38 Quotes by Ennio Morricone

De Palma is delicious! He respects music; he respects composers. For 'The Untouchables,' everything I proposed to him was fine, but then he wanted a piece that I didn't like at all, and of course we didn't have an agreement on that. It was something I didn't want to write - a triumphal piece for the police.

The respect for a musical score must come from the director... If the director has no power and has to surrender to budgetary constraints, this is where we have the problem.

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.

Bernard Herrmann used to write all his scores by himself. So did Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky. I don't understand why this happens in the movie industry.

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.

In music, what is very important is temporality of space and length, based on the breathing space the director gives the music within the film, by separating the music from various elements of reality, like noises, dialogues... That's how you treat music properly, but it doesn't always happen this way. Music is often blamed, but it's not its fault.

There are some directors who actually fear the possible success of music. They fear that the audience or the critics will think the film has worked because there was a very good music score.

I often use the same harmonies as pop music because the complexity of what I do is elsewhere.

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.