Ennio Morricone Dies in Rome Aged 91

Italian film composer Ennio Morricone has died in Rome at the age of 91.

He was renowned for composing film scores for popular Spaghetti Westerns that made Clint Eastwood a star.

According to this family, Ennio Morricone died in a clinic after complications from a fall. His femur was fractured in a fall some days ago, Italian news agency reported.

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, Ennio Morricone went on to win one in 2016 for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.

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

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Yet he remains best known for the haunting melodies he wrote for the trilogy of 1960s westerns Sergio Leone made with the then little-known Clint Eastwood.

A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly centered around Clint Eastwood’s taciturn gunslinger, known as “The Man With No Name”.

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

Clint Eastwood went on to direct Westerns himself, including the Oscar-winning Unforgiven, but Ennio Morricone did not write music for them out of loyalty to Sergio Leone.

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