“assimilate and appreciate the instrumental solutions” he devised in his scores.15 It is impossible to tackle all of Morricone’s vast and diverse output, but I have chosen a crosssection of his important scores from different genres. I will analyze shorter excerpts from Roland Joffe’s 1986 period film The Mission and two of Sergio Leone’s Westerns: For a Few Dollars More (1965) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Analytical Methodology This chapter will build on the timbral, textural, and gestural analyses of the previous sections. I will again employ Denis Smalley’s space-form to detail how Morricone uses texture. As a supplement to space-form I will draw on the “segmented structure” model Sergio Miceli developed to analyze Morricone’s Western scores. I will also examine a procedure that Morricone hinted at in his writings: that of a progression of sonorities, or what I will call a timbral progression.16 This procedure is simple — Morricone stated that he conceived of his scores as a “progression of sonorities” that logically helped the narrative of a film. I will also apply Lerdahl’s idea of timbral prototypes. Finally, I will investigate timbral properties of Morricone’s Western scores using Zachary Wallmark’s claim that “timbre perception is a motor mimetic process.”17 Regarding orchestration, I will once again attribute all orchestrational choices in these scores to Morricone himself. This is easy to do; throughout his long career, Morricone never enlisted the help of an orchestrator, and he was critical of those composers that did.18
15 16
Morricone, Anderson, and Miceli, Composing for the Cinema : The Theory and Praxis of Music in Film, 172. Ibid., 171.
17
Wallmark, Zachary, “Appraising Timbre: Embodiment and Affect at the Threshold of Music and Noise”, ii.
18
Leinberger, Ennio Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly : A Film Score Guide, 111.
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