italian film composer dies aged 91

Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer whose credits include the “spaghetti” Westerns that made Clint Eastwood a star, has died in Rome aged 91.

According to Italian news agency Ansa, he died in hospital having fractured his femur in a fall some days ago.

The prolific composer also wrote music for Once Upon a Time in America, The Untouchables and Cinema Paradiso.

Having received an honorary Oscar in 2007, he went on to win one in 2016 for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.

Morricone, who was simply known as “Maestro” in his home town of Rome, scored more than 500 films over seven decades.

[. . .]

[Sergio] Leone called the composer’s contributions “indispensable” and would have him write the score before shooting so he could design his shots around Morricone’s contributions.

[. . .]

Before his [Oscar] win for The Hateful Eight, Morricone received Oscar nominations for Days of Heaven, The Mission, The Untouchables, Bugsy and Malena.

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Also of note, Charlie Daniels (October 28, 1936 – July 6, 2020) died of a stroke on Tuesday, age 83. His biggest hit was “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” (link to the song), from 1979, which was #1 on the country charts and Top 5 on the mainstream charts in many countries.