What was Ennio Morricone's Net Worth?
Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and musician who had a net worth of $50 million at the time of his death. During a multi-decade career, Ennio wrote music for over 500 movies and television series and sold over 70 million records worldwide. He has been called one of the world's most influential film composers of all time. His music has been featured in over 60 award winning films and he produced more than 100 classic pieces of music.
He composed the scores to most of Sergio Leone's films, and also to such classic titles as "The Battle of Algiers," "Days of Heaven," "The Thing," "The Mission," and "Cinema Paradiso." In 2007, Morricone won an Academy Honorary Award, and in 2016 won the Oscar for Best Original Score for "The Hateful Eight."
He lived in Italy for his entire life and famously never learned English. Despite working on hundreds of Hollywood projects, he only visited the US for the first time in 2007 when he was 78. Ennio died on July 6, 2020 at the age of 91.
Early Life and Education
Ennio Morricone was born on November 10, 1928 in Rome, Kingdom of Italy to textile entrepreneur Libera and professional trumpeter Mario. He had four siblings named Adriana, Aldo, Maria, and Franca. Taught the trumpet by his father, Morricone practiced the instrument at the Saint Cecilia Conservatory. He also studied composition and choral music. In 1941, Morricone was chosen from the conservatory students to join the Orchestra of the Opera on its tour of the Veneto region. He finished his studies in 1954 with a diploma in composition. Before becoming a professional musician, Morricone was an avid chess player.
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Career Beginnings
In the beginning of his professional music career, Morricone wrote music for theater and composed classical music for voice and piano. Additionally, he composed classical pieces, including orchestral and chamber compositions, for evening radio shows. In 1956, Morricone branched out musically by playing in a jazz band and arranging pop songs for the Italian broadcaster RAI. He went on to become a top studio arranger at RCA Victor, where he worked with such artists as Rita Pavone and Mario Lanza. In the 1960s, he composed songs for jazz and pop artists including Gianni Morandi, Edoardo Vianello, and Gino Paoli.
Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza
From 1964 through the group's disbandment in 1980, Morricone was a member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. A Rome-based avant-garde ensemble, the group performed and recorded improvisatory compositions using experimental music methods. The group released seven albums in total.
Film Scores in the 1960s and 70s
Morricone started his career as a film score composer ghostwriting for other composers. After that, he had his first major credit with the 1961 film "The Fascist," which inaugurated his long-running professional partnership with director Luciano Salce. Morricone scored many comedy and costume films during the 1960s and 70s, including "Eighteen in the Sun," "I basilischi," "Slalom," "How I Learned to Love Women," "A Fine Pair," and "Winged Devils." He also did the score for the classic French-language comedy "La Cage aux Folles," based on the play of the same name. Elsewhere, Morricone composed scores for dramas, such as "Fists in the Pocket," "The Battle of Algiers," "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom," and "Days of Heaven"; and giallo horror films, including Dario Argento's "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" and "Four Flies on Grey Velvet."
Morricone's other notable scores in the 60s and 70s were for Western films, particularly those directed by Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone, a former classmate. His first score for Leone was for the 1964 Spaghetti Western "A Fistful of Dollars," the first film in the Dollars Trilogy. Morricone went on to score the other two films in the trilogy, "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." His score for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" became especially famous thanks to its unique use of sounds such as gunshots, whips, whistles, and the Fender electric guitar. Highlighted by the iconic theme "The Ecstasy of Gold," the soundtrack was a major commercial success around the world. Following the Dollars Trilogy, Morricone had another commercial smash with his score for Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West." He continued scoring Leone pictures into the 70s, including "A Fistful of Dynamite" and "My Name is Nobody."
(Photo by Luciano Viti/Getty Images)
Further Film Scores
Morricone continued his prolific and eclectic film scoring in the 1980s. Notably, he composed his final score for Leone, which was for Leone's last film, "Once Upon a Time in America." Morricone also composed the scores to John Carpenter's "The Thing" and Roland Joffé's "The Mission," the latter of which became one of the best-selling film scores of all time and earned an Academy Award nomination. Morricone earned another Academy Award nomination for his score to Brian De Palma's 1987 crime film "The Untouchables." The year after that, he wrote the score for Giuseppe Tornatore's acclaimed Italian film "Cinema Paradiso," kicking off a longstanding collaboration with the director. Morricone went on to compose the scores to all of Tornatore's subsequent films.
In the 90s, Morricone wrote the scores to such films as "The Stendhal Syndrome," by Dario Argento; "Bugsy," by Barry Levinson; "Rampage," by William Friedkin; and "Love Affair" and "Bulworth," both by Warren Beatty. His credits in the 21st century include "Malèna," "Baarìa," "The Best Offer," and "The Correspondence." For his contributions to film, Morricone won an Academy Honorary Award in 2007. Later, in 2016, he won his first and only competitive Academy Award for his score to Quentin Tarantino's Western "The Hateful Eight." At the age of 87, he was, at the time, the oldest person to have ever won a competitive Oscar.
Other Work
Among his surfeit of other work, Morricone wrote the score for the Mafia television series "La Piovra" from 1985 to 2001. He composed for several other television programs as well, including "Il Cuore nel Pozzo," "Giovanni Falcone," and the "Ultimo" crime dramas. Additionally, Morricone composed music for several Dolce & Gabbana ad campaigns. He also held numerous live performances over the years, and went on tours around the world.
Personal Life and Death
In 1956, Morricone wed lyricist Maria Travia. The couple had four children named Marco, Alessandra, Andrea, and Giovanni, and remained married for 63 years until Morricone's passing in the summer of 2020. He was 91 years of age.
