...His approach, he said, reflects his education and his era. “I have studied the expressive methods of the entire history of musical composition,” he said. “At times I turn more toward light music, at times I turn more toward serious music. I mingle things, and sometimes I turn into a chameleon. We are living in a modern world, and in contemporary music the central fact is contamination, not the contamination of disease but the contamination of musical styles. If you find this in me, that is good..." "[regarding the film score for Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (1966)] I wanted to differentiate three timbres — the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said. “A silver flute, sounding sweet, is the good. The ocarina is the ugly. And the bad is the voices of two men singing together, off key.
“I should not be revealing this,” he continued. “These are family secrets.”
from the NYT article, "The Maestro of Spaghetti Westerns Takes a Bow," John Pareles, Jan. 28, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/arts/music/28pare.html
2 comments:
Yes! Who can forget the main theme for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly? The evocative sound that fills the tension of the final standoff..it's one of my favorite movies of all times (Clint Eastwood looking quite dashing)..
it's interesting, I was playing the movie while I was working & not paying attention to the dialogue or the screen, and when I heard the snippets of the music for 'the bad' I'd know what part the movie was at.
Thanks for comments, Styloblanc. If you like those then you'd probably like Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968), unique within Henry Fonda's oeuvre as he actually plays a villain. The scene of the family massacre, at the Irishman's homestead, with Morricone's music (distorted electric guitars?) and the use of wind and dust is amazingly horrific, and then the cut to the train. Another personal favorite, Henry Ford's "My Darling Clementine" (1948) is fantastic. Yes, I want to be the Wyatt Earp character played by Henry Fonda. Looking forward to Week 12, Cowboy Songs: FRONTIER.
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